Poetry Inquery

Poetic Inquiry II – Seeing, Caring, Understanding
Poetic Inquiry II – Seeing, Caring, Understanding

Using Poetry as and for Inquiry
Edited by
Kathleen T. Galvin
University of Hull, UK
and
Monica Prendergast
University of Victoria, Canada
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgmentsix
Introductionxi
Kathleen Galvin and Monica Prendergast
Section 1: Seeing: Poetry as Inquiry
1. Seeing with an Unconscious Eye: The Poetic in the Work of Emily Carr 3
Alexandra Fidyk
2. Lean in as the Story Is Told: Vestibular Sense, Poetic Image,

Instruction for Seeing 21
Christi Kramer
3. A/R/T(herapist)-ography: Examining the Weave 41

Kate Evans
4. The Unpredictability of Bliss: A Grandfather’s Poetic Riffs 51

Carl Leggo
5. Joys and Dilemmas: Documenting, Disentangling, and

Understanding Experience through Poetry 71
Mary Lou Soutar-Hynes
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Table of Contents
6. Embodied Poetics in Mother Poetry: Dialectics and Discourses

of Mothering 81
Sandra L. Faulkner and Cynthia Nicole
7. Resonance and Aesthetics: No Place That Does Not See You 99

Lorri Neilsen Glenn
Section 2: Understanding: Poetry through Inquiry
8. Poetics in a Capacious Landscape 107

Collette Quinn-Hall
9. White Skin, Brown Soul: A Poetic Autoethnography 135

Jacquie Kidd
10. Poems Written in Service of “Service” 141

Jane Piirto
11. Finding Grandma: Memories, Stories, Gifts 155

John J. Guiney Yallop
12. The Use of I Poems to Better Understand Complex Subjectivities 169

Lori E. Koelsch
13. What Is Good for the Poem Is Good for the Poet: An Experiment
in Poetic-Psychoanalytic Therapy 181
Sean Wiebe
14. Geopoetics: An Opening of the World 191

Suzanne M. Thomas
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Table of Contents
Section 3: Caring: Poetry with and for Ethically Sensitive Practice
15. Waking up Following Breast Surgery: An Insight from the Beats,

Burroughs and the Cut-up Technique 205
Fran Biley
16. Making the Case for Poetic Inquiry in Health Services Research 211
Frances Rapport and Graham Hartill
17. ‘If You Believe, If You Keep Busy, You Can Develop Yourself’:
On Being a Refugee Student in a Mainstream School227
Iris E. Dumenden
18. Using Autobiographical Poetry as Data to Investigate the

Experience of Living with End-Stage Renal Disease:
An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis 237
Johanna Spiers and Jonathan A. Smith
19. Unnamed Moments, Transformation and the Doing and Making

of Trauma Therapy Practices 255
Lesley A. Porter
20. Poetic Inquiry, Refrigerator Magnets and Kedrick? 273

Mary E. Weems
21. Materializing the Punctum: A Poetic Study of the Washington

State University Clothesline Project 279
Patricia Maarhuis and Pauline Sameshima
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Table of Contents
22. Research in Special Education: Poetic Data Anyone? 303

Rama Cousik
23. The Stories We Tell in America: State-Sponsored Violence

and “Black” Space 313
Jazmin A. White and Lisa William-White
Contributors323
viii
Acknowledgments
Frontispiece and section photographs by Pauline Sameshima.

The following chapters appeared in Creative Approaches to Research, 5(2), in
2012 in a special issue on poetic inquiry guest edited by Kate T. Galvin and Monica
Prendergast. These articles are reprinted here by kind permission of the journal and
its Editor Dr. Mark Vicars:
Rapport, F. & Harthill, G. (2012). Crossing disciplines with ethnographic poetic
representation. Creative Approaches to Research, 5(2), 11–25. Retrieved from
http://aqr.org.au/publications/creative-approaches-to-research/
Spiers, J. & Smith, J. (2012). Using autobiographical poetry as data to
investigate the experience of living with end-stage renal disease: An interpretative
phenomenological analysis. Creative Approaches to Research, 5(2), 119–137.
Retrieved from http://aqr.org.au/publications/creative-approaches-to-research/
We are very grateful to all of the authors in this volume, who waited patiently as
we underwent a number of significant challenges in seeing this collection into print.
We thank Jeanette Gilchrist for helping us co-ordinate administrative processes
in preparing the text.
We are also grateful to Sense Publisher Peter de Liefde for offering this collection
a home as a companion volume to Poetic Inquiry: Vibrant Voices in the Social
Sciences (edited by Monica Prendergast, Carl Leggo & Pauline Sameshima, Sense,
2009).
ix
KATHLEEN GALVIN and MONICA PRENDERGAST
introduction
What is it that shines into me and pierces the heart without wounding?
Saint Augustine1 [Quid est illud interlucet mihi et percuitit cor meum sine
laesione?]
We offer herein a new international collection of works2 on the use of poetry in
the social sciences that transcends conventional methodological and disciplinary
boundaries. Building on Poetic Inquiry I – Poetic Inquiry: Vibrant Voices in the
Social Sciences (Prendergast, Leggo & Sameshima, 2009); The Art of Poetic Inquiry
(Thomas, Cole & Stewart, 2012) and other contributions to poetic inquiry (Faulkner,
2009; Leggo, 2008) our core purpose is to illustrate further a growing ‘aesthetic
move’ in the human and social sciences. In this text in particular, we offer a specific
focus upon poetic inquiry in the fields of healthcare and education.
Poetic Inquiry is a very young branch of the older tree of qualitative research,
and a flourishing offshoot of the relatively established branch of arts-based research
(Barone & Eisner, 1997, 2012; Knowles & Cole, 2008; Leavy, 2014; Rolling Jr.,
2013). The mission of poetic inquiry strikes at the heart of a call for a turning in
qualitative inquiry whereby a ‘crisis of representation’ (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011,
p. 3) requires some mediation. Often the perspectives and voices of participants
have been fragmented, rendered in analyses that could be considered as lacking
depth, and characteristically ‘over summative’. In such representation the ‘scientific
concern’ is necessarily attended to but as a consequence participants’ voices are at
risk of being appropriated, over-shadowed or even silenced. Further, the researcher
may also be absent in the account of the research, as if science was not a human
endeavour with its own kinds of emotional labour that come with the demands
inherent in the study of human worlds and human frailty. To jettison researchers’
own experiences of engaging with such demands is to risk losing the reflective
and descriptive power that qualitative research offers. If qualitative inquiry is to
succeed then it must be adequately descriptive, reflect the thickness of living and
communicate its processes and findings in rich and in- depth ways. It is within
this quest for a ‘communicative concern’ to offer rich and shared understandings,
that poetry can offer its resonant power (Galvin & Todres, 2010) in hand with a
‘scientific concern’ to be faithful to a systematic, credible and transparent process.
And our heritage has deeper routes. Below the surface of this flourishing branch
that is a response to representational crisis of qualitative research, there is an important
xi
K. GALVIN & M. PRENDERGAST
and longstanding philosophical heritage. This rich heritage points towards the nature
of human Being, it is concerned with human existence, to how we are in and come to
know the world. It spans for example, Wilhelm Dilthey’s (1833–1911) ‘Poetry and
Experience’, his writings on aesthetics and understanding of poetry in the context of
history and the human sciences; William James’s (1842–1910) ideas about sensation,
emotion and perception; The 20th Century phenomenological philosophers, a
whole phenomenological movement that attempted to bring philosophy away from
the abstract metaphysical towards concrete lived experience: Brentano, Husserl,
Heidegger, Gadamer, Arendt, Levinas, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida (see Moran
2000); and it includes later contributions such as Gaston Bachelard’s (1958) ‘Poetics of
Space’ and his (1971) ‘Poetics of Reverie’ and Roland Barthes’s (1975) ‘The pleasure
of the text’; through to later seminal works, for example, that invite such diverse
fields as creative writing, painting, drama and architecture, ‘through gates’ towards
poetry (Hirchsfield, 1997). Collectively this heritage, and the many strands of thought
it has subsequently fertilised, is also concerned with an overarching imperative, that
is, of understanding and productively responding to the shadow that has been cast
through the splitting of art away from science. There remains a problem within the
whole linear trajectory of science to the present day, something that Edmund Husserl
pointed out in Crisis of The European Sciences over 100 years ago and something
which Mary Midgley (2014) warns us about in her discussions of ever more narrowly
defined views of human life when she says:
The myth to which I specially want to draw attention now is the one that credits
science- physical science- with a rather odd central role in our lives. This myth
pictures our world as a vast mass of physical objects that are being observed
from a great distance by an anonymous observer through a huge array of
telescopes. It is not by chance that the observer himself is anonymous, and
indeed invisible, because he is not a proper object at all. Like the telescopes,
he is simply a part of the apparatus that is needed to observe and record this
endless range of facts. The whole process of observing and recording is called
‘Science’ and is seen as constituting a central purpose of human life. (p. 4)
Although human kind has successfully made use of science and technology for the
mastery of many threats, something of our human selves is at risk of becoming
ever more fragmented and even lost: our grounded living in the world. Here, poetic
inquiry, we argue, is one endeavour that offers some recovery of ways of being
faithful to the seamlessness of living and of holding onto ‘wholes’. The ‘need’ for
resonant power given by poetry has to do with the culture of our age, the specialising
nature of science, ‘what counts’ as evidence, and the developmental paths of our
disciplines (sociology, psychology, anthropology, education, health sciences) within
the technological spirit of our age.
In his book Technology as Symptom and Dream (1989) Robert Romanyshyn
traces the European linear perspective developed from the 15th Century and how this
radically transformed sense of world, body and self, analysing how we have ‘created
xii
introduction
ourselves’ through the enactment of technology. He puts to use two metaphors

to reflect upon technology, as powerful human creation that takes us further and
further away from ‘imaginative life’, alienating us from our embodiment and our
lived world: Technology is humanities dream of escaping death (see for example
pp. 29–30) and technology as a symptom of the impossibility of this escape and the
necessity of returning home to the embodied status of a full mortal humanity. We
wish to say that perhaps the greatest promise of poetic inquiry is an offer of one way
to mediate the shadows of our cultural dream and return home to our embodied,
mortal human existence. Romanyshyn more recently says (2014), “My claim is that
a poetic sensibility inclines us to a language of the soul and awakens us to the
mystery, ambiguity, subtlety, and the strange and awesome elusive epiphanies of the
multi- levelled layers of psychological life as they display themselves to the world”
(p. 1). This is a call for the re-enchantment of knowledge, the honouring of reverie,
and towards the possibility of a striking of the human heart.
This present text offers a ‘bridge building’ between the arts, health, caring science
and education disciplines through illustrations that insist that the human endeavour
of social research holds affective and aesthetic dimensions that are both valuable
and deeply insightful. Developing understandings of this rich potential presents a
challenge to conventional methodological approaches and, we argue, can yield new
and practically useful insights in fields such as caring, education, social justice and
gender studies to name a few. And here we draw on Mary Midgley (2014) once more:
The faculties by which all the sciences work are human faculties, continuous
with the ones we use in everyday life. This continuity is plain when we notice,
how prevalent, and how important, metaphors drawn from ordinary experience
have always been in science. New thinking always needs to go back to its
natural roots. And the aim of the whole effort is not to reach an alien world by
getting outside the human sphere. It is to make the best sense we can of what
human life can show us. (pp. 151–152)
What follows is an exploration of poetry for and as enquiry bringing forward
illustrations of a convergence between epistemology, research methods and
poetry. This includes the writing of poetry as inquiry in itself, and also the use of
poetry in the service of research in the human world. Here, diverse applications
of poetry writing and poetic expression have been used to render findings
evocatively. Poetry has also been used to engage participants in aspects of a range
of qualitative methods and analyses, to bear witness, and finally poetry has usefully
enlivened professional and public engagement with research findings. In all these
ways poetic inquiry offers a) the possibility of participation, participative writing
and transcendence of disciplinary boundaries b) engagement in more aesthetic ways
of knowing and c) opening up of an honouring of the ‘relational realities of the
presence of a phenomenon’. Postmodern relativism has been extensively engaged
with the first two moves, and phenomenological approaches go further being
engaged with all three (Galvin & Todres, 2012).
xiii
Many of the contributions in this book are based on presentations given at the
3rd biennial International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry, [ISPI] held in October,
2011, at Bournemouth University in the UK. The symposium aimed to bring health
and educational researchers together to cross-fertilise poetic inquiry from diverse
disciplinary perspectives, serving to enrich what we do as researchers in literary
studies, education, health, caring sciences, anthropology, psychology, sociology
social work and related fields. This event followed the ISPI at the University of
Prince Edward Island in 2009, and was subsequently followed by the 4th ISPI, at
McGill University in Montreal in October of 2013. Common threads drawing these
contributions together span a) novel ways of making use the resonance of poetically
expressed words as a way to help readers engage with findings, b) communicating
human resonance in findings as a way to reveal understandings of human experience
in all its complexity, via naming and articulating that experience in ways that others
can humanly recognise and personally make sense of; c) new ways of being in
dialogue with research findings and finally d) poetic inquiry as a movement that
can offer new directions for productively participating with people in research in the
context of challenging social and personal situations. Since 2009, four Special Edition
peer reviewed journal collections have been devoted to Poetic Inquiry: Educational
Insights (Prendergast, Leggo & Sameshima, 2009); Learning Landscapes (Butler-
Kisber, 2010); Creative Approaches to Research (Galvin & Prendergast, 2012); and
in education (Guiney Yallop, Wiebe & Faulkner, 2014).
While this is still quite a new branch of arts-based inquiry, it is not simply
the case that ‘anything with poetry goes’. The field is developing its standing on
some philosophical grounds to articulate a) what it is, b) what it is doing and c)
what it is for. As part of our overall project we are keen that the poetic inquiry
movement takes steps to revisit philosophical ideas about knowledge generation and
poetry’s communicative tasks within varied communities and within culture. It is
also valuable to point to foundational ideas in both the human and social sciences
concerning the nature and purpose of creatively writing about and communicating
human experience.
There have already been moves to develop criteria that can act as guiding
characteristics for the evaluation of creative analytic practice – substantive
contribution; aesthetic merit; reflexivity; impact; and expression of reality
(Richardson, 2000). This has been followed by several contributions that unfold
and problematise the purpose and craft of poetic inquiry, for example, Faulkner’s
(2009) call for increasing attention to craft; Leggo’s (2011) contemplation upon the
question ‘What is a good poem?’ with his turn towards a new question: ‘What is a
poem good for?’ and works which point to numinous sources of knowledge, new
forms of knowing (Leggo, 2008; Prendergast & Leggo, 2007) and to poetic inquiry
as method (Faulkner, 2010; Leavy, 2014).
Already the Poetic Inquiry field has been bibliometrically scoped and systematised
(Prendergast, 2009) according to the foremost ways that poetry appears in the social
science literature. In 2009, Prendergast presented an analysis of the first bibliography
xiv
introduction
(182 entries from indexed and peer reviewed journals 1918 to 2007) in three primary
voices: Vox Autobiographia / Autoenthnographia; (the personal reflective voice) Vox
Participare (the voices of participants, usually presented as ‘found poems’ crafted
from data) and Vox Theoria (the theoretical exploring poetic inquiry literature and
drawing on philosophy). Her bibliography was updated in 2012 in partnership with a
doctoral student (Clement & Prendergast 2012) and contains 129 sources, testament
to a flourishing new branch of qualitative arts-based research that already offers
a considerable body of work in both indexed peer reviewed sources and the grey
literature. Further, this growth can be articulated as having emerged in the following
forms:
• Vox Theoria / Vox Poetica – Poems about self, writing and poetry as method
• Vox Justitia – Poems on equity, equality, social justice, class, freedom
• Vox Identitatis – Poetry exploring, self/ participants’ gender, race, sexuality
• Vox Custodia – Poetry of caring, nursing, caregivers’/ patients’ experience
• Vox Procreator – Poems of parenting, family and/ or religion. (Prendergast,
2015, p. 6)
In all these ways, playfully named in Latin by Prendergast (2015, p. 6), poetic
inquiry is contributing to the quest of engagement with concrete experiences
and in ways that point to ‘more than words can say’, and in ways that open up
participation. Poetry reveals, poetry has the power to open up the unexpected, to
contribute to aesthetic depth, to bring us close to ambiguities with metaphor and
image, it allows access to vulnerability, courage, and truth telling and playfully or
poignantly forges new critical insight. This includes a bearing witness to diverse
vicissitudes of life (Forché, 1993; Glassman, 1998; Churchill, 2006). The poetic
inquiry movement offers a contribution to a developing body of evidence that is not
merely a third person perspective, as in conventional evidence, but is also intimate
with first and second person perspectives and is thus a fertile pathway to ethical,
caring and empathic work. In reading or listening to a poem we are bearing witness
to the other, to the person writing the poem, or to the situation that is the subject
of the poem and this is a fundamental part of caring work. Such capacity to care
is resourced through the empathic imagination, and this imagination is given by
bodily and relational resonance (Galvin & Todres, 2010; 2012). Here understanding
is never simply cognitive: thinking is never alone, feeling is also there – a personally
recognisable connection or resonance that makes possible an experiential ‘to be
struck by’ something. It is in this spirit that an aesthetic and poetic sensibility opens
up the possibilities of relational engagement with poetic renderings and through
which we can come to understand something freshly and deeply. We invite you to
jump in and swim in the depths and to explore what grabs your attention.
Poetic form is both the ship and the anchor. It is at once a buoyancy and a
holding, allowing for the simultaneous gratification of whatever is centrifugal and
centripetal in mind and body. And it is by such means that Yeats’ work does what the
necessary poetry always does, which is to touch the base of our sympathetic nature
xv
while taking in at the same time the unsympathetic reality of the world to which
that nature is constantly exposed. The form of the poem, in other words, is crucial
to poetry’s power to do the thing which always is will always be to poetry’s credit:
the power to persuade that vulnerable part of our consciousness of its rightness in
spite of the evidence of wrongness all around it, the power to remind us that we are
hunter and gatherers of values, that our very solitudes and distresses are creditable,
in so far as they, too, are an earnest of our veritable human being (Seamus Heaney,
Crediting Poetry, The Nobel Prize Lecture, 1995, p. 467).
Notes
1
Translated by Nolan, P.E. (1990). Now through a glass darkly. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of
Michigan Press.
2
The collection offered in this text cannot be exhaustive of the many developments in poetic inquiry,
rather it aims to offer diverse illustrations to indicate poetic inquiry’s intentions and to highlight many
rich possibilities.
3
We cannot be exhaustive here but include branches of twentieth century thought concerned not with
material and physical sciences but with existence, social, cultural and psychological life and the
epistemological projects that serve these understandings.
REFERENCES
Bachelard, G. (1958/1964). The poetics of space. London, England: Penguin Classics. (Republished 2014)
Barone, T., & Eisner, E. (1997). Arts-based educational research. In R. M. Jaeger (Ed.), Complementary
methods for research in education (pp. 75–116). Washington, DC: American Educational Research
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Barone, T., & Eisner, E. (2012). Arts based research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Barthes, R. (1975). The pleasure of the text (R. Miller, Trans.). New York, NY: Noonday Press.
Butler-Kisber, L. (Ed.). (2010). Special issue: Poetry and education. Learning Landscapes, 4(1), 1–318.
Retrieved from http://www.learninglandscapes.ca/archives/76-autumn-2010-vol4-no1-poetry-and-
education-possibilities-and-practices
Churchill, S. (2006). Encountering the animal other: Reflections on moments of empathic seeing. Indo-
Pacific Journal of Phenomenology [Special Edition on Methodology], 6, 1–13.
Clement, C., & Prendergast, M. (2012). Poetic inquiry: An annotated bibliography: Update, 2007–2012
[595 page bibliography]. Victoria, BC: Department of Curriculum & Instruction, University of
Victoria.
Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2011). Introduction: The discipline and practice of qualitative research.
In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (pp. 1–20).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Dilthey, W. (1833–1911). Poetry and experience: Selected works (Vol. V, 1985 ed.). Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Faulkner, S. (2007). Concern with craft: Using ars poetica as criteria for reading research poetry.
Qualitative Inquiry, 13(2), 218–234.
Faulkner, S. (2010). Poetry as method. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Forché, C. (Ed.). (1993). Against forgetting: Twentieth century poetry of witness. New York, NY: Norton.
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Poetic Inquiry, 5(2), 1–180. Retrieved from http://www.iaqr.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/
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Galvin K. T., & Todres, L. (2010). Research based empathic knowledge for nursing: A translational
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Insights, 13(3). Retrieved from www.educationalinsights.ca
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Rolling, J. Jr. (2013). Arts-based research primer. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Romanyshyn, R. D. (1989). Technology as symptom and dream. London, England: Routledge.
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Kathleen Galvin
Monica Prendergast
University of Victoria, Canada
xvii
Section 1
SEEING
Poetry as Inquiry
In this opening section, chapters collectively make an implicit case for the
use of poetry in research as a method to see a phenomenon or event in a new
way or in a new light with fresh perspective. Seeing a research site through
poetry invites a deeper kind of observation, this is a thread that weaves itself
through the contributions in this section. As in many poetic inquiries, in some
cases there is an overlay of voices, with examples of participant voiced poems
to illuminate a diverse kinds of studies with many complexities; in others
contributions from literary poets illustrate poetry as an inquiry in itself.
Selected chapters are illustrations of the power of poetry to elicit an empathic
response and several chapters offer examples of visual art responses layered
with poetic responses.
ALEXANDRA FIDYK
1. SEEING WITH AN UNCONSCIOUS EYE

