ABSTRACT
Using poetry in the inquiry begged a question about its capacity to language the “in-between spaces” of creative processes and knowing. Many of the poems in this chapter play with a paradox: how might language be used to capture the inexpressibilities of creativity? Poetry is the meeting point of parallel lines – in infinity, but also in the here and now. The term poetic inquiry refers both to using poetry as a research process and for representing its results. Poetic inquiry incorporates both research methodology and aesthetic aspects of language. Creating found poetry is a common method in poetic inquiry. Found poetry involves carving away words from the research transcripts until the most evocative phrases remain. Poetic inquiry takes a range of traditional literary forms, such as poetic monologues and soliloquies, and has developed new ones, such as ethno-poems, anthropological poems, autoethnographic verse, interview poems, and map poems, inter alia.
