ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we offer an overview of the diverse ways in which poetry is being used in qualitative inquiry. We seek to illuminate for readers how and why poetic inquiry has value for such researchers. Illustrative projects and poems are placed throughout the chapter to help contextualise the literature reviewed. For example, in the poem above, the first author uses the poetic form to reflect on and express her motivations for engaging in qualitative research. This poem
provides an embodied demonstration of one of the ways poetry can be a useful tool for researchers; allowing researchers to express the emotional research journey through metaphors and images not available to them in traditional academic language. In this example, poetry functions as a creative form of selfreflexivity, of understanding the self and how this self shapes the interpretation and construction of knowledge produced in research. However, poetry is used in diverse ways by qualitative researchers. In poetic inquiry, poems can be a source of data, a form of data, a way of representing complex or even unspeakable social dilemmas, or a methodology or means through which to link research processes to research outcomes for transparent, powerful effect. Poetics can be viewed as a discourse articulating ‘the relationship between the creative work and its critical inputs and outcomes’ (Lyall, 2014, p. 134, citing the work of Lasky, 2013). The use of poetry in qualitative inquiry is not new (Butler-Kisber & Stewart, 2009). Since the early 1990s, qualitative researchers increasingly have used poetry as a means of exploring complex social issues and presenting lived experiences, particularly when working with minority or vulnerable populations (Prendergast, Leggo & Sameshima, 2009; Sjollema, Hordyk, Walsh, Hanley & Ives, 2012). The practice of poetic inquiry or poetry-as-research is one approach in a diverse range of arts-based practices that emerged in the 1990s in response to what Denzin and Lincoln (2005) described as the ‘triple crisis in qualitative research: that of representation, legitimatisation and praxis’ (p. 19). Denzin and Lincoln (2005) stated that researchers were acknowledging their own role in shaping research data, and the difficulties of representing lived experience, in turn rendering the traditional evaluation criteria of validity, generalisability and reliability increasingly problematic. Poetic inquiry, with its emphasis on disrupting hierarchies, promoting reflexivity and introducing a pause or ‘a stammer’ (Shidmehr, 2009, p. 101), is one means by which qualitative researchers can respond to these tensions in research practice. According to Wulf-Andersen (2012), poetic representation ‘shows rather than academically explains’ and can constitute a ‘process of creating knowledge’ (p. 573). Qualitative researchers have utilised the distinctive qualities of poetry in diverse ways, including participant-voiced poems (Connelly, 2010), or ‘vox participare’ (Prendergast, 2009, p. xxii), where the researcher uses only the words of the participants gathered during research and ‘re-presents’ them (Glesne, 1997; Richardson, 2003). This practice is similar to ‘found poetry’ (Sjollema et al., 2012, p. 205), where a poem is created solely from primary sources, such as prose, conversations, interview transcripts and other research data, and the poet/ researcher shapes this original material. Such poems also have been called data poems (Bishop & Willis, 2014, para. 15). A review of the literature suggests this is the most common form of poetic inquiry. Other approaches include autobiographical poems that explore the lived experiences of the author-researcher in order to gain insight into a particular research process (Furman, Langer, Davis et. al, 2007). These poems are
sometimes referred to as ‘auto-ethnographic poems’ (Bishop & Willis, 2014, para. 16) and ‘vox autobiographia’ (Prendergast, 2009, p. xxii). Such poetry is used as a method of inquiry to think through data (Richardson, 2003) or to explore the researcher’s journey (Bishop & Willis, 2014, para 16). Bishop and Willis (2014, para 16) suggested that ‘research poems’ are akin to autobiographical poems. However, we suggest that research poems are a distinct practice (Butler-Kisber, 2002). Research poems often are based on theoretical frameworks or fieldwork and diaries, rather than personal memories and experiences. Prendergast (2009) described these poems as ‘vox theoria’, literature-voiced poems written in response to literature or theory in a field (p. xxii). In this way, although the poems are personal, they normally are not a direct expression of the researcher’s personal experiences. As demonstrated in the opening poem by one of the authors, the writer/researcher may use metaphor and imagery in a conceptual and abstract way, as critical researcher reflection on the research process. In addition, some researchers have selected and analysed existing poetry in order to understand a particular social phenomenon (Bishop & Willis, 2014, para. 17). Finally, some qualitative researchers have invited participants to produce poems, which the researcher then uses as a form of data (Bishop & Willis, 2014, para. 18). Bishop and Willis (2014) suggested that invited poetry is an under-utilised approach, in part because participants’ poems might be critiqued as questionable data, possibly inferring that poetic inquiry privileges poetry written by trained researchers or poets. However, Bishop and Willis (2014) argued that poetry ideally would not be the exclusive domain of a trained writer. Rather, poetry that is ‘earthy’ and rooted in ‘everyday experience’ is of value to researchers (Bishop & Willis, 2014, para. 22). As Bishop and Willis (2014) stated, poetry offered their participants an opportunity to express their subjectivities using tools only available in this form, thereby cultivating a unique form of qualitative data. Poetic inquiry appears to be driven by a variety of motivations, including the aims of the research project, a researcher’s epistemological standpoint, a quest to echo or amplify the voice or perspectives of vulnerable groups, and an aspiration to present diverse lived experiences, including the researchers’ experiences, in order to build relationships between the reader and the research inquiry. Used as an analytical, reflective and interpretive approach, as well as a representational strategy in qualitative inquiry, the value of research poems lie in their capacity to engage the reader, and to express and/or evoke unique ways of seeing, knowing and storying experience and narrative knowledge through writing. That is, poems are valued within qualitative inquiry for their potential to represent, or write into visibility, novel ways of seeing. They also make visible the subjective, experiential and affective elements of research (Furman, 2006; Glesne, 1997; Prendergast, Leggo & Sameshima, 2009; Richardson, 2000; van Manen, 1997) and the way those elements are conveyed (or not) through writing. Poetic writing in inquiry is more than ‘another way of telling . . . it is another way of interpreting and therefore of knowing’ (Brady, 2004, p. 633; see also Shidmehr, 2014).
