ABSTRACT

In recent years, leisure scholars have increasingly used creative analytic practice (CAP). Poetic representation is one form of CAP that allows researchers to synthesize findings and represent the data while highlighting the emotional aspects of the lived experience. Despite the increased use of CAP in leisure research, little has been written about the process of using poetry as a form of representation. This article focuses on the process and experiences of creating poems to represent data from a study about leisure and Aboriginal women's healing. It describes how researcher location and subjectivity can impact ethical practice, as well as the aesthetic and epistemological tensions that can occur. It introduces the term “Ethical Crafting,” which denotes that aesthetic attention to detail is at the same time an ethical practice. Finally, this article highlights the importance of researcher intuition and emotion, and argues for a reflexive practice to negotiate the tensions experienced in the poetic process.