ABSTRACT

Life is abundant, and lifewriting is a way of focusing on some particulars of that abundance in order to recognize some of the possibilities of meaning that lie always in the seemingly tangled messiness of lived experiences. As a poet, fiction writer, teacher, and education researcher, the author says he promotes connections between lifewriting, poetic inquiry, and research in the social sciences. He supports a poetics of research by investigating ways that creative writing (including poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, lifewriting) contributes to knowing and understanding. People need spaces for many kinds of research, including lifewriting research that focuses on narrative, autobiographical, fictional, and poetic knowing. In presenting this combinatoria, he is full of reservations, concerns, and fears about lifewriting. Lifewriting is fraught with dangers, wrought with tensions, bought with tears and laughter, always caught up in mysteries beyond all telling.