The Poetic in the Work of Emily Carr
EMILY CARR – WOMAN, ARTIST, INDIVIDUAL & VISIONARY
Any call to ways of seeing, understanding and caring through poetic inquiry as a
creative approach to research would not be complete without the inclusion of the
unconscious. That is the forgotten, repressed and denied aspects of one’s personal,
familial, cultural, and collective unconscious. To illustrate the centrality of this
autonomous element to the creative process, I highlight the work of Emily Carr and
its capacity to reflect her ability to live more consciously through the urge of the art
complex.
THE EARLY YEARS
Carr was a Canadian painter and author whose life was marked by loss, poverty,
illness, and isolation (1871–1945). While she embodied a wild spirit, she was out
of tune and time with the Victorian household of her parents as well as the racist
and classist attitude of her society – Victoria, British Columbia. Indeed, it was only
at the age of fifty-six that the long years of suffering and neglect ended when the
Group of Seven discovered her work. This group of seven male landscape painters
believed that a distinct Canadian art could be developed through direct contact with
nature. While Carr’s technique and relationship to self was yet to mature, she was
the only woman known to be seriously painting at this time who sought to express
a soul connection with nature. It was among this small group of painters that Carr,
as a woman, artist, and individual, was seen and her work was recognized. One
could say that meeting these artists and encountering their art symbolized a pivotal
turn in her life – the end of withdrawal, depression, and grief and the beginning
of a time of discovery and a potential expansion of selfhood. It also marked the
start of her Journals in which she wrote about her spiritual life, inner dialogues,
and relationships, the creative process with the subjects painted, and of the decisive
change in direction that her life took after seeing the work of the Group of Seven.
One might argue that her suffering shaped her aesthetic attitude, indeed, shaped
her for art to unfold. In her early years Emily lived in fear of her father who was “ultra
English” (Carr, 1966b, p. 14); while her mother provided a buffer to the harshness of
her family, she did not provide the love and acceptance that this extraordinary child
K. T. Galvin & M. Prendergast (Eds.), Poetic Inquiry II – Seeing, Caring, Understanding, 3–20.
© 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
A. FIDYK
so deeply needed. Her stubborn and independent character challenged constantly

her English upbringing and the norms of her society. She was dubbed “Small” by
her older sisters, not only because she was the smallest, but also because she knew
nothing of societal norms and Victorian prejudice.
In childhood she often escaped to her father’s open lily field when punished
or lonely. Her closest friends, an imaginary small boy, and a luxurious horse,
accompanied her there and became the “world of Small.” She dropped out of school
when her mother died at 15. And two years later, her father died. Her life then
became even more difficult when her eldest and sternest sister became head of the
household.
Along with Carr’s sensitive and intuitive character, her marginalized position
within her family and society, contributed to an identification with and understanding
of others on the fringes, including Aboriginal and Asian peoples. Her passion for
animals and nature further aided in dissolving her boundaries of perceived difference,
thus enabling Carr to not only feel from their horizon but to love them and their
difference.
At 18 years of age, Carr began to formally study painting, first in San Francisco,
then in England and France. The subject that attracted her most during these early
years was “Indian art” – their masks, totem poles, and long houses. However, her
training had taught her to copy, to “carefully, and honestly, and correctly” record
the characteristics and dimensions of her subject (Riley, n.d., part 1). Her art thus
failed to pierce as West Coast First Nation art did for she had acquired the skills and
processes to see outsides only. Their art, in contrast, captured the heart and mood of
the land – the brooding coastal forests and majestic mountains with their mystery
and beauty. In her autobiography, Growing Pains (1966b), she explains:
Indian art broadened my seeing, loosened the formal tightness I had learned
in England’s schools. … The Indian caught first at the inner intensity of his
subject, worked outward to the surfaces. His spiritual conception he buried
deep in the wood he was about to carve. (pp. 211–212)
This understanding of ‘Indian art’ is not reflected in her painting until after 1927
when she strips the poles of excessive detail, wipes from them “distracting settings
and concentrates on their sculptural strength and expressive energy” (Shadbolt, 1979,
p. 30). Until then she imposes that of “other” onto them, either a straightforward,
carefully observed and rendered watercolour style (as with her work of 1908–1910)
or the French-derived manner she brought back with her from Europe in 1911
(Shadbolt, 1979). Neither style was suitable for the awe-inspiring numinosity that
she experienced in the presence of the poles.
A HOLY ENCOUNTER
Many years later, at age 56, upon seeing the work of the Group of Seven, she had
a similar experience to standing in the presence of the totem poles; she had a holy
4
SEEING WITH AN UNCONSCIOUS EYE
encounter – a profound numinous experience – a “feeling of the supersensual”

(Otto cited in Stein, 2006, p. 41). She wrote of this meeting: “Oh, God, what have I
seen? Where have I been? Something has spoken to the very soul of me, wonderful,
mighty, not of this world. … Something has called out of somewhere” (Carr cited
in Davis, 1992, p. 7). Jung proposed that one is conditioned not only by the past but
also by the future, which gradually evolves out of us. This is especially the case in
creative persons whose aptitude and skill are not seen until an unexpected reflection
is turned back upon them. He describes this happening:
with a creative person who does not at first see the wealth of possibilities
within [her], although they are all lying there already. So it may easily happen
that one of these still unconscious aptitudes is called awake by a “chance”
remark or by some other incident, without the conscious mind knowing exactly
what has awakened. (Jung, 1946/1954, para. 110)
This “unseeing” of self is precisely what had happened to Emily Carr. Due to
her isolation, difference, and the inability of significant others to mirror (see and
acknowledge) her and her creative gifts, Carr doubted herself, her intuition, and
skill, thereby further withdrawing from human relationships. When she encountered
the art and artists forming the Group of Seven when she was invited to Ottawa for
an art exhibition, the experience was so powerful that it utterly transformed the rest
of her life. This ‘chance’ encounter activated a higher or deeper consciousness or
what Jung and Otto (1923/1950) call the numinosum – described as “fascination,
mysteriousness, and tremendousness” (cited in Rossi, n.d., p. 12). When Carr
returned to Victoria (after the exhibition), she was already responding to this
awakening.
For the next ten years, she painted the west coast in extraordinary beauty and
further developed methods and a style that were aptly suited to a widening range of
her maturing self. It was during this period that she released herself to the artistic
drive. This creative surge reflected new elements of her personality that emerged
unheralded, including being open once again to love.
THE CREATIVE SURGE
Considered psychologically, when the artist creates, it is not the manifestation of

her need to communicate some “thing” to the world. Rather, it is an autonomous
complex, an “art complex,” “gone wild which [has] to emerge, which [needs] to
find full expression” (Spielrein cited in van den Berk, 2012, p. 22). The complex,
while “fused with affect and bound to the individual” (van den Berk, 2012, p. 17),
is however denied a personal element. The very “tendency towards dissolution
(or transformation) of every individual complex is the motive for poetry, painting,
for every sort of art” (Spielrein cited van den Berk, 2012, pp. 24–25, italics van
den Berk’s). Like any complex, which autonomously takes charge, it gripped and
directed her, and at times even possessed her. However, as her ego strengthened, she
5
A. FIDYK
was better able to “channel [its] energy” into her creative process without completely
succumbing to it (p. 19). Indeed, “the creative process,” for Jung, “has a feminine
quality, and the creative work arises from unconscious depths – [one] might … say
from the realm of the Mothers” (1930/1978, para. 103), from the embodied, the
relational, and the feminine.
What was most significant to Carr’s new creative approach was her ability to
trust her feelings and to risk their expression. She was now able to go into the woods
and tune to that thing that called to her rather than following the steps of others and
copying their artistic expression of what called to them. Simply, she had learned to
feel, trust and release to what arose, including old hurts and fears. She was then able
to become the conduit for – a “vision” which had to emerge – one that “wishe[d] to
incarnate itself with unyielding force … a symbol, without any concern for [her]”
(van den Berk, 2012, p. 100).
Significantly, it was through her poverty that she discovered by thinning house
paint with gasoline and using brown paper, that with great sweeps of her arm, her
brush strokes became alive, unrestrained, embodying the movement of her natural
world. Her brush “strokes became forms of energy themselves,” markers of direction,
speed or strength, carrying whatever expressive value they released (Shadbolt, 1979,
p. 185). “Working with the thin medium, the brush move[d] in easy waves across the
paper,” back and forth, creating one “continuous flow,” uniting the sky with the rock
and trees in “one fluid movement” (Shadbolt, 1979, p. 185). This technique suggests
that Carr had come to rely on a kind of wisdom – an inner seeing simultaneously
tuned to the creative outer eye of the cosmos. This reflexive act bridged vision,
creative drive, practical demands, and the subject itself while releasing previous ego-
driven habituations. It is important to note that Carr did not feel detached from nature
when she was younger yet her earlier paintings and methods reveal an unconscious
separation, one where she appears the unattached observer.
A NEW INTEGRATION
Carr’s late work bears witness to a new integration within her psyche, between
unconscious and conscious elements, and between her self and nature. It becomes a
meeting place for the ideal and the real, the numinous and the mundane. In a journal
entry she beautifully describes the potential of art to develop the soul. She saw, for
example, the plant’s struggle to reach the light was the same as her own:
look at the earth, crowded with growth, new and old bursting from their strong
roots hidden in the silent live ground … so, artist, you too from the deeps of
your soul, down among dark and silence, let your roots creep forth [and push,
push towards the light]. (1993, p. 676)
One senses that she understands the creative process as “a living thing implanted
in the human psyche” (Jung, 1922/1978, para. 75) – a breathing “thing that is
6
autonomous, unintentional, fused with affect and bound to the individual” (van den
Berk, 2012, p. 17).
Her inner process respected the relationship with that which coursed through her
and the cosmos, arriving via a different tempo and process than did the speed of her
oil-on-papers. It required that she go far into the woods and upon finding something
that beckoned her, she lit a smoke and sat to contemplate it. She absorbed it at
length then asked, “Now what do I want to say about it?” She used a notebook for
these “jottings” – a form of free association in relation to the subject – including
what she felt in relation to it was of primary importance, not the measure or detail
of what she saw. She also sketched in her journals. Rather than seeking to capture a
representation of what she saw, she quietly allowed a pictorial image to “sort itself
out of nature’s jumble” (Shadbolt, 1979, 193, emphasis mine). During this part of the
process, “instead of trying to force our personality on to our subject,” she advised,
“we should be quite quiet and unassertive and let the subject swallow us and absorb
us into it” (1966, p. 123). Here the polarities of subjectivity and objectivity invert;
here Carr becomes the object to the subjectivity of the thing holding her attention.
Here the ego has a say and the unconscious has a say. For most it is crucial that the
ego gently hold the lead for it is in danger of being overwhelmed by the unconscious.
However in these notes, it can be argued that Carr had developed her relationship
to the unconscious to such a degree that she could surrender to the lead of the
unconscious and slowly slip back to ego consciousness when she had left the thing
that had called to her. This process likewise resembles that of a scholar or researcher
who must become aware of her predisposition and transference to the subject in order
that her ego does not drown the other energies at play. It is a critical partnership, one
that is often not recognized in the creative process, especially when many credit
themselves (their egos) with artistic ability and insight rather than something arising
from the objective psyche which needs to be negotiated. As Jung describes, “It is
exactly as if a dialogue were taking place between two human beings with equal
rights, each of whom gives the other credit for a valid [point]” (Jung cited in Miller,
2004, p. 26). Carr (1966) describes it thus:
I am always looking for the face of god, always listening for his voice in the
woods. This I know – I shall not find it until it comes out of my inner self, until
the God quality in me is in tune with the God quality in nature … until I have
learned and fully realized my relationship to the Infinite. (1966, p. 29)
Such a dialogue between the conscious and the unconscious is fundamental for the
emergence of the third, the transcendent function, seen here as an exchange between
two equal entities. Of this exchange, what becomes crucial is the ability to be fully
present, to be able to contemplate, and to hold the tension of what arises within
the artist herself. Jung underscored the ability to listen; for to dialogue requires
good listening skills and each is required with the other both intrapsychically (via
the transcendent function) and interpersonally (in relationships). It also requires
“courage, perseverance and effort” (Miller, 2004, p. 29) on the part of the individual
7
A. FIDYK
as the happening of the transcendent function can be affected by the person’s

readiness. In terms of Carr’s own development, her ability to dialogue intimately
about philosophical and spiritual ideas with Lawren Harris (the intellectual of the
Group of Seven), for example, reflects her improved ability to relate to others. Her
intrapsychic dialogues are notable in her Journals where she writes between (and
from) the voice of her sensitive and imaginative inner child, Small, and her older
self, Emily, reflecting her ability to converse with her inner figures. For Jung, “the
capacity for inner dialogue is a touchstone for outer objectivity” (Jung cited in Miller,
2004, p. 27). This capacity becomes increasingly evident in Carr’s later work.
THE MATURE YEARS
When psychological maturity comes – it may or may not be accompanied by years –

