Unearthings | Rosa Jones

December 2, 2019 11:27 am

Unearthings is a workshop exploring the use of writing within art, discussing the barriers at play that prevent artists from developing confidence in writing, editing and sharing their writing with others. It will involve a conversation as to why and how people are made to feel alienated from writing, despite naturally leaning towards it as a means of self-expression.

Wednesday 11th of December 6 – 9 pm

Writer and editor Rosa Jones will introduce tentative writers to writing tools and editing techniques as a means of demystifying the writing process. The intention is to give confidence to people who feel unsupported in their urge to write, and to give some permission to access that interest and genuinely engage with it.

Participants are encouraged to bring a text—a poem, a book, a story or essay—anything you would be interested to discuss, with a view to understanding and verbalizing why we are drawn to particular pieces of writing. We will look at some of these examples as starting points for methods of close reading and identifying the reasons we are drawn to specific texts. We will also discuss structural notions of ‘good’ writing, taste and literariness, and whether these are things we need to ascribe to our own work.

The workshop will include a series of informal writing experiments with the possibility to work alone or collaboratively, exploring the process of developing a piece from draft to finished work, while considering whether finished-ness needs to matter.

This workshop is intended for artists who want to incorporate writing into their work, as well as those who write and would like to develop their writing skills. No traditional writing training or familiarity with literary language is required.

We will have a group agreement before we start which will detail how each person wants to be identified. We will construct a safe space that does not allow any racism, homophobia, sexism, or anything that detracts from our mental wellbeing.


This is one of a series of writing workshops for artists run by Market Gallery with invited facilitators who will provide a variety of perspectives and provocations on writing and visual art. Places are free but limited – please reserve your space via eventbrite. Travel and childcare bursaries are available for those in need. For more information please email market@marketgallery.org


Rosa Jones is a writer from Galway, Ireland, with experience facilitating events that attempt to navigate elitism in writing spheres. They also have worked collaboratively with various visual and sound artists to combine poetry with photography or sound design, and have experience editing text, essays and performances for use in exhibitions. Their own work deals with themes of humiliation and abrasion, alongside euphoria and romance. Their poetry and essays have been published or are forthcoming in journals and zines like Abridged, Banshee Journal, Ache, SOFT:EIS, The Cardiff Review, Polyester Zine, Spilt Milk, and Fuck What You Love among others.

They graduated from a BA in English Literature from University College Dublin in 2018 and were the recipient of the 2018 Maeve Binchy Travel Award, with which they went to Finland to research Tove Jansson. They’re a former co-founder of Not4U Collective, with whom they won the Poetry Ireland Bright Ideas Bursary in 2019 and ran various events for queer people and gender minorities in Dublin. They currently facilitate events and writing workshops for trans and GNC people with the Glasgow branch of the Small Trans Library.