Reading Rocks is a slow, kin-making project exploring earthly care and attentiveness through close-reading with the land.

Reading to our human kin is an established practice of learning and togetherness, in which the reader animates their words with liveliness and care for the enjoyment and benefit of the listener. The performance of reading in intimate and relational space is often informal - taking place on a bed or a chair. The listener may lean on the reader, or else fall asleep in their gentle presence. Through reading aloud, the listener’s life is expanded, nourished and held in comfort; care is enacted through the presence of the other and through mindfulness of the listener’s experience.

I am interested in how we can enact and express the same level of care for our wild kin as an act of togetherness and interconnected intimacy. In this ongoing series I find passages that I would like to ‘read back’ to the world - nature writing in particular - and then take them outside to read aloud for all who are listening with non-human ears. I record the experience as a way of reflecting on the spontaneous embodiment that occurs.

Reading ‘to nature’ is ambiguous - can we ever feel how our words are received in the way we might reading to a child or partner? - but as the reader I am interested in my own response to this creative act of sharing, how it by turns develops deeper listening, consideration and patience. How do I select what I read back to the world? What informs my decisions? What would the world want to hear? How do I respond to the listening needs of the natural world, differently. As a ritualised act, how does the intention to express love through words impact our interdependent relationality?