it is no longer the pains or joys of the individual that has import but rather the life of
the collective. In arriving to this place, the artist has learnt to see poetically, a fusion
of love, relationality, patience, empathy, continuity, and surrender. Some significant
encounter (or series of minor ones) has shifted her centre of awareness to a more
inclusive vantage point wherein creating art must reach beyond the personal while
always grounded in it. In this way, one understands re-search in a new light. It is
no longer an effort of the ego, seeking affirmation externally often in the form of
accolades, status, or recognition. Rather, it becomes an inner directed task where
coming to know is part of one’s very existence, undertaken for the in-dividuating
self yet always through ongoing dialogue with one’s inner figures (subjectivity) and
the creative principle or objective psyche of the cosmos. As such creating becomes
a necessity, an unbidden urge, and the individual merely a vessel for its expression.
The artist or researcher “writes, paints, or composes what [she] suffers” (Jung cited
in van den Berk, 2012, p. 19). “Creativity exists by the grace of an ‘unrestrained’
spirit” (van den Berk, 2012, p. 1) wherein the artistic person has animal roots. It
is “in and through the ‘artistic drive’ [that] the creative process is propelled ‘from
below upwards’ and receives within the psyche a ‘radiating’ numinous aspect” (Jung
cited in van den Berk, 2012, p. 16).
Carr’s Journals and the biographies and documentaries on her life suggest that she
remained in close relation to the root matter of all things; she lived by an “instinctive
animism” (Shadbolt, 1979, p. 142). She was of the earth so it was natural for her
to endow rocks and roots with human life, “humans with animal life, nature with
spirit life, or any other combination” (p. 142). With time, suffering and humility,
she recognized the boundaries of her ego and the experience of the irrational greater
forces that constitute the drives of the psyche. Her reclusion and exclusion from
society, regardless of how painful, allowed her to maintain a kind of porosity that
enabled her to be in feeling empathetic relation with nature, an ability to access
the “perennial rhizome beneath the earth” (Jung, 1952/1956, para. xxiv). She did
develop, of course, greater consciousness regarding the role of her ego in this
process. As a whole her late work suggests a more consciously aware connection
8
between the conscious and the unconscious, reflecting the dialogue of her ego with
the other – both her personal and the collective unconscious. This relationship
is the aim of poetic inquiry, of re-search that serves the soul and of inquiry that
best expresses through performance, journaling, collage, painting, and poetry. The
researcher then resembles Carr as the artist who can touch the psychic depths in
which we all partake, and thus, influences us in a visionary way. This vision reveals
itself to our consciousness as a symbol that connects consciousness and appears in
aesthetic form – the tree for example can be noted predominantly in the paintings
and writings of Carr.
To illustrate Carr’s “seeing with an unconscious eye,” I close with a suite of
found poetry drawn from Carr’s Journal Hundreds & Thousands (1966). These
excerpts have been selected as reflective of her inner process and speak of her poetic
awareness and reverence for Mother Earth. They are offered as a felt sense of Carr’s
relationship with other – not as distinctly other but as an extension of her own breath
and body – a union made possible by surrendering her ego desires, and welcoming
the images and feelings that sought release through her. In this way, I offer a glimpse
of her unique way of seeing, understanding, and caring for the world.
9
A. FIDYK
This is perhaps the way

to find that thing
I long for:
Go into the woods alone
and look at the earth,
crowded with growth,
new and old bursting
from their strong roots
hidden in the silent, live ground,
each seed
according to its own kind
expanding, bursting,
pushing its way
upward
towards the light and air,
each one knowing
what to do,
each one demanding
its own
right on earth.
Feel this growth,
the surging upward
this expansion,
the pulsing life
all working with the same idea,
the same urge to express
the God in themselves.
So, artist, you too
from the deeps of your soul,
down among dark and
silence,
let your roots creep forth,
gaining strength.
Crawl deeply from the
good nourishment of the earth
but rise into the glory
of the light
and air
and sunshine.
10
I am painting Sky.
A big tree
butts up into it
on one side
and there is a slope in the corner
with pines.
These are only to give
distance.
The subject is Sky,
big big Sky –
starting lavender beneath the trees
and rising,
rising into a smoother
hollow air space,
greenish in tone,
merging into laced clouds
and then into deep, deep,
bottomless blue,
not flat and smooth
like the centre part of Sky
but loose,
coming forward.
There is to be one,
one sweeping movement
through the whole air,
an ascending movement,
high and fathomless.
The movement
must connect with each
other –
taking great care
with its articulation.
A movement that floats up, up
floats up.
It is a study in movement,
designed movement –
something very subtle.
11
A. FIDYK
There is a torn and splintered ridge

across the stumps.
I call them screamers –
the unsawn last bits
the cry of the tree’s heart,
wrenching and tearing apart
just before she gives that sway,
and that dreadful groan of falling,
that dreadful pause
while her executioners step back
with their saws and axes resting –
and watch.
It is a horrible sight.
It is a horrible sight
to see a tree felled
even now
though the stumps are grey and rotting.
As you pass among them
with their screamers sticking out –
their own tombstones.
They are their own tombstones
and their own mourners.
The cedars are good.

I know that.
I ought to stick
to nature
because I love trees better than people.
I don’t know
humans as deeply.
12
I am painting a
jungle,
a forest as jungle,
that nobody visits
because the loneliness repels them.
The density –
the dark dark overhangs,
the unsafe hidden footing,
the dank smells,
of slow rot and death,
the great quiet,
the mystery,
the general mix up
of tangle, bramble, entwine
of growth and
what might be hidden there – .
No one comes.
They are repelled
by the awful solemnity of the Old Ones,
with the wisdom of all their years
of growth
looking down upon you,
making you feel perfectly in
infinitesimal –
their overpowering weight,
their groanings and
their creekings, mutterings, and
sighings –
the rot and decay of the age-old trees
the toadstools and slugs
among the upturned, rotting roots
of those who have fallen,
reminding one
of the perishableness of even those
slow-maturing,
much-enduring growths.
The sallal is tough and stubborn
rose and blackberry thorny.
13
A. FIDYK
There are the fallen logs

and mossy stumps,
a thousand varieties of growth
and shapes and obstacles,
the dips and hollows,
hillocks and mounds,
riverbeds,
forests of young pines and
spruce piercing up through
the tangle to get to the
quiet light
diluted
through the overhanging branches
of great overtopping trees.
Should one sit down –
the great, dry, green sea
would sweep over
and engulf you.
14
Life is sweeping
through the spaces.
Everything is alive –
the air is alive;
the silence is full of sound;
the green is full of colour;
light and dark chase each other.
Here is a picture –
a complete thought
and there another
and there. . .
There are themes everywhere –
something sublime,
something ridiculous,
something joyous,
or calm,
or wonderful,
or mysterious.
Tender youthfulness
laughing at gnarled oldness.
Moss and ferns,
and leaves and twigs,
light and air,
depth and colour –
chatting, singing, dancing,
dancing
a mad joy-dance,
but only, apparently tied up,
in stillness and silence.
You must be still
in order to hear and see.
15
A. FIDYK
How badly I wanted that nameless thing.

First there must be an idea,
a feeling,
or whatever you want to call it,
the something that interested or inspired you
to make you desire to express it.
Maybe an abstract idea that
you must find a symbol for,
or maybe it was a concrete form that
you have to simplify
or distort to meet your ends –
but that starting point
must pervade the whole.
Then you must discover the pervading direction,
the pervading rhythm,
the dominant, recurring forms,
the dominant colour,
but always the thing must be top in your thoughts.
Everything must lead up to it,
clothe it,
feed it,
balance it,
tenderly fold it,
till it reveals itself –
in all the beauty of its very being-ness.
16
Sometimes the soul

gets so lonely
that it tries to break
through its silence.
The tongue and ear
want to handle it,
to help it grow –
fertilise it.
Everything is for
the soul’s growth.
She calls
to all the physical and
material to help her,
like these majestic forests that call you,
the gravel pits that churn you up inside,
the little creatures who ask nothing – .
And yet we act
as if its sole use was
for itself,
for its comfort and ease.
17
A. FIDYK
The beach was sublime

this morning –
low, low tide
that revealed things
that are most times hidden,
great boulders, and
little round stones the size of heads,
covered with a kind of dried sea moss,
looking like the tops of human heads.
The sea urchins squirted
as you walked by
and crabs scuttled,
and the air
and the sea
and the earth
were all on good terms,
and made little caressing sounds.
The sea kissed the pebbles
and the young breeze petted everything.
As for the earth –
she is beside herself
with sprouts and so happy.
The air
and the earth
and the sea
seemed to be holding some splendid
wonderful secret,
folding it up between them
and saying to you –
“Peep and guess.
If you guess right, you can have it.”
And you’re almost scared –
scared to guess
for fear of being wrong
and not getting it right.
18
I think perhaps this is the way in art.

The spirit of the thing
calls to your soul.
First it hails it
in passing
and your soul pauses
and shouts back – “Coming.”
But the soul dwells
in your innermost being
and it has a lot of
courts and rooms
and things to pass through,
doors and furniture
and clutter to go round
and through,
and she has to pass through
and round all this impedimenta
before she can get out
in the open and catch up
and sometimes she can’t go on
at all
but is all snarled up
in obstructions.
But sometimes
she does
go direct and clear and
and catches up
and goes along.
Sometimes
they can only go a bit of the way together
and sometimes
quite far,
but after a certain distance,
she always has to drop back.
But, oh, if you could only go
far enough to see
the beauty of the whole,
of the whole
complete thought
that has called out to you –.
19
A. FIDYK
References
Carr, E. (1966a). Hundreds and thousands: The journals of Emily Carr. Toronto, ON: Clarke, Irwin & Co.
Carr, E. (1966b). Growing pains: The autobiography of Emily Carr. Toronto, ON: Clarke, Irwin & Co.
Carr, E. (1993). Hundreds and thousands. In D. Shadbolt (Ed.), The Emily Carr omnibus. Vancouver, BC:
Douglas & McIntyre.
Davis, A. (1992). The logic of ecstasy: Canadian mystical painting 1920–1940. Toronto, ON: University
of Toronto Press.
Jung, C. G. (1916/1960). The transcendent function. The structure and dynamics of the psyche [The
collected works of C. G. Jung]. (R. F. C. Hull, Trans., Vol. 8, pp. 67–91). New York, NY: Pantheon
Books.
Jung, C. G. (1922/1978). On the relation of analytical psychology to poetry. The spirit in man, art, and
literature [The collected works of C. G. Jung] (R. F. C. Hull, Trans., Vol. 15, pp. 65–83). Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Jung, C. G. (1930/1978). Psychology and literature. The spirit in man, art, and literature [The collected
works of C. G. Jung] (R. F. C. Hull, Trans., Vol. 15, pp. 84–105). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Jung, C. G. (1946/1954). Analytical psychology and education. In The Development of Personality [The
collected works of C. G. Jung] (R. F. C. Hull, Trans., Vol. 17, pp. 65–132). New York, NY: Pantheon
Books.
Jung, C. G. (1952/1956). Symbols of transformation: An analysis of the prelude to a case of schizophrenia.
New York, NY: Pantheon Books.
Miller, J. C. (2004). The transcendent function: Jung’s model of psychological growth through dialogue
with the unconscious. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Otto, R. (1923/1950). The idea of the holy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Riley, N. (n.d.). Growing pains, part 1 (Unpublished documentary).
Rossi, E. L. (n.d.). Creativity and the nature of the numinosum: The psychosocial genomics of
Jung’s transcendent function in art, science, spirit, and psychotherapy. Retrieved from
http://www.ernestrossi.com/ernestrossi/keypapers/JS%20Creativity%20Nature%20of%20Numinosumd.pdf
Shadbolt, D. (1979). The art of Emily Carr. Vancouver, BC: Douglas & McIntyre.
Stein, M. (2006). On the importance of numinous experience in the alchemy of individuation. In A.
Casement & D. Tacey (Eds.), The idea of the numinous: Contemporary Jungian and psychoanalytic
perspectives (pp. 34–52). Hove, England: Routledge.
van den Berk, T. (2012). Jung on art: The autonomy of the creative drive. Hove, England: Routledge.
Alexandra Fidyk
Department of Secondary Education
University of Alberta, Canada
20
CHRISTI KRAMER
2. LEAN IN AS THE STORY IS TOLD

Vestibular Sense, Poetic Image, Instruction for Seeing
Invitation
Purpose: to understand methodology, where poetic inquiry may be understood

primarily as “gaze.”
If, as Bachelard says, the poetic image is direct ontology, a phenomenology of the
soul and if the gaze of poetry is courtesy (Lilburn, 1999), how might poetic inquiry—a
courteous inquiry, courteous seeing—move us toward a deeper understanding?
What images do we have to illuminate this gazing? Ancient, the image, that there is
a window that opens in the heart. Imam Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali (1058–1111), poet,
philosopher, and esteemed scholar, gives instruction for how to see (with the heart),
how to take in the world, past the body’s hardest bone (eardrum), where in the act of
listening we meet, are at once necessary witness, and at once [at our greatest depths
within the image] may begin preparation to see.
The poetic image bears witness to a soul which is discovering its world, the
world where it would like to live and where it deserves to live. (Bachelard,
1960, p. 15)
[Let’s place ourselves here:]
to understand poetic image:
Poetic image is whole (Al-Ghazali) and it is also trace. It may be a place or
state: a space for radical meeting1 (Forché) of self and other, a multi dimensional
location (Zwicky, 2011) of potential and tension; a threshold/dihliz (Al-Ghazali).
Where poetic image is motion, it may be vertical and verb. Poetic image is not equal
to metaphor (Bachelard). Even as it may be like a butterfly in that it is not a thing to
be enslaved, made into object or pinned down, it is not a butterfly in that, perhaps, it
can never be only one thing at once. Yes, it exists in this sensory world—no—along
with the five plus senses, a doorway into our perception and memory, as Kwasny
says, “enabling us to locate and embody the invisible and the unknown.” (Kwasny,
2012, p. 2). It is generative, first of the creative imagination (Corbin; Ibn ‘Arabi)
and exists possibly prior to thought (Al-Ghazali; Bachelard). Poetic image may be
known, says Bachelard, as direct ontology, a phenomenology of the soul. Where both
C. KRAMER
the poetic image and phenomenology require active participation and deny passivity,
there is not space for enslavement to object; in poetic image there may be liberation.
[And, specifically, we are here:]

Where dialogic, where “utterance” is a limitless continuum or whole (Bakhtin, 1986).
Where the gaze of poetry is courtesy The “gaze of poetry is courtesy.” (Lilburn)
We stand where there is necessity of witness; where we are the “necessary witness”
(Al-Ghazali; Forché)
[And we are here]: within traditions of Sufi, Islamic scholars, specifically near
teachings of Imam Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali, where the heart is understood as the
seat of knowledge: where (not just in our imagination) we may listen, witness, see
from the heart. Where there is an image (mithaal) of the whole world already placed
within our very being: where poetic image exists within the heart.
[here]
Within a qualitative research methodology, where the research may cause itself to
stammer. (Shidmehr, 2009)
Where we may or may not find the ground upon which we stand, moves.
[And, at last, we are here:]

in what we have called liminal space/dihliz (Al-Ghazali) at the threshold, where,
perhaps we will or will not leave; where we may or may not arrive.
22
LEAN IN AS THE STORY IS TOLD
Dihliz
Loosen the strap, leave sandal here
(kiss too is a place of hover, or refuge)
in architecture of connecting, entry
A small covered place to wait for rain
before the house or sanctuary
between
Where place shoes, tie donkey, set the heavy basket you will not carry in
It is just stones, held up by each other
No, it is the space framed in stone, sometimes arched like rib cage
A vestibule in the ear too, named this
by any definition, where we gain or lose our balance
23
C. KRAMER
Image 1. Threshold
24
There is a vestibular sense and a threshold of pain.

a nerve for listening
timbre twinge in each story necessary witness
The hardest bone of the body holds this labyrinth

what is fluid knows gravity, motion
we call this canal, duct, window
a rib cage is nothing of armour; birds with enough longing pass easily through
sometimes we cover our ears with our hands

listen then to your own heart’s pulse
this story—even of escaping—never left the palm
Some measure absolute threshold of hearing. Since the tone is always present,
“Yes” is the answer.
In reality a grey area exists where the listener is uncertain as to whether or not
they’ve actually heard.
25
C. KRAMER
We don’t even need to ask—what we hear when we already know the answer.
So said Shams Tabriz:
There were many things that could have been said
but because the right quality of presence wasn’t there, they will never be seen
(Helminski, 2011).
There’s the risk:

“The ones doing the looking are giving themselves the power to define” (Mita, as
cited in Smith, 1999, p. 58).
There is a kind of greedy stare that does not see, that threatens and diminishes.
Research, as is often practiced, does this, or can.2
“You cannot truly see this stone
[You cannot truly see this stone]
if you believe the world is yours
[if you believe the world is yours]
to do with as you will.
… You must lay no violent hands upon it!” (Lilburn, 1999, p. 35).
Image 2. Pilot project3
“The world seen deeply eludes all names; it is not like anything; it is not the sign of
something else. It is itself. It is a towering strangeness” (Lilburn, 1999, p. 47).
Our task hear/here is to here/hear: not name nor claim;
It asks willingness to see: that the [eye] be vulnerable
[this world]
26
Data collection4
Proof, she said, you had an encounter: what proof that you went, were there?
Before we used the word with yeast: what one does with a bit of warm water
before milk before flour.
First thought: were the holes drilled in her brother’s body proof of anything, of any
kind of life. Returned the corpse limp as she dragged it: could it testify
to how before he cared for her, kept her safe?
(This question itself betrays.)
In the circle where the children sat, there was no need to explain.
The youngest motioned to the angel on her shoulder: the angel there. Visible
in a song of comfort that grew in pores of bread rose and in the wind left
this leaving, taking nothing as evidence
that even as bread enters and becomes the body song is a quick lover of breath
If one wanted to analyze this: discourse of proximity

what the child spoke otherwise in perfect past tense said, “I live in Baghdad”
how could we argue, though present street is all pine and seldom
blood puddle and run
Take it as given that this child, introduced as having come from “the triangle of
death” and though he has never seen the Tigris, is, as he says a river
a river a river (from above it is not dry banks coursing canyon through map
it is, (he is) as a he says, floating clear sweet a beautiful warm sea.
We all already know a bucket holds nothing of ocean

though enough salt for a small loaf from wheat—
given do we reach dip in, drink?
27
C. KRAMER
Is it possible to write the world well? If, with intention to practice courteous gaze,
research may serve as witness and resistance, what then, does this mean? How might
we come to hear to see?5
a gaze of courtesy (you say courage to) how might we here
reconcile our practices as researchers as teachers with the soul’s desire to be
fully, to be fully seen and to fully see?6
To see the world whole it is
Is there a window in the heart? The heart itself is a window.

There are doors in the heart: one opens hinged to a world tethered to senses
to the visible world
here we know rough grain of plank and knock and wait know the feet sore
sand and pebble prepare to take from waft of bread cushion, cool drink
there is acquisition taking in knowledge in this body we understand –that is door
one
two: open to ru’ya – spirit – here we already have already, the whole world
– never made lesser – is
present in the heart here, we see
open this door :able to see
28
Image 3. Pilot project
There is nothing like

better translated: nothing like his likeness laysa ka-mithleehi Sheea
[…] but a vision that calls for completion [….] For what is known generates a
desire for what is not known. (Adonis, as cited in Kwasny, 2013, p. 40)
29
C. KRAMER
Frankincense, copal: Grogram wrapped cedar box7
I heard there was a weaver who stepped back from the loom and dropped the wool
whenever her heart was heavy. Her work was light.
I heard another kind of weaver warn against poems that are all light and no plank.
Something about birds trapped in a carpet of night.
In the stylized design can you recognize this easily as goat?

