A found-poetry project to explore new and missing voice through geological text
In early 1983, A Hallam published a text called Great Geological Controversies (Oxford Science Publications) outlining the development of 8 major controversies in the field of geology and pure Earth Science. Hallam was a professor at the University of Birmingham that would many years later become my alma mater; teaching under the dome that I would receive my own lectures and practicals.
Today, the controversies seem unbelievable (often starting from the belief that the Great Flood of the bible created the world) and today in a time of huge political upheaval and polarity, they have a parochial charm that are easy to laugh at. But having retrieved the book from a pile that were to be disposed of, I became curious in the controversies, the voices within them, and the voices that were excluded. As a women, a writer and geologist by training I was keen to encounter the text in a new way, and to make a creative piece of my own in response
I am currently working on a collection of erasure poems (as a subset of found poetry) from the original source text, as well as an accompanying essay and new photography, and will publish a zine of Great Geological Controversies as an unofficial third edition. This method of erasure especially suits this geological text which engages with the ‘layered story’ over time. We can think of geology and story as palimpsest, and so the method of erasure begins to reveal what might be hidden beneath and within.
