| Title | 8. TO TOUCH LIGHTLY IN PASSING |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Merlijn Huntjens (author) |
| Nina Willems (author) | |
| Leonie Cornips(author) | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.63308/63878687083054.ch08 |
| Landing page | https://www.whpress.co.uk/publications/2025/03/04/meam-2/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Merlijn Huntjens; Nina Willems; Leonie Cornips |
| Publisher | The White Horse Press |
| Published on | 2025-07-01 |
| Long abstract | In this paper, a poetic discourse invites the reader to slow down and pay attention to the pictures of Piet (the bull) and his herd as they present themselves, interact with each other and with human beings. The authors use light, precise, and minimalist descriptive discourse to guide the reader’s attention to bodies, gazes, positions, attitudes, synchronisation, relationships… and to the unspoken, yet meaningful, that forms the core of human-animal communication. Each picture is taken as a suspended moment or space where something happens. Artful methods (combination of pictures and poetic discourse) have been chosen by the authors for their ability to decentre the perception from language-centred categories, and embody such notions as ‘becoming-with’ or haptic communication, fully showing the potential of these methods for research in interspecies communication. |
| Page range | pp. 168–178 |
| Print length | 11 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
| Media | 7 illustrations |
Merlijn Huntjens is a writer. Between 2013 and 2018, Merlijn was active as a poetry slammer, performing widely in the Netherlands, Belgium and occasionally in Germany. In 2016, 2017 and 2018 he was in the finals of the NK poetry slam. Between 2017 and 2019, he was city poet of Heerlen. Merlijn is involved with Wintertuin and is a creator at PANDA. Poems of his regularly appear in literary magazines such as De Revisor, Tirade and Het Liegend Konijn and in 2022 his chapbook ‘De zee zwaait terug’ was released by Wintertuin.
Nina Willems graduated as a performer from the Maastricht Theatre Academy in 2011. With this background, she always seeks the boundaries of the discipline of theatre in her practice. She likes to work with makers from other (non-artistic) disciplines. Since graduating, she has mainly been working in Limburg. In 2015, she founded the literary organisation PANDA Collective, where she develops artistic and educational projects. She also works as a teacher at the Maastricht Theatre Academy and is part of the coordinating team of the directing course.
Leonie Cornips is affiliated with the research group NL-Lab, Humanities Cluster of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), and professor Languageculture in Limburg at Maastricht University. Since 1994 she has examined sociosyntax, methods in dialectology and bidialectal child acquisition. More recently her research focuses on local identity constructions through language practices including place-making and belonging. At present she examines intraspecies and interspecies interactions of dairy cows in various settings. She is conducting ethnographic fieldwork on various farms in the Netherlands.