Cedar as cluster of properties, only one of which may be basket or pole for door
What is permeated with resin

yarn clings to fingers of balsam
a whole poem could be written about this cricket in amber
a heart suspended in silent, flammable pitch
traveler carries a basket of feathers, robe that never once dragged through
the brush
offering
textile bends to the body’s labour: curtain, veil, rope
even if she weaves the sun, such things absorb block
fragrance (yes) fragrance of light
Image 4. Pilot project (Harith, 2010)
30
What should I do with this bucket of water when the whole world is on fire?!
Is it true “The physical world cannot be known in the way poetry aspires to
know it, intimately, ecstatically, in a way that heals the ache….”
Again, says Liburn (1999, p. 13).
this that is not naming not map no retreat he does say, “love the world”
taken in
or out of context.
Cartography
danger to mapping the soul
only one route to get there and all along the way:
bandits, extortion,
satchel with broken lock paper and all those
sketched birds scattered everywhere
orbis universalis
Coordinates for
shells that were left (where beach where nest)
what this river flows over
is oil
mined land mine
there is a line in the sand step over
31
C. KRAMER
Pamphlet on estuary8
Circle: the perfect shape for planetary orbits

Or, unabashedly wanted physical proof for motion and location of Earth
Inside the eyelid: teacher kneeling

Along this seawall: waft of grass and bay mud
You began this journey to image :you

Act: since everything that is desires its own being (Arendt)
The crucial point is not when the beginning is located but why and from where
(Mignolo, 2000) 9
So we shall say the map maker took plume next to inky index finger, drew
on purpose, the crevasse of his own damp brow
into a world already splayed and halved.
There is a small green plant in her bag

basil tucked between camisole and skin: immediate memory of home
miracle: return (another word for being born)
Against glass pane: two palms
Written on one: shorebirds, marsh and mollusc
The other stained green, blue
(Where did you imagine the glass: a division between two images pressing,
or one being looking out, leaning in?)
Now, look directly into sun

Place your palms over your eyes
read estuary: tell me, where is the water salty, where drink
We see veiled mirrors that condemn us to a blindness that means that
face is utterly unable to look upon the face that ‘Is’ before it. (Bree, 2009,
pp. 117–118).
32
Bachelard assured us: “There’s no need of a gate, no need of an iron-trimmed door;

people are afraid to come in” (Bachelard, 1964, p. 132).10
Even, even if speaking of the scarf

the one abandoned in branches after youth snuck out over the wall
was it to see his love of course
and love has many forms
recited in whisper the one we intend here is The Scarf 11 read into cups of broth
or water from what is sacred, a well
there is fine etching on the wall and like on many other walls
(some bar entry and break, some bless)
we may also read the trace of fingers into stone mullion, and even near floor
someone (or many) may have pressed their brow pursed lips to push [prayer]
safely beneath
lowest rail hear
there is an impression made
if songe is all that’s left to give witness

(quite, be still) you may find that
squeak
of what’s hinged [heart] moving open
from what was said you may find yourself draped and well
In lyric’s idea of the world, language would be light. (Zwicky, 2011, p. 230)
33
C. KRAMER
Image 5. Threshold
Etched, framing this door: the words of Qasidah Burdah (The Poem of the Scarf) by
Al Busari
34
Awe is the entrance
It was a mistake they said, of the map, when one country accidently
invaded another,
set up camp.
Anasheed he sings: it is the same sea
Or this is euphemism for refugees fled.

Number is not name not face not what each person walking away sings
a ccapella: the ocean in a single beat
Or the soldier breathes out

Or the child in the hedge by the door breathes in
35
C. KRAMER
Why does it matter? This imagining, this baring, this seeing – this soul’s desire
for the world where it would like to live and where it deserves to live
Do you hear that: deserves to live …
There is no longer beauty or consolation except in the gaze falling on horror,

withstanding it, and in unalleviated consciousness of negativity holding fast to
the possibility of what is better. (Adorno, as cited in Forché, 1993, p. 41)
36
Lean in as the story is told
What does the look of shock do to the story?

Poor teller crouched remembering; listener, even poorer, fails to breathe.
The body holds a certain pose in wonder, another in grief.
When the horror from her story shoots out from the hearer’s face
The story itself forgets to breathe, balloons up and carries away
floats to another countryside or city, over burned palm, parched lake,
far away
floats over green, by every name and thing, green valley, green pasture,
green mossy hills,
away.
(Remember the body crouching)
Floats over the wedding (of justice and peace): you may kiss, floats the story
floats over banquet, musicians, rose sash on dress.
Or the story draws a circle for their dancing, for their grief.
Dance: story in lung and face and liver and feet.
Dance: fire, breath, recognition,
face.
notes
1
The notion of radical meeting of self and other, and the possibility and necessity of this kind of
meeting within the poetic image, grows, in part, from contemplation around this passage by Carolyn
Forché:
We are submerged, as all humans are, in what is politically understood as ideology and what
is humanely called culture; these constitute “world” for us – our versions of world, invisibly
walled and roofed. …By this means we are able to calculate true cost (of economic and political
oppression, institutional violence, warfare, environmental destruction) and alter the way our lives
are understood at the deepest levels, so as not to allow any possible future to be foreclosed by
our unjust and violent past and present. …I would argue that such radical meeting of the other, in
various prosodies and forms, is the way poems constellate meaning, and the way poems transmit
the life form of language. (Forché as cited in Chang, Handal, & Shankar, 2008, p. xxx)
2
“To move in sympathetic resonance is not to point, to grasp, or to refer. //In lyric experience, we are
open to the world. Resonance does not originate with us, but proceeds through us, from the world”
(Zwicky, 2011, p. 219).
3
The two photos of the child, Zaen, near the text, “see,” were taken in writing/arts circles with Iraqi
children living in Harrisonburg, VA, 2010. The writing circles were part of a pilot project for doctoral
research titled, Poetics of Return: Poetic Inquiry Toward the Poetic Imagination and Peacebuilding,
completed within the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British
37
C. KRAMER
Columbia, 2009–2014. The photo of the text titled, River, authored by Harith, is from this same pilot
project.
4
I acknowledge that the images in the poem, Data Collection, especially without greater
contextualization, run the risk of sensationalizing or appearing to name, describe, or document. That
is not my intent. Toward the vulnerability I request in this study, I offer the poem with a knowledge,
secret to myself. When I was able to listen to what I heard in this poem, there was a pivot: a return,
a reminder to attend carefully to my own deep desire first for something like courtesy. The poem
brought about revision of my research as proposed. The poem emerged out of a place of grief, written
during the pilot study. What the poem may “evidence” is my struggle, in effort to better understand
and act in witness; my troubled relationship with the activity of research, and potentials within poetic
inquiry itself.
5
“Yet the thing itself, the natural image seen not as object but as being in living relationship to
ourselves as other living beings on this planet, as subject with its own claims, is something poetry—
and humanity—is still trying to accomplish.” …. “If one believes, as I do, that poetry teaches us
how to live, not just how to write, in what ways can the image help to solve or salve or satisfy the
conundrum of both being and seeing?” (Kwasny, 2013, p. 3).
6
“The poet begins with mere observation, but as soon as the violet is isolated, recognized, and named,
it is changed by its being seen” (Kwasny, 2013, p. 41).
7
Reflecting on the activity of this research and what phenomenology might look like in an arts-based
dissertation – remembering we are speaking here of phenomenology of the soul. In context of the
Authentic Dissertation, Moran describes [phenomenology] “as looking, with as few presuppositions as
possible, at something with enough light to reduce the need for preconceptions. So if artful renditions
can bring in a form of ‘light’ that can help reveal something in its ‘isness,’ then this form of light is a
legitimate space for phenomenology” (Moran, as cited in Four Arrows, 2008, p. 90).
8
“Poems that are shaped with the kind of remembering that passes back through the heart, always with
a desire to return, always a realization that there can be no return to the places of childhood, except
in writing and telling stories that record, store, and resonate, so that none of us is totally forgotten, so
that the future continues to hold promises” (Leggo, 2009, p. 60).
9
The crucial point is not when the beginning is located but why and from where (Mignolo, 2000).
since everything that is desires its own being
(For in every action what is primarily intended by the doer, whether he acts from natural necessity
or out of free will, is the disclosure of his own image. […] and since in action the being of the
doer is somehow intensified, delight necessarily follows. ….Thus, nothing acts unless [by acting]
it makes patent its latent self.) (Dante, as cited in Arendt, 1998, p. 175)
Also see (Arendt, 1998, p. 312).
10
Thinking of voice, vision, vocation and how poetic imagination may relate to gaze, this inquiry is
concerned deeply with the work of Lederach (2005), where he describes “the moral imagination,”
moving from theologian Brueggemann’s (2001) notion of “prophetic imagination,” which links moral
vocation and the artist or poet’s voice, to the observation that “the genesis of the moral imagination
is found in creation itself.” Lederach, 2005, p. 24–26). “The moral imagination develops a capacity
to perceive things beyond and at a deeper level than what initially meets the eye.” Citing Guroian,
Lederach continues to describe “this quality of imagination as ‘a power of perception, a light that
illuminates the mystery that is hidden beneath a visible reality: It is the power to ‘see’ into the very
nature of things.’” (Lederach, 2005, p. 27) Giving emphasis to “the necessity of the creative act,”
he characterizes moral imagination as “the capacity to give birth to something new that in its very
birthing changes our world and the way we see things” (Lederach, 2005, p. 27).
11
“The Scarf ” in this Introduction is in reference to Al Busairi’s poem, Qasidah Burdah, and alludes to
the stories of the emergence of this poem. The poet, ailing, paralyzed and full of despair, wrote this
poem. In complete devotion and sincerity he recited the poem until, exhausted, he slept, guarded by
38
Messengers. When the poet woke, he found himself cured and his body draped in a scarf. The story
ripples; that night, dervishes far away heard the poem recited in their dreams.
Songe, in this poem, refers to Bachelard’s notion of reverie, which he stresses is something other than
songe or dream. “In order to know ourselves doubly as a real being and as an idealized being, we must
listen to our reveries” (Bachelard, 1960, p. 58).
REFERENCES
Al-Ghazali, A. H. M. (2010). Kitab sharh ‘aja’ib al-qalb: The marvels of the heart (W. J. Skellie, Trans.).
Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae.
Arendt, H. (1998). The human condition (M. Canovan, Intro). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
(Original work published 1958)
Bachelard, G. (1960). The poetics of space: The classic look at how we experience intimate places
(M. Jolas, Trans.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press. (Original work published 1958)
Bachelard, G. (1971). On poetic imagination and reverie (C. Gaudin, Trans.). Dallas, TX: Spring
Publications.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). In C. Emerson & M. Holquist (Eds.), Speech genres and other late essays
(V. W. McGee, Trans.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Bree, T. (2009). Symbolism as marriage and the symbolism of marriage. Eye of the Heart: A Journal
of Traditional Wisdom, 3. Retrieved from http://www.latrobe.edu.au/humanities/research/journals/
eye-of-the-heart
Busairi, A. S. M. B. H. Al. (2000). Qasidah burdah (K. E. S. Zakariyya, Trans.). New Delhi, India: Noida
Printing Press.
Corbin, H. (1998). Alone with the alone: Creative imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi (Bollingen
Series XCI). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work 1969)
Dancer, A. (2009). The soundscape in poetry. In M. Predergast, C. Leggo, & P. Sameshima (Eds.),
Poetic inquiry: Vibrant voices in the social sciences (pp. 31–42). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense
Publishers.
Forché, C. (Ed.). (1993). Against forgetting: Twentieth century poetry of witness. New York, NY: Norton.
Forché, C. (1998). Introduction. In T. Chang, N. Handal, & R. Shankar (Eds.), Language for a new
century: Contemporary poetry from the Middle East, Asia and beyond. New York, NY: W.W.Norton
& Co.
Four Arrows. (a.k.a Don Trent Jacobs). (2008). The authentic dissertation: Alternative ways of knowing,
research and representation. New York, NY: Routledge.
Helminski, K., & Helminski, C. (2011). Personal interview. Whistler, BC September 2nd–4th, 2011.
Hunter, A. (2009). A peepshow with views of the interior: Paratext. Kingsville, ON: Palimpsest Press.
Kwasny, M. (2013). Earth recitals: Essays on image and vision. Spokane, WA: Lynx House Press.
Lederach, J. P. (2005). The moral imagination: The art and soul of building peace. New York, NY: Oxford
University Press.
Leggo, C. (2009). Forget-me-nots. In E. Hasebe-Ludt, C. M. Chambers, & C. Leggo (Eds.), Life writing
and literary metissage as an ethos for our time (pp. 60–64). New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Lilburn, T. (1999). Living in the world as if it were home. Ontario, ON: Comorant Books.
Mignolo, W. (2000). The many faces of cosmo-polis: Border thinking and critical cosmopolitanism.
Public Culture, 12(3), 721–748. doi:10.1215/08992363-12-3-721
Moosa, E. (2005). Al-Ghazali and the poetics of imagination. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina Press.
Prendergast, M., Leggo, C., & Sameshima, P. (Eds.). (2009). Poetic inquiry: Vibrant voices in the social
sciences. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Shidmehr, N. (2009). Poetic inquiry as minor research. In M. Prendergast, C. Leggo, & P. Sameshima
(Eds.), Poetic inquiry: Vibrant voices in the social sciences (pp. 101–109). Rotterdam, The
Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
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Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. New York, NY: Zed
Books, Ltd.
Zwicky, J. (2011). Lyric philosophy. Kentville, NS: Gaspereau Press.
Christi Kramer
Independent Scholar, Canada
40
KATE EVANS
3. A/R/T(HERAPIST)-OGRAPHY
Examining the Weave
Sure a poet is a sage;

A humanist, physician to all men
(John Keats from The Fall of Hyperion)
I am a writer. I am a researcher. I am a therapeutic counsellor. What interests me
here is how my practice of the three connects. I want to pin down what unites my
practice as writer, researcher and therapist. I want to explore the key elements which
bind them together. I experience these three aspects as warp, weft and shuttle, giving
shape, colour and movement to the tapestry of my life. It feels to me like there’s an
inevitability and obviousness about how they work in unison, the one nourishing
and informing the other. In the writing of this chapter, I have set myself the task of
teasing out and naming the threads which interlace them, in order to begin a more
rigorous examination of them, to increase my understanding of them.
However, in doing so, I want to hold in mind that writer, researcher and therapist
are identities which are integral to my way of being. I join with Romanyshyn (2007)
when he speaks about his own speciality psychology as ‘less than a formal discipline
and more a style or a disposition, a way of being present in and to the world … [less]
a noun, but something adjectival’ (p. 25). In listing the key elements which tie my
work as writer, researcher and therapist together, I do not mean to create a mere list
of skill sets, rather they are the quintessence of all three. They are dynamic, open to
enquiry and development according to place and over time. I see them as part of a
human project, which I humbly attempt to contribute to, built on, as Van Manen says,
the ‘caring act’ of wanting to know ‘that which is most essential to being’ (1990,
pp. 5–6).
I have taken as my starting point the concept of ‘a/r/tography’. Irwin defines
this as ‘a relational aesthetic inquiry’ which envisions ‘embodied understandings
and exchanges … between and among the broadly conceived identities of artist/
researcher/teacher.’ She further states that the writing involved in the aesthetic
inquiry and the inquiry itself are ‘not separate or illustrative of each other but
interconnected and woven through each other to create additional and/or enhanced
meanings.’ For her the word ‘a/r/tography’ is broken down as: ‘a’ representing artist-
writer; ‘r’ representing researcher; ‘t’ representing teacher; and ‘graphy’ representing
K. EVANS
the use of writing. My understanding of what she says is that the use of writing binds
the three roles – artist-writer, researcher and teacher - it is central to all three and, as
well as this, it is both a means of communicating the ‘aesthetic inquiry’ to others and
a means of discovery within that inquiry.
This definition resonates with me in two ways. Firstly, the idea that my writing is
what ‘interconnects’, it is the golden thread which runs through the whole pattern of
my way of being and practice. Secondly, the idea that we can write both about what
we have already understood and, in addition, we can write in order to reveal what is
as yet unclear. The elucidation comes through the writing. It has been described as
‘ploughing a field’, going underneath the ‘now of the mind’, ‘like ploughing things
up and exposing them and it’s almost like, aha, I knew it was there, I don’t know
quite why I didn’t think of it before.’ (Evans, 2011, p. 180).
Poet, Paul Valéry also describes this act of writing to find meaning: ‘The true poet
does not know the exact meaning of what he has just had the good luck to write. A
moment later he is a mere reader. He has written non-sense: something that must not
present but receive a meaning’ (quoted in Elza, 2009, p. 57). I write to discover what
the story might be: for this text I want to create; for this inquiry I want to make; for
this person sitting in front of me in the therapy room.
In order to build on Irwin’s definition for my own purposes, I have taken the
liberty of replacing the ‘t’ for teacher with the ‘t’ for therapist. I now want to explicate
the key elements which I believe run through the work of artist-writer, researcher
and therapist, entwining them into a coherent fabric which knits comfortably into the
human project of caring inquiry. I have labelled the filaments which I am attempting
to unpick: process; curiosity; relationship; graphy.
KEY ELEMENTS TO A/R/T(HERAPIST)-OGRAPHY
Process
I have already written about poetry making and therapy being kin in that they
both involve voyaging (Evans, 2009, pp. 15–16). A journey that begins with the
permission (from ourselves as well as others) to embark and the letting go of (or,
more accurately, an acknowledgement of and reflection on) preconceptions. A
journey which isn’t linear, more ‘…a spiral, moving backwards and forwards …
those all important “aha” moments helping to sustain the initial engagement. I stick
with a creative idea for a poem, as I will stick with a client, as both stutter and
hesitate and ramble and contradict and lose faith.’ (Evans, 2009, p. 16).
Finlay (2011, p. 24) characterises this in the research paradigm as a process which
is ‘constantly evolving, dynamic and co-created’ with a ‘dance-like quality’:
Caught up in the dance, researchers must wage a continuous, iterative struggle
to become aware of, and then manage, pre-understandings and habitualities
that inevitably linger. Persistence will reward the researcher with special, if
42
A/R/T(HERAPIST)-OGRAPHY
fleeting moments of disclosure in which the phenomenon reveals something

