Abstract In micro-phenomenological interviews with seven Finnish artistic writers about their work, I identified a recurring somatosensory state: a bodily sensing of emerging meaning that guides composition without yet being articulable as thought. I call this state merkitysaisti, or sensoception — the perception of sense prior to linguistic form.

This workshop investigates sensoception alongside teoksen tila, or ("composition space", as best I can translate it): the felt spatio-temporal field writers inhabit during sustained creative work. Part of a doctoral research project on writers' embodied knowledge, this iteration begins with somatic preparation focused on non-visual orientation. The “third eye” is approached not as a mystical element but as part of developmental biology: in early vertebrates, the pineal complex functioned as a light-sensitive, image-producing organ. The workshop explores sensing space and meaning — attending to what precedes articulation.

Participants then move through iterative writing cycles. The first of these is prompted with a sentence drawn from the somatic exercise, the rest of the writing emerges spontaneously. Participants are divided into three rotating groups: After each round, writers read aloud. (It is not necessary to write in a shared language.) Reflectors select resonant fragments and place them as notes in shared floor space. Cartographers reorganize these fragments spatially, tracing emerging relations and creating new fragments. After roles are rotated, new writers enter the field and the process is repeated several times. Finally, a co-composed “poem” is read out loud together.

Through this process, composition space becomes collectively visible — not as private interiority but as a dynamic field organizing itself between bodies. The workshop leaves no permanent shared artifact or text. What remains are traces: a live research encounter at the intersection of phenomenology, somatics, and collective creative practice.