Fiona Murray and Jonathan Wyatt begin their beautiful and evocative edited book on creative-relational wildness, a companion that is ‘fierce rather than gentle’, one that might lure readers into their own wildernesses, in love-letter antidotes to the hate-fuelled current global political climate. I love their editorial foregrounding of language, and symbol, by choosing the curvy, wavy tilde instead of the rigid dash. It seems fitting for this.It is, in total, a collection of techniques, they tell us, assistants in ‘thinking from within’. Ultimately, like all of Murray and Wyatt’s work, this is more an invitation to readers to launch their own creative-relational journeys into the unknown, and less the delivery of an authoritative guidebook. That suits me fine. These 20 chapters and stunning front and back letters by Gael Bateman are like a community of corpuscular essays, testing the water as they drift forward through the sea (of Sea-cry fame) of the Centre for Creative-Relational Inquiry at the University of Edinburgh (and beyond). Each of these chapters adds another tentacle to this creative-relational cnidarian, sensing out into its environment, contributing to an ecology of being-with. Most inspiring, these scholar-editor-wonderers model passionately, respectfully, and intentionally how they allow themselves to be led by the work, to be vulnerable, to be changed, and to change their ‘agenda’ – in the case of these co-editors, a book proposal. But they and their authors are gesturing at something more – a need to be changed and changing (as a process, not a destination) in this particular world, at this particular time.Professor Daniel X. Harris, Creative Agency research lab, RMIT University, Melbourne, AustraliaCreative-relational inquiry has crossed disciplinary and geographical boundaries to capture the imagination of researchers who are intent on finding ways to do research differently. This inspiring book showcases the work of eleven authors who invite us to take a deep dive into complex terrains of human experience. I am drawn in by the stories they tell. At times I am surprised. Other times I am troubled. And always I am enlightened. For those of us who have felt hemmed in by procedural methods – finding ourselves creating a new approach for each and every study we undertake – this wonderful book offers companionship, validation, and inspiration. Here are a diverse array of writers, researchers, and practitioners inviting us to join them in the creation of new and unique ways to inquire into the business of being human.Dr David Carless, Reader, University of the West of ScotlandCreative~Relational Inquiries in the Wild disturbs the perceived tidiness of methods and invites readers to contend with the felt-uncertainty of potential intimacies. A book about creative~relational inquiry and its reverberations in the world, it requires a reading with orientation. Refusing to give instruction or a ‘how to’ outline of creative-relational inquiry, the chapters in this collection provide insights into textures – of care, intimacies, vulnerability, and feeling. An important read, Creative~Relational Inquiries in the Wild curates a timely conversation about relationality and our capacity to access feeling, support deep connection with others, as well as the natural and metaphysical world in which we all live.Dominique C. Hill, author of Black Gurl Reliable: Pedagogies of Vulnerability and TransgressionUpfronting ethics and ethos, Creative~Relational Inquiries in the Wild is a call to consider the usefulness of the uncertain, the rough, the messy, the wild. It is a collection that, as a whole, rejects a way of doing neat qualitative research projects or creative-relational inquiry for that matter. Instead, the authors make visible what opens up and becomes possible when one embraces intimacy and relating as central rather than periphery in research. Contributors engage varying sites, theoretical frameworks, and sources of feeling that illuminate what is attainable when we take risks in our research and remain consciously grounded in the gift of being a present presence. A must have text and an invaluable resource for researchers who are more interested in the journey than the destination.Durell M. Callier, co-author of Performative Intergenerational Dialogues of a Black Quartet: Qualitative Inquiries on Race, Gender, Sexualities, and Culture