of itself in a fresh way.
I wrote this reflective piece on client work during my counselling training, 23rd
November 2005. It attempts to encapsulate this sense of co-authored movement:
The ground is dangerous here
marshy, pathless,
the only signpost
is sunk in the mud,
useless.
If we stay here
we will sink,
the sucking mire
closing over our heads.
If we go from here
we will have only each other,
our questions, our uncertainties,
our vulnerabilities.
At some point going
will become preferable to staying
and we will
mark our own way
to the lake,
the mirror lake,
in which is sunk the key.
A/r/t(herapist)-ography, then, is dynamic. It involves a movement through, which is
not predictable and which requires us to give ourselves permission to set off, while
also recognising and setting aside (as much as we can) our preconceptions.
Curiosity – A Place of Not Knowing
The Pocket Oxford’s definition of research is an ‘endeavour to discover … a careful

search after or for or into’. This suggests that a researcher is interested in something
which is as yet not revealed, is in some way hidden. Finlay (above) says the job
of the researcher is to ‘manage’ what we think we know in order to discern the
phenomenon in a ‘fresh way’. I have already suggested earlier in this chapter that, as
a writer, I strive to unearth through writing. As Faulkner (2009, p. 59) says, ‘Don’t
write about what you know, write about what you want to discover’.
Researchers and writers, then, can claim an expertise in not knowing. It is not that
they have no prior understanding or knowledge, just that they strive to go beyond
43
K. EVANS
this to capture what is new. It is unfortunate, in my opinion, that therapists can have
a very different reputation (Masson, 1988).
However, I, along with many other therapists, subscribe to what has been
described as a state of ‘unknowing’, for example, by Kurtz (1983, p. 245):
Knowing, understood as a state of mind, is a condition of reasoned assuredness:
a state of closure that structures further experience. Unknowing, by contrast, is
a state of openness that does not foreclose experience through predetermined
structure.
Or as Casement (2006, p. 195) puts it ‘non-certainty’:
I see non-certainty as very different from uncertainty. Non-certainty is not
about indecision, nor is it about ignorance. Rather, we can make a positive
choice to remain, for the time being, non-certain. … When we are too sure, we
are in danger of becoming slaves to our own thinking and to our own preferred
theories. We may then become trapped by preconception, which can blind us
to what else may lie beyond the limits of our current thinking.
The capacity to wonder at, and find wonder in, not knowing is an element of
a/r/t(herapist)-ography. We lay ourselves open to what we have not yet comprehended
and tolerate that space of ‘unknowing’ or ‘non-certainty’.
Relationship: Witnessing, Empathic, Embodied, Presence
I have noticed that in trying to write this section I have begun to loop round, to
tangle with the old adage: what comes first the chicken or the egg? Relationship
is at the centre of all my work. It is not just any old relationship, it is one which
somehow knits together with witnessing, empathy, embodiment and presence. Yet
as I try to pin them down, the four yarns twist and seam together, a rhizomatic and
continuously active flow.
Empathy is ‘the capacity to think and feel oneself into the inner life of another
person’ (Kohut, 1984, quoted in DeYoung, 2003, p. 50). For me, interwoven
with this concept of empathy is that of witnessing.1 Naturally I will judge, I will
acknowledge those judgements to myself, sometimes bracket them, sometimes
share them, depending on what is appropriate. However, empathy opens up a space
for the beholding, without immediate evaluation, of another’s narrative, for sitting
with it and accepting its impact, what I would describe as witnessing. And I am
convinced of (have indeed personally experienced) the transformative possibilities
that come from having our stories being truly recognised and having that recognition
empathically reflected back to us.
The final two threads in all of this come together in my embodied presence. I
am there, not only as someone who can think and theorise, but as a flesh and blood
human being who senses the world and the other through the whole of her body.
Yesterday as I sat with a client telling me about a violent altercation, I felt chills
44
running through me, yet the room was warm and up until she started recounting
what had happened I felt comfortable. There are moments in my work when I am
like a tuning fork to the emotional vibrations in the room. Not all the time, of course,
because this is about two people sitting together and their availabilities. However,
when it happens it is a precious and critical resonance of my self with another self.
The experiment –
breaths of two drawn in, expelled –
the fragile moment.
(Kate Evans, February 2007)
So the pattern of a relationship is beginning to appear: witnessing; empathy;
embodiment; presence. This way of being – with its transformative possibilities – is
being written about by a wide gamut of therapists (DeYoung, 2003; Casement, 2006;
Mearns & Cooper, 2005), as well as by researchers who recognise the relationality
of their work and their part in it (Finlay & Evans, 2009; Finlay, 2011; Todres, 2007).
Relationality – which spins collectively witnessing; empathy; embodiment;
presence – is the basis for my practice as therapist and researcher, it also plays a part
in my writing (as I explain further below). It is, therefore, another key element of
a/r/t(herapist)-ography.
-Graphy
Process, curiosity, relationship are the key elements I am proposing for

a/r/t(herapist)ography. I have already made links between my writing with process
and with curiosity. Now I also realise that my explorations in writing have been a
good proving ground for the creation (and necessary recreation after it breaks down)
of the quality of relationship that I have described above. The apprenticeship has
been two fold. Firstly in the act of writing itself and secondly in the sharing of my
words with others.
I feel attached to my words, interconnected with them at a primal, visceral level.
My writing journal is an ever-accepting companion (Bolton, 1999). Sometimes
I struggle to find the words, sometimes I become frustrated and break-off, but I
always come back, and in the grappling I understand more.
Words
fail me,
words save me,
words sink me,
words buoy me up.
Words I have borrowed
filched
like stolen kisses.
I am arraigned
45
K. EVANS
for words that are not my own.

Words escape me
down pipes of robust iron
furred by time and shit and grit.
Words sing and dance
on merry-go-rounds
and laugh and shake,
fill glasses to their bubbly brim.
Secret words
only I understand,
slip silently from the sea
into the conch shell
I hold to my ear
to breathe – breathe –
words.
(Kate Evans, 2005)
For my writing I open myself up to the world and to others, I consciously develop
my contact with all my senses, use my body as a reverberating reed. To create
character I not only store conversations, but I tune in empathically with the mother
I see wrestling with an over-loaded pram down the street or the man who carries all
his worldly goods in a shopping trolley.
More recently I had a participant in one of my creative writing workshops2 who
was displaying the early stages of dementia. After one session I sat down and wrote,
trying to empathically put myself in ‘Alice’s’ shoes. What came out was something
that demonstrates how the act of writing from a place of curiosity has brought me
closer to some kind of connection with ‘Alice’ which witnesses how she strives to
make meaning.
Alice Negotiates a Writing Workshop
Large.
Beautiful.
And.
Garden.
Words
on my paper.
You who smile so much
question
beautiful garden large and.
I knew them once.
Now they are forgotten jumblings,
large garden and beautiful.
I did not write them,
46
though they are there

now
on my paper.
I cry for the little girl
fastened in my garden
large and beautiful.
You offer me tissues.
There’s another piece of paper I haven’t written on either, though it is covered
in neat collections of letters. I know what you want me to do. Choose one.
“Cobweb,” I say. And you smile your wide smile.
Yes, yes, yes!
Writers have argued endlessly (and through the centuries) about the presence of the
author in their work – whether it is inevitable or not, whether it is desirable or not.
I am with novelist Meg Rosoff (2011) when she says, ‘Your writing voice is the
deepest possible reflection of who you are.’ And who I am includes my self at a very
elemental level, as Maxwell describes:
Poetry is an utterance of the body… It is the language in thrall to the corporeal,
to the pump and procession of the blood, the briefly rising spirit of the lung,
the nerves’ fretwork, strictures of the bone. (G. Maxwell, quoted in O’Driscoll,
2006, p. 224)
I am bonded to my words. After writing I become their first reader and another
relationship develops in which I may discover implicit and unexpected meanings
and rhythmic resonances. I might decide to share my writing with a wider audience
and yet another layer of relationship is born, which has the potential to touch once
again on the key elements of empathy (Evans, 2009) and embodiment (Dark, 2009).
This relationship with the reader also carries the concepts of presence and witnessing
which I have been talking about. The reader enjoys the voyeuristic element of
looking at what the writer has created, while actually looking at themselves through
the piece of writing. They make up the tale which they think the writer is telling, but
in reality the narrative is about themselves. Thus they make themselves into the text
and, in so doing, witness their own story.
THE FRAME
So having demonstrated the ties that bind, I want now to investigate what delineates,
what creates the boundaries between the work of artist-writer, researcher and
therapist. For though the core may share constituents, we must not lose sight of the
differing frame within which we situate ourselves. For me it has to be intention which
creates and maintains the boundaries. What is our purpose? Research? Therapy? Or
an aesthetic creation in written form? If we are clear about our intent, then we will
47
K. EVANS
proceed ethically to build in the safeguards, boundaries and protocols which are
required.
What happens as a side-effect might be important but must not be allowed to blur
our intention. A research interview might be therapeutic or transformative (Finlay,
2011). A therapy relationship can give us new insights into the human condition.
A piece of writing could bring us both increased personal awareness and fresh
perspectives. However, each one remains contained within the modus operandi of
their individual disciplines.
THREADING IT ALL TOGETHER
I have suggested that a/r/t(herapist)-ography interweaves certain approaches which

I have described as: process; curiosity; relationship. The ‘graphy’, the writing, is the
permanent golden chord which twists through the design. Yet as writer, researcher,
therapist we are focused on our separate looms, configuring our own portion of a
much larger patchwork which is an on-going project to gain greater insight into our
universe (personal, societal, global and beyond). We may look over at other frames,
even swap fragments of fabric at times, but we are cognizant of the precious craft we
are presently engaged with.
Irwin (Irwin & de Cosson, 2004, p. 29) proposes that a/r/tology creates a
‘métissage’, an ‘in between’, a ‘third space [which] offers a point of convergence –
yet respect for divergence’.
Those who live in the borderlands are re-thinking, re-living, and re-making the
terms of their identities … They embrace a métissage existence that integrates
knowing, doing and making, an existence that desires an aesthetic experience found
in an elegance of flow between intellect, feeling and practice.
I would claim for a/r/t(herapist)-ology such a borderland potential. With its
interweaving elements of process, curiosity and relationship co-existing with a
separateness born of clearly defined intent, as such it is part of a human project. This
project is transformative (Dark, 2009), it is concerned with existential questioning,
with the ‘caring act’ defined by Van Manen (1990, pp. 5–6) as wanting ‘to know that
which is most essential to being’ and with ‘connect[ing] with others, seeking always
a living ecology in the vast mystery of the earth’ (Leggo, 2009, p. 151).
notes
1
I am not using this term in the same way as Janice M. Morse (1993) who sees witnessing as a detached
stance and contrasts it with authorship which implies a fully involved co-creation between researcher
and participant. I hope this is apparent as I emphatically link witnessing with embodiment, empathy
and presence within relationship.
2
I ran twenty interconnected workshops entitled Creative Writing for Good Mental Health funded by
the Workers’ Educational Association. The workshops are not therapy groups, but have therapeutic
intent.
48
REFERENCES
Bolton, G. (1999). The therapeutic potential of creative writing: Writing myself. London, England and
Philadelphia, PA: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Casement, P. (2006). Learning from life: Becoming a psychoanalyst. London, England and New York,
NY: Routledge.
Clarkson, P. (2003). The therapeutic relationship (2nd ed.). London, England and Philadelphia, PA:
Whurr Publishers.
Dark, K. (2009). Examining praise from the audience: What does it mean to be a ‘successful’ poet-
researcher? In M. Prendergast, C. Leggo, & P. Sameshima (Eds.), Poetic inquiry: Vibrant voices in the
social sciences (pp. 171–185). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
DeYoung, P. A. (2003). Relational psychotherapy, a primer. New York, NY & Hove, England: Brunner-
Routledge.
Elza, D. B. (2009). di(versify: Further testimony for that which cannot be (ascertained. In M. Prendergast,
C. Leggo, & P. Sameshima (Eds.), Poetic inquiry: Vibrant voices in the social sciences (pp. 43–57).
Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Evans, K. (2009a). Rhythm ‘n’ blues. Groupwork, 19(3), 27–38.
Evans, K. (2009b). The poetry of therapy. Therapy Today, 20(10), 15–17.
Evans, K. (2011). The chrysalis and the butterfly: A phenomenological study of one person’s writing
journey. Journal of Applied Arts and Health, 2(2), 173–186.
Faulkner, S. (2009). Poetry as method: Reporting research through verse. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast
Press.
Finlay, L. (2011). Phenomenology for therapists: Researching the lived world. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-
Blackwell.
Finlay, L., & Evans, K. (2009). Relational-centred research for psychotherapists: Exploring meanings
and experience. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
Irwin, R. L. (2011, December 12). [Website]. Retrieved from http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/Artography/
Irwin, R. L., & de Cosson, A. (Eds.). (2004). A/r/tography: Rendering self through arts based living
inquiry. Vancouver, BC: Pacific Educational Press.
Kurtz, S. (1983). The art of unknowing: Dimensions of openness in analytic therapy. Northvale, NJ: Jason
Aronson.
Leggo, C. (2009). Living love stories. In M. Prendergast, C. Leggo, & P. Sameshima (Eds.), Poetic
inquiry: Vibrant voices in the social sciences (pp. 147–167). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense
Publishers.
Masson, J. (1988). Against therapy. Glasgow, England: Fontana/Collins.
Mearns, D., & Cooper, M. (2005). Working at relational depth in counselling and psychotherapy.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Morse, J. M. (1993). Emerging from the data: The cognitive processes of analysis in qualitative inquiry. In
J. M. Morse (Ed.), Critical issues in qualitative research methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
O’Driscoll, D. (Ed.). (2006). The Bloodaxe book of poetry quotations. Northumberland, England:
Bloodaxe Books.
Romanyshyn, R. (2007). The wounded researcher: Research with soul in mind. New Orleans, LA: Spring
Journal Books.
Rosoff, M. (2011, October 18). How to write fiction: Meg Rosoff on finding your voice. Retrieved from
www.Guardian.co.uk
Todres, L. (2007). Embodied enquiry: Phenomenological touchstones for research, psychotherapy and
spirituality. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy.
Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
49
K. EVANS
Kate Evans
Scarborough Psychotherapy Training Institute
University of Hull, Scarborough Campus, UK
50
carl leggo
4. the unpredictability of bliss

A Grandfather’s Poetic Riffs
I found my place in the world with language.

