ABSTRACT
In art-based research (ABR), art seeks “to disrupt the ordinary, which in turn stimulates change, transformation and even transcendence” (Leavy 2015, p. 20). Understood as a researcher-reflexive tool, ABR affords deeper insights and access to emotional and embodied lived experiences (Downey 2019). ABR fosters reflexivity and empathy (Sherry and Schouten 2002), enabling rich engagement with phenomenon aesthetics and the notion of researcher-poet and poet, as bricoleur. As such, this chapter introduces poetic reflection (PR) as a means by which to capture researcher-poet and poet voices of pandemic times. PR offers a means to understand, amplify, and reflect on key trepidations. The ability to capture critical moments that attend pandemics, both past and present, offers further occasion to make sense of the real complexities of vulnerability, which pandemics can elicit, and to extend appreciation of such an art-based approach. The author penned, Shelter Down, to capture reflections of Covid times and called on researcher-poets and poets (past and present) to give voice to the momentarity of pandemics.
