ABSTRACT
Poetry has long been a medium used by imprisoned people as a form of storytelling to document the injustices and pains of imprisonment, process trauma, and resist oppressive systems. Poetry can portray intimate and visceral human experiences, including moments of suffering and resilience, in ways that more standard prose, including traditional academic writing, cannot. Recognizing this, “poetic inquiry” is an innovative, qualitative methodology that uses poetry as data, as a strategy for analysis, or as a means to present research findings that allow the voice of participants to come through in authentic and emotionally evocative ways. Furthermore, poetic inquiry can promote greater public engagement with topics related to crime, the legal system, and punishment differently than traditional academic prose or media portrayals. This chapter provides an overview of poetic inquiry and its use within the social sciences and argues that a “Poetic Inquiry Criminology” is a valuable and needed addition to the discipline given the nature of the settings, people, and injustices that criminologists so often study.