(Patrick Lane, 2004, p. 169)
Almost no one kept up his questioning wonder past the first answer.
(Ernst Bloch, 2006, p. 170)
… discovery is one of the best ways to light a fire in a creative mind.
(Wallace Stegner, 1988, p. 28)
I have been a professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the
University of British Columbia for almost a quarter century. At my UBC interview
in March, 1990, I cited from The pleasure of the text by Roland Barthes (1975).
I recently returned to the book where Barthes writes about eroticism, sensuality,
breath, corporeality, the body, bliss, pleasure, and jouissance: “The text you write
must prove to me that it desires me” (p. 6). I regard Barthes’ advice as still some of
the best I know for writers (beginning and experienced). Barthes wants texts that
do not bore or prattle (p. 4). He wants texts that offer “the possibility of a dialectics
of desire, of an unpredictability of bliss: the bets are not placed, there can still be a
game” (p. 4). Above all, Barthes calls for vocal writing: “a text where we can hear
the grain of the throat, the patina of consonants, the voluptuousness of vowels, a
whole carnal stereophony: the articulation of the body, of the tongue, not that of
meaning, of language” (pp. 66–67). Like Barthes, I want to attend to language, and
I do not always want to be compelled to attend only, or even primarily, to meaning,
denotation, and semantics, to clarity, coherence, and unity, to explanation and
translation.
I am now the happy, proud grandfather of a six-year-old granddaughter who began
Kindergarten last September. Madeleine is in love with language, with the sounds
and shapes of words, with the possibilities of the alphabet, with “an unpredictability
of bliss” that emerges from the pleasure of the text. So, this paper is written for
Madeleine with the hope that others will remember Barthes’ pleasure of the text, and
nurture and celebrate a vibrant and lively love for language. This paper is written as a
poetic performance of polyphony which film editor Walter Murch (Ondaatje, 2002)
defines as “multiple musical lines playing at the same time” (p. 50).
C. LEGGO
***
Spelling
in school I learned to spell words with precise correctness
but I seldom learned the sensuous spell of language
in school I learned the rules and stipulations of grammar
but I seldom learned the glamour, the alchemy of prepositions
in school I learned the conventions of syntax
but I seldom learned the lyrical resonances of connections
in school I learned to chant the teacher’s dictums
but I seldom learned the enchantment of poetry
in school I learned facts, fat fatuous facts full of lies,
but I seldom learned the restorative joy of fiction and fantasy
in school I learned to color inside the prescribed lines
but I seldom learned about wild places beyond, elsewhere
in school I learned the denotative definitions of words
but I seldom learned the magic of capacious connotation
in school I learned to be good, an anaesthetic obedience
but I seldom learned to ask with aesthetic wonder, what is good
in school I learned to be neat tidy clean even pristine
but I seldom learned to enjoy the body’s erotic energies
in school I learned to grow my brain-mind-head like a cabbage
but I seldom heard my heart beat or the hearts of anyone else
in school I learned to fear the arts like wild lions, lacking logic,
but I still caught glimpses of dandelions in the cracks of sidewalks
and so I dance with lines, straight and slant, curvaceous and cursive
and I dance with dandy lions, too, no longer fearing their ferociousness
***
All my writing emerges from a fascination with language, especially with the
possibilities of the alphabet. I am always enthralled with the magic of grammar, the
way that words bump into one another and greet one another and acknowledge their
kinship, and dream together possibilities for more creative energy and activity than
anyone will ever have time to explore and embrace. That is always my hope—to
roam and linger in the alphabet, the dictionary, the places of syntax where there
is neither sin nor taxes. Most of my writing involves poetry or poetic language or
poetic living. According to Wallace Stegner (1988) writing is “a voyage of discovery
52
THE UNPREDICTABILITY OF BLISS
that may discover nothing” (p. 9). He wisely recommends that “nobody can teach
the geography of the undiscovered” (p. 10). Instead teachers can “encourage the
will to explore, plus impress upon the inexperienced a few of the dos and don’ts
of voyaging” (p. 10). As an English teacher I always want to investigate why
ordered, logical, grammatical arguments fuelled by a classical rhetorical stance are
epistemologically valorized. I want to question how the alphabet has been used to
construct a linear way of knowing. I am seeking ways to juggle many divergent paths
of knowing, to walk down many paths at once, to walk in the maze, the labyrinth, the
carnival funhouse of mirrors, that lies at the end of the alphabet and in the alphabet
and beyond the alphabet.
***
The Alphabet
the alphabet we learned
to write in school was Spartan,
pressed between parallel lines,
eschewing swirls curls whirls,
but we need to ask always, all ways,
with tireless wonder,
what lies beyond the alphabet?
for the alphabet, the creation
in letters, is a letter
inviting the imagination
beyond the alphabet in lines
that do not begin, do not end
***
Madeleine is teaching me to open myself up to language. She is at the beginning of
her journey in the alphabet—she pronounces polysyllabic words like she is savouring
a tasty jujube; she sings and dances and imagines stories all the time; she tells jokes
and laughs with joyful abandon. As a writer, I seek to live with and in and within the
rhythms of the heart, to know the heart’s thinking and feeling and imagining. I am
not at home in the head/mind/brain as defined by many academics. Instead, I want to
think with the heart, to know how I am in relation to others by connecting heartfully.
Therefore, as a poet, I am always seeking in words to evoke a sense of hopefulness.
I resonate with Patrick Lane’s testimony (2004): “What I knew in my bones was that
there was something hidden inside words and that I could reveal it if I only knew
how. There was something hidden inside me I wanted to uncover. The speaking it
was all” (p. 304). I am always engaging with my art. I live my art, and my art lives
53
C. LEGGO
me. I wear my art, and my art wears me. I am my art. I engage with my art always
everywhere. Perhaps I only live as art, as a poem.
***
Wor(l)d
in the beginning is
the word
without beginning
the spoken word written
the written word spoken
the word born in the world
the world born in the word
the word is worldly
the world is wordy
the word is in the world
the world is in the word
the word is the world
the world is the word
in the end is
the word
without end
***
In his first book of poems Let Us Compare Mythologies, first published in 1956,
Leonard Cohen (2006) asks: “Will minstrels learn songs/ from a tongue which is
torn…?” (p. 32) And I ask, also, will poets learn songs from a tongue which is worn?
We all need to hear songs and poetry and stories from voices that are neither torn
nor worn. We need lively voices full of creative wonder. Jay Parini (2008) wisely
claims that “poetry offers an antidote to the bludgeoning loud voices of mass culture,
insisting on the still, small voice, the personal voice, thus staking a claim for what
used to be called the individual soul” (p. 63). We need to hear our own voices and
the voices of others, singing out with playful courage and hopeful commitment.
As a poet, teacher, and grandfather, I wish to live in the place of fancy, fun, and
fantasy. Like Madeleine, I wish to live in the places of emotion and joy and talking
to myself, the places of singing and dancing and flying on the word-buoyed wings
of imagination.
***
54
Echo
the nymph Echo loved
to talk
and insisted on the last word
until Juno
searching for her wayward husband
among the nymphs
grew angry with Echo’s
chatter full of wile
(while the nymphs hid)
and cursed Echo
with the last word only,
always reply, never the first word,
never an original word,
so attracted to Narcissus,
Echo repeated his words only,
words Narcissus heard
as mimicry, words
that imitated his words only,
words with no promise or deferral,
only frustration,
and Narcissus rejected Echo
till Echo withered away,
gaunt and craggy,
a voice in mountain caves,
the last word only,
never an initiatory word,
the imitative word only
***
Many writing teachers have the notion that they are guardians of the grammar
garden. Some teachers see themselves as angels with flaming swords outside the
garden, policing and securing traditions of correctness. They have grown up in a
system where they are constantly grading students with letters and numbers and are
constantly assessing students according to prescribed standards. They understand
grammar as the science of language, or a set of rules, or a system of standards
or general principles, or a compendium of preferred and prescribed forms. They
understand grammar in the ways they learned grammar in school.
55
C. LEGGO
I always felt like grammar involved more than strict rules for the use of the semi-
colon. So, I was happily surprised when I learned that the word grammar is derived
from the word gramarye which is now called an archaic word related to the old
French gramaire or learning. Gramarye means magic, occult knowledge, alchemy,
necromancy, and enchantment. So, grammar is really about spells and spelling.
Understanding grammar in this more creative way, I promote a poetic return to
language that acknowledges purposeful play and playful purpose. Instead of simply
being a system of rules and correctness, grammar acknowledges the wild creativity
that is the heart of language. Many years ago, as a grade 7 teacher, my students
often called me Mr. Grammar because I emphasized the mystery of punctuation
and syntax and parts of speech. And I continue to celebrate the wonder of grammar.
I am always urging writers to attend to grammar as magical, as full of wonder, as
a significant part of the dynamic energy of language. I thoroughly enjoy reading
grammar handbooks because I am always attracted to the playfulness of language,
and the ways that language changes and evolves. I am glad when young people
write, in any medium, in any language, including slang and text-messaging. I always
trust that, if students write, they will grow as writers. Then, in the active experience
of writing and growing as writers, I believe that students will want to learn all they
can in order to make their writing as effective as it can be, and that includes paying
attention to standard language use in those kinds of texts and situations where formal
language use is expected and needed.
***
Lies My English Teachers Told Me
As a writer in school I learned I had no talent, no gift, no aptitude for writing
(at least my grade eleven English teacher told me I’d never be a writer, and I
believed her).
As a writer in school I learned to fear the teacher’s red pencil like a whip, a rod
of fire, that left red welts and bloody wounds, marks of shame that I could not
play by the rules, did not know the rules, broke the rules without end.
As a writer in school I learned that the reason for writing was learning to write
and the reason for learning to write was learning to write, the hermetically
sealed circle of school separated and isolated from the eccentric world. Nobody
in school seemed to think that anybody outside school actually wrote—writing
was an in-house game like learning to make a balsa raft in case you woke up
one morning and wanted to sail to Singapore.
As a writer in school I learned that a topic sentence plus six or seven sentences
(some simple, some compound, some complex) plus a concluding sentence
equals one paragraph. I didn’t learn that journalists and novelists and poets
apparently haven’t learned the equation.
56
As a writer in school I learned that I had to master effective English, and whip
sentences into shape and obedience, and compel them to do my will, and tame
the wildness of language and imagination and emotion. I was a master-in-
training learning the trade of mastering effective English, and I learned only
that I do not have the ruthless and unconscionable heart to be a master. I was
always laughing with the letters and the words and the sentences. I wanted to
be their friends, to be invited to their parties, to fall in love with them, to know
their falling in love with me. I didn’t want mastery; I wanted mystery.
As a writer in school I learned that academic prose comprised citations from
famous writers which I gathered and linked with appropriate transitional
phrases. I was like the person who couples boxcars and makes sure they are
securely united. I was a kind of matchmaker.
As a writer in school I learned to avoid slang, clichés, idioms, euphemisms,
gobbledygook, jargon, and sentences that rambled like rambling roses
overstepping neighbours’ fences.
As a writer in school I learned that the page was either a blank page like an icy
precipice to be scaled, inch by inch, or a scribbled page, already so overwritten
by others that my writing was like roller-skating in a buffalo herd.
And in university I learned where my English teachers learned the lies they
told me. I knew when I saw what long noses my professors had. They were
all masters who had mastered the mastery of effective English. In university I
learned what I already knew: I couldn’t write; I couldn’t remember the rules;
I had nothing to write about; I suppressed my voices; I coupled boxcars filled
with the words of others.
***
Perhaps some teachers have failed imaginations because they have never been
invited to know themselves as writers. They’ve been trained to criticize texts in
specific ways, and their imaginations now fail to attend to the mystery of language
and the making of poetry. So, I emphasize playing with language—a lot of my work
as a teacher educator is about encouraging teachers to be playful in their approaches
to writing. Many teachers have the notion that they’re preparing students to write the
government-sponsored final exams at the end of high school and those exams are not
only important because they are government-sponsored but because they also act as
gatekeepers to university entrance. So the goal for some teachers is to prepare their
students to write this ultimate test. I am concerned that we fail to ask why!
We become readers and writers by engaging with the spells and mystery of
language. I think we ought to emphasize the mystery rather than the mastery of
language. None of us ever masters language. We can never rest assured there’s
nothing more to learn. If we embrace the mystery, the playfulness of language, then
57
C. LEGGO
we remain humble. I embrace Ted Aoki’s (2005) wise call for “the voice of play in
the midst of things—a playful singing in the midst of life” (p. 282).
***
Snack?
Bit Bat
Cit Cat
Dit Dat
Fit Fat
Git Gat
Hit Hat
Jit Jat
Kit Kat
Lit Lat
Mit Mat
Nit Nat
Pit Pat
Qit Qat
Rit Rat
Sit Sat
Tit Tat
Vit Vat
Wit Wat
Xit Xat
Yit Yat
Zit Zat
***
Richard E. Miller (2005) presents an intriguing notion of autobiography that aims
to attend to how the personal and institutional are inextricably connected. He claims
that the goal of institutional autobiography is “to locate one’s evolving narrative
within a specific range of institutional contexts, shifting attention from the self to
the nexus where the self and institution meet” (p. 138). Then, the questions that
need attending to include: “What experiences have led you to teach, study, read, and
write in the ways you do? What institutional policies have promoted or inhibited
your success? What shape and texture has your life in the institutions given to your
dreams of release?” (p. 138) Miller promotes “a pragmatic pedagogy” (p. 136)
which provides “students with the opportunity to speak, read, and write in a wider
range of discursive contexts” than is typically available or sustained “in the culture
of schooling” (pp. 140–141).
***
58
Conjunctions
while I once sought the whole
I only ever found holes
because I can never tell
a whole story, I seek fragments
since I am an incomplete sentence
I seek communion with others
like the possibilities of conjunctions
ghosts are everywhere, everywhen
as they call us eagerly to connect
like bridges that lean on light
with invitations to walk in places
where we have been but never been
conjunctions invite us to know inter-
connections, even if our eyes are dim
***
I engage in writing in order to gauge how well I am living with wellness. I am
always eager to live well (not falling into a dark well; not moaning with a finger-
wagging “well, well, well”), always with hope that the story of a life, a living story,
can be filled with joy, even in the midst of each day’s turbulent turmoil. During the
day I seek to be wakeful and attentive to something, perhaps the light or the gooey
stickiness of a cinnamon bun, or the light smile of a person who isn’t afraid to smile
at least a glimpse of joy, or…. And in my attending, watching, sensual openness, I
write in a journal or take photographs, and I store a little of what I see, sense, know,
hope to know, for writing when I can sit and focus on the writing. During the night
when I sleep, I let the images percolate and steep and mature. In all my reading and
writing and lingering with language, I am seeking not only a love of literacy, or a
literate love of the word, but a lively love of the world. As Nancy M. Malone (2003)
claims, “reading helps us, helps me, to love” (p. 177).
***
Written on the Back
of a Safeway Slip
engineers all wear
a ring, remember
the collapsed bridge
59
C. LEGGO
I write metaphors,
tensile scribbles
for carrying hopes
we insist on clear
words, interpretable,
Apostle Paul’s idea
I want to play
with wild words
like an alchemist
polishes the stone
for transmuting
dross into gold
my poems fail,
of course, always
I need no ring
***
All my research and teaching are inextricably connected to my art. My research
is energized and enlightened and enlivened by my writing. My research is about
writing. My research is in writing. My research is my writing. I am searching, again
and again, by writing into, through, amidst, with, under places that are both familiar
and unfamiliar. I write in order to learn. I know nothing without engaging in the
writing. Isn’t it interesting that heart and learning both have the word “ear”? My
writing is a way of opening up the ears to hear, and hearts to hear, to learn how to
live with boundless joy. Don Domanski (2002) reminds us that “we cannot grasp
the world nor put it into an order. We can only experience it” (p. 246). Madeleine
reminds me to live in the fullness of experience and emotion. She is always attending
and expressing and exploring. She lives with the kind of poetic spirit that Domanski
promotes: “Poetry asks that we surrender to mystery, that we refuse the constraints
of language, that we intuit beyond the mere genre of its expression outward to the
larger sphere” (p. 255).
How does the alphabet write me? What does the alphabet conceal? What is life at
the end of the alphabet? Words are always surprising me—perhaps I try to control
experience and understanding in words, but I don’t really want control—I want to
be open to experience. Knowing is not constrained by the borders of the linguistic;
language is not a closed system with a beginning and an ending. In my language
use I know constant tension. I am seeking to subvert, even escape, the constraints of
certain ways of knowing that are part of the received Western traditions of logic and
reason and grammar and rhetoric and a linear alphabet that runs from A to Z.
***
60
Cars
cars drift down
SW Marine Drive
a long prose sentence
on Valium
the beginning forgets
all syntactical energies
the amnesiac sentence
refuses the period’s finality
in this senseless sentence
with no beginning or end
some cars pull while others push
no train of linear thought
a sentence can be stepped
into only once, never again
lines on a map, lines in a story
a long breath that might last
***
My artistic and scholarly engagements are inquiry because I am always questioning,
always journeying, always in process. My inquiry is a verb. I am never satisfied,
always full of desire, always seeking more, always wanting to look around the
corner, to creep through the dark cavern with the hopeful expectation that there will
be light, to listen carefully for the wisdom of poets and children and elders and
mentors. Italo Calvino (1995) claims that “the word connects the visible trace with
the invisible thing, the absent thing, the thing that is desired or feared, like a frail
emergency bridge flung over an abyss” (p. 77). I like this notion of words as bridges
that connect.
I emphasize the performative activity of language. Too often we use language
to declare and assert and prove and argue and convince and proclaim notions of
“truth.” But what happens if we emphasize the use of language to question and
play with and savor and ruminate on notions of “truth”? Language as performance
invites interactive responses—intellectual and emotional and spiritual and aesthetic
responses. Language as performance invites people to enter into the labyrinth of
human knowing and being in order to learn that the labyrinth, apparently chaotic
and undecipherable, is in fact an experience rich with possibilities. I am devoted to
the kind of language use that celebrates the diversity that inevitably characterizes
61
C. LEGGO
human be(com)ings constituted in the play of language. We all need to be committed

to writing and re-writing our stories together.
***
Prepositions
I write my lines
across
in
between
through
over
inside
on
under
your lines in dozens
of prepositional possibilities,
a lineal writing, defying
linear measure or equation
***
Madeleine is teaching me to attend to emotion. Like Virginia Woolf (1976), “I feel
that strong emotion must leave its trace; and it is only a question of discovering how
we can get ourselves again attached to it, so that we shall be able to live our lives
through from the start” (p. 67). I fear strong emotion. Is that a typically masculinist
attitude? Am I one more stoic man who does not weep, does not laugh, my heart
and spirit bound in moderation? Strong emotion can be both constructive and
destructive, and I do not think I can tell the difference. Some time ago I experienced
and expressed strong emotion. I was walking on the dike trail where I once walked
most days with Tess the family dog. A man on a bicycle struck Tess, and said only,
“Put it on a leash.” He didn’t say, “I’m sorry.” He didn’t even stop. I called out,
“Dogs don’t have to be leashed in this part of the dike trail.” He turned and told me
to kiss his ass. I flashed red and shouted words I seldom use. He rode on. I ran to my
car and raced up Dike Road, stopped, and waited in the middle of the road, ready
for another verbal fracas or even a fist fight. Strong emotion was boiling my blood.
What did I learn? I was reminded that there is a sturdy spirit of violence in me. I was
reminded that I can swear in public. I was reminded that I fear strong emotion. At
least I fear the public profession of strong emotion.
Still, as Woolf suggests, I am seeking ways to attach myself to strong emotion
(even if at times I feel like a Velcro strip that has lost its stickiness) because I know
that as a poet I live consciously and constantly in my emotions. I am seeking to
live poetically, and that means living emotionally with my feelings in motion and
62
commotion. But who can I share these emotions with? Who can receive the intensity
of these emotions? Are there some emotions that should not be moved or agitated,
but concealed and unstirred?
***
Silent Letter
am I a silent letter?
in a word
clinging to other letters
but unspoken
a vestigial organ
like an appendix
or tonsils
serving no purpose
except to confound
spell(er)s
a disreputable cousin
lurking in shadows
not invited to the party
an eccentric uncle
nobody acknowledges
nobody can forget
known only
in the writing
unknown
in the speaking
seen and not heard
a hymn psalm sonnet
of silence
is a letter ever silent?
***
In the beginning is the word. Everything is constructed in language; our experiences
of lived time and lived space and lived body and lived human relation are all
epistemologically and ontologically worded, lined, known, revealed, disclosed,
understood, lived in words. I operate with the conviction that in words I know, I am
known, I am. As a poet I play with language, not unlike a child playing with blocks
of wood engraved with the letters of the alphabet, seeking sense in nonsense, cosmos
in chaos.
In The Witness of Poetry, Czeslaw Milosz (1983), winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize
for Literature, writes: “Frankly, all my life I have been in the power of a daimonion,
63
C. LEGGO
and how the poems dictated by him came into being I do not quite understand”
(p. 3). Like Milosz most of my life I have been seeking to understand, engaged in
a quest for the Holy Grail of truth, convinced that enough words read and written
and spoken and heard would stack up like the Tower of Babel, a winding walkway
into the heavens where my Sunday School teacher assured me truth resided. Now
securely ensconced in middle age I have finally rejected my persistent pursuit of
understanding in order to dwell with the understanding that is not understood, a
misunderstanding that is still not a missed understanding. Like Milosz I wait,
expectantly and hopefully and faithfully, for the daimonion to help me birth poems,
confident only that the waiting will prepare me to open my sense(s) and know what
is hidden, and perhaps even live poetically, open to plural and diverse ways of seeing
and being (in) the world, eager to nurture Milosz’s “new image of the world, still
timidly developing, the one in which the miraculous has a legitimate place” (p. 53).
***
Verb
I want to be a verb:
a word which
makes statements
gives commands
asks questions
too long I have been
written a noun only:
a name for a person
animal place thing
quality idea action
no longer satisfied
with being the name
the namer the named
I want to be a verb:
the naming
Author Authors:
a word which
declares
authors
interrogates
I am I:
always be(com)ing
endlessly mutable
64
subject in process
naming without end
***
My English teachers told me, “Do not mix metaphors.” But I have finally learned
that mixing metaphors is what I need. I’ve never met a metaphor I didn’t like. In
school I didn’t learn to let writing surprise me. I was always stalking the writing, a
hunter in pursuit of prey; now I am a poet in pursuit of play. In school my metaphors
for writing were constraining and constricting; now my metaphors are loose and
ludicrous. Where my metaphors leaned on factories and army boot camps and Emily
Post’s Etiquette, I now seek a multitude of metaphors, mixed metaphors, mixing
metaphors, mincing metaphors, mocking metaphors, magnetic metaphors, musical
metaphors, a/musing metaphors, a/mazing metaphors.
I have always felt restricted and constrained by the conventions of discourse I
learned in school. I have always wanted to climb (over) (through) (under) the fences
and hedges that controlled my word-making and meaning-making into the secret
garden where I could dance wildly in ludic meadows. But most of my life I have
goose-stepped obediently around the parade ground.
The language of university and school has not served me well. Only in my thirties
did I begin to sing in an arrogant voice filled with play and whimsy that pokes fun at
the traditions of writing I was taught, the conventions in which I was indoctrinated
and shaped and composed. Like Miriam Waddington (1985) who wrote, “Why did
it take me/so long to find our/lost languages,/to learn our songs?” (p. 160), I am
looking for my lost languages and seeking to learn new songs.
***
Walter Ong
bongcongdong
fonggonghong
jongkonglong
mongnongpong
qongrongsong
tongvongwong
xongyongzong
zongyongxong
wongvongtong
songrongqong
pongnongmong
longkongjong
honggongfong
dongcongbong
***
65
C. LEGGO
When I name myself or when I am named by others, I am created (constructed or

written) with identities, and these identities are multiple because I always occupy
many subject positions—educator, poet, father, grandfather, son, husband, reader,
spiritual seeker, long-haired white Canadian man from Newfoundland…. I have
written myself and been written in multiple identities. Sometimes these identities are
conflictual, possibly even contradictory, constantly in a process of change, malleable
and tentative. When I consider that everyone I meet is like me, constituted in the play
of language, always writing and being written in changing configurations, I see the
shadow of chaos fill the blue sky. How can a person who walks daily in plural stories
ever hope to find places for meeting other people who walk in their plural stories?
As a writer, my response and conviction are relatively simple. I recommend that we
learn together to speak and write and perform our stories with playful and creative
commitment, with purposeful and critical commitment. We need to compose texts
that offer “the possibility of a dialectics of desire, of an unpredictability of bliss: the
bets are not placed, there can still be a game” (Barthes, 1975, p. 4).
I live in the world as a writer. My granddaughter Madeleine enthuses me with her
emergent love for language and words and stories and music. Madeleine reminds me
that we are all writers, all in love with language, all eager to explore the mysterious
and magical powers of words as eminently powerful in the world. Virginia Woolf
(1976) once wrote: “I feel that by writing I am doing what is far more necessary
than anything else” (p. 73). Like Woolf I write, convinced that writing and teaching
writing and nurturing writers is the vocation that calls for my faithful and trusting
response.
***
Text Upon Text
nothing but a further text,
the last of the series,
not the ultimate in meaning:
text upon text
Roland Barthes
all I remember is amnesia,
just can’t recall details,
so I write fiction where I live
in a house of many words,
maxims for muddling mystery
&
these words reveal the world
in lines of lies that make
rudiments of truth, a stone wall
for containing ruminants
66
&
we live
in an age of acquisition,
always wanting more,
convinced our desires
are finite not fickle
we live
in an age of inquisition,
always wanting answers
convinced our questions
are in love with the alphabet
&
writing is like hopping
on a pogo stick
all the way from Canada
to the South Pole
on the scribbled lines
of the Atlantic Ocean
&
to enter this waiting room
you must PUSH the door
but most people still pull,
habitual creatures, eager,
failing to note how literacy
writes us literally in words
and the world, even while
language laughs at us
with its bag of tricks
&
like the pond skater
I read every vibration
like a hieroglyph
with an ancient message
that might still teach me
what I need for today
&
in the philosopher’s lecture
I fell asleep
67
C. LEGGO
missed the second

half of sentences
jerked awake
read my notes
full of scribbled subjects
incomprehensible
with missing predicates
no sentence made sense
learned again
philosophers are best read
in sentence fragments
&
I suffer with logorrhoea
too many stories to tell
still afraid the stories
will singe my eyebrows
like a blast furnace
&
I have no words
for explaining
I wrote a story and the story wrote me
I turned a script into scripture
like a prescription for failure
&
writing is finding my way
to the bathroom at 3am
in an unfamiliar house
having forgotten
where my glasses are
where the light switches are
&
truth stares me in the face
with the guise of stern people
like Preston Manning
who know the truth about everything
and are eager to shove it in me
68
&
writing is walking
in a snowy day
making tracks
like temporary tattoos
&
some speak silence like a weapon
what is left when everything has been said?
References
Aoki, T. (2005). In W. F. Pinar & R. L. Irwin (Eds.), Curriculum in a new key: The collected works of Ted
T. Aoki. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Barthes, R. (1975). The pleasure of the text (R. Miller, Trans.). New York, NY: The Noonday Press.
Bloch, E. (2006). Traces (A. A. Nassar, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Calvino, I. (1995). Six memos for the next millennium. Toronto, ON: Vintage Canada.
Cohen, L. (2006). Let us compare mythologies. Toronto, ON: McClelland & Stewart.
Domanski, D. (2002). The wisdom of falling. In T. Bowling (Ed.), Where the words come from: Canadian
poets in conversation (pp. 244–255). Roberts Creek, BC: Nightwood Editions.
Lane, P. (2004). There is a season: A memoir. Toronto, ON: McClelland & Stewart.
Malone, N. M. (2003). Walking a literary labyrinth: A spirituality of reading. New York, NY: Riverhead
Books.
Miller, R. E. (2005). Writing at the end of the world. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Milosz, C. (1983). The witness of poetry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ondaatje, M. (2002). The conversations: Walter Murch and the art of editing film. Toronto, ON: Vintage
Canada.
Parini, J. (2008). Why poetry matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Stegner, W. (1988). In E. C. Lathem (Ed.), On the teaching of creative writing: Responses to a series of
questions. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.
Waddington, M. (1985). When we met. In S. Mayne (Ed.), Essential words: An anthology of Jewish
Canadian poetry (p. 160). Ottawa, ON: Oberon Press.
Woolf, V. (1976). In J. Schulkind (Ed.), Moments of being. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Carl Leggo
Department of Language and Literacy Education
University of British Columbia, Canada
69
5. Joys and Dilemmas

Documenting, Disentangling, and Understanding
Experience through Poetry
Introduction
There are joys and dilemmas inherent in documenting, disentangling, and

understanding experience through poetry—the ever-present tensions between
loyalty and truth, the implications of breaking the silences around sensitive issues,
and the effect of pressures to “tell it slant.” I explore these as poet and reader through
the lens of my own poetry/poetic practice, reflections on translation, and insights
from other poet-writers.
Each of the three sections—I: On Renderings, II: Of Fragments/ and Heartwood,
and III: Fall into Freedom—is grounded in a poem, its constraints and possibilities,
and the joys, dilemmas, or tensions it exemplifies.
Background
A reflective practitioner informed by a Master’s in Education and doctoral course

work (the latter completed in the early1980s), I’ve had an abiding interest in praxis,
process, and craft—particularly in reading, language education, composing process
theory, and the teaching of writing. These interests guided my work in teaching, in
consulting, and in coordinating roles in a large urban school board. They informed
my poetry, which I shared with students and educators in courses and professional
development workshops, and through the development of the senior English writing
text The Writer Within: Dialogue and Discovery, published in 1989, which I co-
authored with a colleague.
In 1990, I moved to the provincial Ministry of Education. One of my areas of
focus was secondary curriculum policy and its implementation. During those
ministry years, I joined a writing workshop with Toronto poet Libby Scheier, and
began building the poetry portfolio that facilitated my acceptance into the 1998
Writing Studio Program at the Banff Centre for the Arts, as it was then known.
There, the opportunity to consult with leading poets over a sustained period of time
was incredibly affirming, and deepened my commitment to the craft.
My interest in translation began some years ago with my attempts to render into
English three short Spanish poems by a Dominican Republic poet—an experience
M. L. Soutar-Hynes
that led to the poem “On Renderings.” I have a personal connection with Spanish
as well as a link with the Dominican Republic. My maternal grandmother came
from Puerto Plata, DR, so Spanish became my mother’s second mother tongue and
her preferred language of communication with her mother and siblings. Because
my father was English-speaking, I grew up with Spanish in one ear and English in
the other. This daily familiarity with both languages gave me a distinct advantage
throughout my high school years, although I would consistently resist responding to
my mother in Spanish. During my postsecondary education, I majored in Spanish
but included a heavy concentration of English courses. Both languages became the
subjects I taught in my first years in education while I was still a Sister of Mercy
working in my home country of Jamaica.
An interest in translation was re-kindled in 2011 at the symposium It Must Be
Nova Scotia: Negotiating Place in the Writings of Elizabeth Bishop in honour of
the 100th anniversary of the poet’s birth, a symposium in which literary translators
also participated. The confluence of these experiences led me to reflect on possible
similarities between the act of translation and my own poetic practice.
Section I touches on joys and dilemmas, insights related to translation that struck
a chord and seemed to spill over into my poetic practice and those that emerged as
I worked between the Spanish source texts and my evolving English renderings—
creating, in effect, new texts.
I: On Renderings
Literary translator Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese, in her essay “Placing the Poem in

Translation,” writes that “[t]ranslators usurp for themselves the right to intrude and
trespass. … [t]hey make gradual inroads upon words, images, thoughts, emotions
and silences of the original poem and its variants” (Wójcik-Leese, 2013).
Her words ring true for my own poetic practice. I, too, struggle to “make …
inroads” with “words, images, thoughts, emotions and silences.” Through images
and metaphors, the spaces between words, the breaks between and within lines, the
architecture of the piece, I work and often live in what Wójcik-Leese describes as
“this dynamic mental space which a poem … claims as its own.”
The poem “On Renderings” tries to capture the dilemmas, tensions, and joys
experienced as I worked on rendering into English those three short Spanish poems
referenced earlier. The process consumed me for weeks. I consulted multiple
English-Spanish, Spanish-English dictionaries, old and new; pored over synonyms
with Latin-American nuances; produced multiple drafts and variations; and sought
feedback from a former Spanish professor—who had become a friend. It was an
all-engrossing experience—a process akin to being lost in someone else’s mind
and space. At times it was exhilarating; at other times, I questioned my right to, as
Wójcik-Leese described it, “usurp for [myself] the right to intrude and trespass.”
I could also relate to the idea of the translator as a tightrope walker, suggested by
the title of an essay by Andrea Bell, “Translation: Walking the Tightrope of Illusion,”
72
Joys and Dilemmas
her contribution to The Translator as Writer (2006), a collection of essays edited by

Susan Bassnett and Peter Bush.
The poem “On Renderings,” reflections on my own experience with translating,
emerged as a variation on the palindrome. Reproduced here, an earlier version first
appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of the journal Poetry Wales, and subsequently in
Dark Water Songs, my third collection of poetry (2013).
On Renderings
i.
Drowning is easy
here — the poem dark water, a falling stone.
No other way
to descend, but line by line,
lungs filled, breath packaged, each word
weighed in the palm.
Images turned
over and round un-threaded lovingly. Each strand
catching
a differently slanted light —
to sieve and weave this new rendering.
ii.
Rendering anew
this sieve and weave to light, slanted differently.
Strands caught,
like love un-threaded, round and over in the palm,
images weighed.
Each word packaging breath, filling lungs
line by line
to descend
no other way, but stone falling,
water dark —
The poem, where drowning is easy.
(M. L. Soutar-Hynes, 2013)
Considering the poem again, it seemed clear that not only did it describe the act
of rendering/translating from one language into another, but it also described the act
of writing any poem—the attempt to make visible (translate into words) the joys,
struggles, and intricacies of one poet’s creative process.
73
M. L. Soutar-Hynes
Indeed, this insight is affirmed in literary translator Edith Grossman’s references

to the essay “Translation: Literature and Letters” by Octavio Paz, where she describes
his proposition that “all of us are continuously engaged in the translation of thoughts
into language.” Furthermore, not only is “the acquisition and use of language … an
ongoing endless process of translation, [but] by extension, the most creative use of
language—that is, literature—is also a process of translation: not the transmutation
of the text into another language but the transformation and concretization of
the content of the writer’s imagination into a literary artifact” (Grossman, 2010,
pp. 75−76).
Section II touches on joys revealed through the power of the hyphen as a reciprocal
space, its role in the poem “Of fragments/ and heartwood” and related insights on
translation. In this case, the source of the poem is the experience of a sculpture
installation (rather than reflections on the process of shuttling between source texts
in one language and emerging new texts in another—as was the case with the poem
“On Renderings”).
II: Of Fragments/ and Heartwood
The poem “Of fragments/ and heartwood” seemed to create and mine poetically
a time/space continuum between 1940s and 1950s Jamaica and Toronto in 2011.
Through the cracks in that continuum surged joyful childhood memories, images of
roots and familiar trees, Toronto thunderstorms, and reflections on life and time—all
triggered by Cedro di Versailles, Guiseppe Penone’s tree-sculpture, installed in the
Galleria Italia of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Canada.
As a Jamaican-Canadian poet, I often find myself creating, inhabiting, and mining
those reciprocal spaces—landscapes, cracks, and the time/space continua facilitated
by the hyphen between “Jamaican” and “Canadian.” “Though the hyphen is in the
middle,” Fred Wah writes in Faking It: Poetics and Hybridity, “it is not in the centre.
It is … a borderland … a rope, a knot, a chain (link) … a bridge, a no-man’s land …
a … floating magic carpet, now you see it now you don’t” (Wah, 2000, p. 73).
The experience also seemed to mirror the notion of “returning to (our) time”
explored in one of the insightful, provocative conversations between literary
translator Mireille Calle-Gruber and Hélène Cixous, in Hélène Cixous, Rootprints:
Memory and Life Writing. In response to a comment about time from Calle-Gruber,
Cixous declares “as soon as one is in time, one sees that it [italics added] is not
what goes by but what stays, what opens itself” (Cixous & Calle-Gruber, 1997,
p. 35).
The space I entered in writing the poem also seemed similar to the notion of
“reciprocal space.” A space “between the original and the translation―the reciprocal
space that is built/gained in the crack and can now be inhabited creatively and
imaginatively” (Wójcik-Leese, personal correspondence, June 30, 2011). A few
sections of the poem are included here by way of illustration:
74
Joys and Dilemmas
Of fragments
and heartwood
after Cedro di Versailles, by Guiseppe Penone
I.
They say the roots of certain trees grow up, not down, while some grow /
knees,
interrupt the story ―
plum, baobab, and casuarina,
Bombay, tamarind and frangipani
Anchors and deviations
[...]
II.
Today, the air’s like August in St. Andrew, still and heavy, waiting for /
thunder —
sharp, thick downpour flooding roads, newly minted potholes
forcing traffic through and ’round —
each car intent on seizing its sliver
of advantage
Faced with obstacles, roots thicken, grow up
and over ―
sense gravity, which way is down,
perception at the tip
[...]
IV.
Childhood certainties, all sunlight and fierce truths ―
Cable Hut, its wild, black-pebbled beach, steep, slack drop to the sea,
open mouth of waves
and summers, painting logos for her father’s booth at the Denbigh Fair
Pot a tree, and roots will circle, tie themselves
in knots
Time a forest, wood-breathing ribs, polished smooth —
sapling, mother to the tree
heartwood —
limestone, mountains,
coral-sea
75
M. L. Soutar-Hynes
“The hyphen,” Wah continues, “even when it is notated, is often silent and
transparent.” Through my poetry, I find myself trying to make “the noise surrounding
it more audible, the pigment of its skin more visible” (Wah, 2000). As Edith
Grossman suggests, to write is to “engage in the immense utopian effort to transform
the images and ideas flowing through [a writer’s] most intimate spaces into material,
legible terms to which readers have access. … As they move from the workings of
the imagination to the written word, authors engage in a process that is parallel to
what translators do as [they] move from one language to another” (Grossman, 2010,
p. 76).
Section III touches on tensions between loyalty and truth, the implications
of breaking silences around certain issues—the fine line between the courage to
write about controversial subjects as a way of discovering and exploring internal
understandings and the constraints of self-censorship.
III: Fall into Freedom
When I first saw the still-evolving and untitled painting that led to my poem “Fall
into freedom,” it evoked for me a sense of liberation—a seated woman in the process
of robing or disrobing, clothed only with what seemed to be a religious habit’s cone-
shaped headgear. I was drawn to it immediately—this image that evoked a naked
nun. The colours were bold and warm.
The path to the poem’s level of explicitness was inhabited by tensions between
naming/not naming; telling it “straight” or telling it “slant;” and between loyalty
and truth. A dilemma that seemed not dissimilar to that described by Cixous: “We
respond straight ahead and think sideways. … We ‘take decisions’: in a stroke, we
come down on one side—we cut out a part of ourself. … We are the place of a
structured unfaithfulness. To write we must be faithful to this unfaithfulness”
(Cixous & Calle-Gruber, 1997, p. 9).
As I worked on the poem, I shared early drafts with the artist, even as she continued
to work on the painting. We discussed possible titles—she finally settled on “Kind of
Blue” for the painting, while “the naked nun,” the more provocative image that had
initially drawn me to the painting, refused to leave my mind.
Fall into freedom
for “Kind of Blue” by Wendy Weaver
acrylic on paper, 32” x 24”
She roams gardens
in her dreams — bypasses Adam
munching on apples, wants to de-fang serpents,
encounter Eve, skin on skin,
arising like dawn
76
Joys and Dilemmas
Lost interest in conjuring

crucifix and sacrifice —
would rather focus on that female nude
bronzed and confident,
honey and milk under her tongue
Wants to meander
through landscapes,
study whirlpools, confluences,
attend to coincidence —
river and sea, love and pain, rock against wave —
winter past, rains over and gone
A central dilemma/constraint of the poem was deciding what to remove/re-work,
what to name directly. Given the vow of chastity to which nuns pledge their life, the
fact of foregrounding the notion of the naked nun in the poem could be problematic
for the more devout members of the audience at an event where the poem would be
read, and both painting and poem would be exhibited side by side.
Interested in whether traces of more provocative elements from earlier drafts
still remained—despite the constraints/dilemmas of self-censorship, the tensions
between naming/not naming, telling it “straight” or telling it “slant,”―I re-read
the final draft with an eye to earlier versions. This re-reading suggested that the
poem still contained elements of the provocative image of “the naked nun,” more
interested in the possibility of intimate encounters with women (Eve) than with men.
The final version, however, while distinctly female-centred and lesbian in intent,
uses the more distant “she” and makes no direct reference to nuns or religion—
other than the title’s biblical inversion, an oblique reference to the Garden of Eden,
variations on the psalms, and the implication that the “she” in the poem had “lost
interest in conjuring/crucifix and sacrifice.” While allowing for a degree of truth/
explicitness, this version also enabled the reader/listener to avoid challenging
assumptions about women religious.
The process illustrates an area of tension between loyalty and truth, especially
where there is a sexual dimension to the piece, an area with which I continue to
grapple and where I find myself as Tillie Olsen writes in Silences (building on Emily
Dickinson) “even in telling the truth, having to ‘tell it slant’” (Olsen, 1979, p. 44).
In her correspondence with Robert Lowell (referenced in David Kalstone’s
Becoming a Poet: Elizabeth Bishop with Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell),
Bishop reflected that “it’s almost impossible not to tell the truth in poetry” (Kalstone,
2007, p. 157). However, in the poem “Her Early Work,” written about her friend
Elizabeth Bishop, May Swenson refers to the poetic devices employed by Bishop
which served to mask the identity or possible state of undress of the one to whom the
poem was directed (Swenson, 2013).
77
M. L. Soutar-Hynes
Perhaps this is a place of “structured unfaithfulness” (Cixous & Calle-Gruber,

1997) to which Cixous referred—where only through the devices that poetry allows
can tensions between loyalty and truth be both protected and resolved.
Conclusion
This essay has explored joys and dilemmas inherent in using poetry to document,
disentangle, and understand experience, weaving together reflections on translation
and reflections from poet-writers by way of deepening insights into my own poetic
practice.
Whether capturing the process of working between two languages to create new
texts, as the poem “On Renderings” describes, exploring the power of the hyphen
and reciprocal spaces in the poem “Of fragments/ and heartwood,” or continuing
to struggle with breaking silences and the tensions between loyalty and truth in
“Fall into freedom,” the opportunity to reflect on these issues continues to prove
fruitful.
“If the act of writing charts the process of thought, it’s a process that leaves a
trail, like a series of fossilized footprints” (Atwood, 2002, p. 158). And if life is a
text and we create our own story, then poetry is an attempt to render, translate, and
make sense of that life. As poet and writer, I continue to follow the trails—to inhabit,
probe, and mine those reciprocal spaces, those joys and dilemmas where, for me,
poetry resides.
References
Atwood, M. (2002). Negotiating with the dead. London, England: Cambridge University Press.
Bell, A. (2006). Translation: Walking the tightrope of illusion. In S. Bassnett & P. Bush (Eds.), The
translator as writer: Textual studies (pp. 58–70). London, England: Bloomsbury Academic.
Cixous, H., & Calle-Gruber, M. (1997). Hélène Cixous, rootprints: Memory and life writing. London,
England: Routledge.
Grossman, E. (2010). Why translation matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Kalstone, D. (2007). Becoming a poet: Elizabeth Bishop with Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell. Ann
Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.
Olsen, T. (1979). Silences. New York, NY: Delta/Seymour Lawrence.
Soutar-Hynes, M. L. (2011). Fall into freedom [Poem] (Unpublished manuscript).
Soutar-Hynes, M. L. (2012). When surf meets shore: Reflections from the edge. In C. E. James &
A. Davis (Eds.), Jamaica in the Canadian experience: A multiculturalizing presence. Toronto, ON:
Fernwood Books.
Soutar-Hynes, M. L. (2013). On renderings [Poem]. (First published in Poetry Wales, 47(4). Included in
Dark water songs). Toronto, ON: Inanna Publications.
Swenson, M. (2000). Dear Elizabeth: Five poems and three letters to Elizabeth Bishop. Logan, UT: Utah
State University Press.
Swenson, M. (2013). Her early work [Poem]. From May Swenson: Collected poems. Retrieved from
Library of America website: http://www.loa.org/
Wah, F. (2000). Faking it: Poetics and hybridity: Critical writing 1984–1999. Edmonton, AB: NeWest
Press.
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Joys and Dilemmas
Wójcik-Leese, E. (2011). Personal communication, June 30, 2011, with M. L. Soutar-Hynes.

Wójcik-Leese, E. (2013). Placing the poem in translation. In I. Davidson & Z. Skoulding (Eds.), Placing
poetry, Issue 15, Spatial Practices series. Amsterdam, The Netherlands/New York, NY: Rodopi.

Independent Scholar
Toronto, Canada
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Sandra l. Faulkner and CynthIa nicole
6. EMBODIED POETICS IN MOTHER POETRY

Dialectics and Discourses of Mothering
Poetry is when the animal bursts forth, inflamed. It isn’t always pretty.
(Young, 2010, p. 15)
Motherhood is a contested space; from news of opting out to tiger moms to welfare
moms (Belkin, 2003; Chua, 2011; Kuperberg & Stone, 2008; Maura, 2010; Paul,
2011; Pollitt, 2010; Vavrus, 2007). Mothers are evaluated by society and one another
based on what they do and don’t do, and even what they think and don’t think
about mothering (the action) and being a mother (the role). Many of these ideas
are presented, played with, and altered through writing such as poetry. Poetry, in
particular, is a form uniquely situated to re-present such liminal space. Poets who
write as mothers often use their work to contend with dominant discourses about
mothering, being mothers, and the concomitant evaluations (e.g., Cooley, 2005).
In this chapter, we argue that (mother) poetry matters because of its political
power, that poetry about mothering allows for an expansion of the idea of mother and
motherhood, and that relational dialectics theory (RDT) is an excellent framework
for interrogating mothering discourses. We make these arguments through a RDT
analysis of the anthology Not for Mothers Only: Contemporary Poems on Child
Getting and Child–Rearing (Wagner & Wolff, 2007).
Poetry and Politics
Within the literary theory, textual analysis, and women’s studies literature, writers
argue about the political implications of poetry. Typically these authors have focused
on a particular poet or political movement, but overall their work demonstrates that
writing and publishing poetry is political activity. Parini (2008), for example, argued
that poetry has political importance because poets can offer useful ways of thinking
about the world through language use and deep understanding that isn’t like clever
bumper sticker slogans.
In this essay, we argue that the political power of poetry creates a space for
marginalized discourses about mothering. Orr (2008) noted that “poetry and politics
are both matters of verbal connection,” and many poets are politically minded
individuals who choose to engage through their writing rather than within the
confines of the bureaucratic political realm (p. 409). They are activists because they
S. l. Faulkner & C. nicole
are visionaries. Contemporary poets are frequently representatives of marginalized

groups (Archambeau, 2008). However, unlike politicians, poets generally receive
very little compensation for their work as representative voices. Poets, instead, hold
their cache in terms of cultural capital (Archambeau, 2008). Orr (2008) indicated that
perhaps poetry can be political in its underlying spirit and in terms of the conditions or
events that motivate its writing; rather than containing an overtly political statement,
the key to political poetry is that it engages a “political voice” (p. 416). As Fisher
put it, “poetry is always in crisis” (2009, p. 983) and thus contains the potential for a
unique form of dialectic resistance. He concluded that the “political task” of poetry
is “a visionary one, the work of making way for new worlds and words” (p. 984).
In our analysis section, this notion of poetry as an example of a dialectical style of
communication will be illustrated.
In a more specific example of the ways in which poetry can be employed to engage
in political activity, Bell (2007) offered up an examination of British women’s poetry
during the Great War. In this article, she stresses the political significance of poetry
during the wartime and the importance of women’s involvement. O’Brien (1994)
conducted a similar analysis of the significance of women’s voices in the fight to end
apartheid in South Africa. In her article she postulated the particular importance of
equating the role of mother with activist in this struggle for political power. Research
like that of Bell and O’Brien lends support to the claims that the position of the
poet in society is critical in informing the politics and the claim that poetry has
historically played an essential role in political struggles.
In an article that lauded the poetry of one of the writers featured in NFMO,
Strine (1989) linked the work of Adrienne Rich with the larger value of poetry in
politics, specifically her voice within the women’s movement. Strine focused “on
the complex interconnections between voice and value – interanimations among
seeing, assessing, saying, and self-understanding – in Rich’s poetry in order to grasp
the ways in which her evolving poetic sensibility and her emergent political vision
inform one another” (1989, p. 24). Working from Bhaktin’s dialogical theory, Strine
located the potential political agency of voice in its interaction between participants
and across boundaries. Thus, if we think of the poem as a vocal intonation, or “the
material site where self and social values intersect and are mutually defined” (Strine,
1989, p. 26), and consider the idea that “poetic discourse is quintessentially a site
of personal and ideological struggle within the on-going cultural dialogue” (Strine,
1989, p. 26), we can understand why a poem would be an ideal unit of analysis for
the type of dialectical research that seeks to uncover political articulations. She
emphasized Rich’s ability to use poetry to give voice to feminine experiences and use
to negotiate the various conflicts these experiences create. Her poetry indicates the
way she must construct her own identity, both within and counter to the masculine
world in which she lives. Strine connected this sort of poetic engagement with the
historically feminist project of consciousness-raising, the goal of which was to open
political spaces for women through the act of giving voice to their unique (both
individual and when compared to men) but common (as women) experiences. Strine
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EMBODIED POETICS IN MOTHER POETRY
made the case that Rich’s writing is a form of poetic consciousness-raising, which
would make it a distinctly political activity. This political power of poetry underscores
our goal of a dialectical analysis of dominant and marginalized discourses present
in mothering poetry.
Poetry and Mothering
Poetry about pregnancy, birthing, deciding to/not mother, child-rearing, child-

getting, the meanings and experiences of mom-mother-mothering, speaks to larger
issues of mothering as contested spaces of social change. “Poets who write as
mothers are thick on the ground now. Yet fathers still send sons (and now daughters)
to war, and nursing mothers are still supposed to be invisible (Ostriker, 2007a,
p. x). Dominant ideas of mothering as totalizing identities and relationships suppress
other considerations, such as embodied knowledge, multiple (mother) identities, and
political force. For example, Nicole Cooley (2005) explained motherhood was a
pivotal experience that changed her writing aesthetics, in particular mothering after
9–11. “Now for the first time, persona began to seem like a disguise. I felt I was
escaping into someone else’s history, trying on other people’s pasts like borrowed
clothes. Strangely, persona had become a kind of self-imposed silence” (Cooley &
Kasdorf, 2008, p. 204). Her poems about her parent’s decision to stay in New Orleans
during Katrina, an emergency caesarean, and New York post 9–11, engage in difficult
conversations through an examination and redefinition of personal connections
(Cooley, 2010a, 2010b). Cooley uses bodily personal experience and ethnographic
observation to critique and reveal socio-cultural conditions surrounding Hurricane
Katrina and motherhood in the context of terror and responsibility. Her use of lyric
narrative bodily experience and observation imagine new models of mother, poet
and activist.
We examined the anthology NFMO because of the potential to highlight
marginalized discourses. Souffrant (2009) outlined important concerns for poets
who mother.
In developing a poetics of motherhood that is deeply entrenched in the body
and the social experience of being a mother—mothers are still the primary
caregivers in most young children’s lives—women poets confront essentialism,
the conundrum of addressing being a woman, a mother, and the importance of
troubling neat definitions of both. (2009, p. 28)
The poems in NFMO are organized by the date of a child’s arrival and include topics
of birth, infants, breast-feeding, non-mothers, abortion, adoption, queer parenting,
and toddlers. Catherine Wagner and Rebecca Wolff (2007), the editors of NFMO
explicitly stated their goals for the collection: to expand writing and poetic discourse
about motherhood, to place poets into conversation with one another showing
a poetic legacy, and to put “challenging, off-center depictions of power struggles
and the politics involved in motherhood” into conversation with historical and
83
contemporary culture (xvi). Wagner (2007) asserted that NFMO is not about only
celebrating the mother-child relationship, rather “the poems here are ruinous to
assumptions that motherhood is obedient and passive in its encounter with cultural
expectations for self-sacrifice, and they make it clear that mothers’ creative acts—
in this case, their writings—participate in a larger discursive field” (p. xv). Wolff
(2007) disallows concerns that a collection focused on content is less than universal.
Everyone gets born, and everyone has a mother, or at the very least knows
someone who does. I suppose most people have cars, too, but most people do
not emerge from between their cars legs, or out of their car’s belly, naked and
squalling. At least not as a newborn. (p. xix)
Theoretical Framework
Relational Dialectics Theory [RDT 2.0] (Baxter, 2011) focuses our attention on
dominant (centripetal) and marginalized (centrifugal) discourses in relational life.
Unlike many relational theories, the focus is on discourse as the unit of analysis
rather than the individual. The theorist’s task is “to understand how the interplay of
discourses construct meaning” (p. 13), how relationships are constructed through
talk and the communication practices of the involved parties. This focus on discourse
makes a RDT analysis of mothering poetry apropos, especially if we consider poetry
as reflective of cultural discourse. Rae Armantrout (as cited in Wagner & Wolff,
2007) argued that being a mother forces you to engage with mainstream culture.
You can’t hide from social life…You become increasingly aware of its moral
difficulties, of your resistances and collusions. What you learn about yourself
and your inherited culture in these negotiations finds it way into your poems—
if you’re a poet. (p. 136)
Our task is to analyze how mothering is constructed through talk and the
communication practices of the involved parties by paying attention to the utterance
chain as “part of a dialogue in which it responds to prior discursive utterances
and addresses anticipated discursive responses of others. The discursive voices of
others are with us in our talk” (Baxter, 2011, p. 15). An utterance chain can also
be constituted in cultural discourse surrounding an utterance, such as discourses
of mothering and feminism that precede the individual utterances (e.g., poems)
as in the present study. We experience tension (1) between the past and present in
our relationships (proximal already-spoken talk); (2) about what we anticipate will
occur in our interactions (proximal not-yet-spoken talk); (3) from larger cultural
messages about how to do relationships (distal already-spoken talk); and (4) about
what we think generalized others will say and how they will respond to us, a struggle
between discourses of the conventional and the ideal (distal not-yet-spoken talk). In
this project, we were most interested in the examination of distal already-spoken talk
and distal not-yet-spoken talk in poetry about mothering.
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Analysis
We critically analysed larger cultural messages about mothering (distal already-

spoken talk) and ideas about generalized others’ reactions to mothering (distal not-
yet-spoken talk) in poetry about mothering from the collection Not for Mothers
Only: Contemporary Poems on Child Getting and Child–Rearing (Wagner & Wolff,
2007) using RDT as a framework. Our contrapuntal examination of dominant
and marginalized discourse in the poetry demonstrates how competing discourses
construct and contest cultural ideas of mothering.
We engaged in contrapuntal analysis by examining “the interplay of contrasting
discourses (i.e., systems of meaning, points of view, world views)” in a collection of
poetry about mothering (Baxter, 2011, p. 152). First, we read through the text to get
a holistic sense of the poems. We asked the following sensitizing questions: Where
are messages directed (self, society, child)? What are the messages? Second, we
generated initial codes noting answers to the question: What is being said or implied
about mothering? How are poets saying this? We made notes about manifest (e.g.,
mother vs. mothering role vs. poetry) and latent (e.g., frustration with narrow ideas of
mother) themes through the use of direct quoted speech and indirect reported speech,
highlighting relevant passages in the text. Third, we focused on larger systems of
meaning from the initial coding. That is, we theorized about the mothering discourse
and collapsed first order codes into the following themes we present:
Relationships between Mother and Child, Self and Others
The negotiating of identities and roles dominates much of the poetry in NFMO.
The previously known selves, not including mother, quarrel with the newly avowed
and ascribed identities- mother-poet/care-taker/activist/feminist/feminine; “being a
mother is so hard sometimes/ it makes me want to smoke & drink (Bumstead, 2007,
p. 315).” Alice Notely (2007c) asked in the poem, “Three Strolls”, “what is it with
babies anyway?/all this for the pleasure of holding this?” (p. 87). The adjustment and
struggle often shocks.
We saw the rejection of mother as totalizing role and identity; mother(poets)
and poet(mothers) co-identify, integrate roles and identities in a process that does not
necessarily entail choosing either/or and switching back and forth. Lee Ann Brown
(2007c) mused in the poem, “Tatami Mommy”, “Am I evolving into a mommy
because I sleep next to you under a Down/Comforter shaped like a powdery grid of
flour powder ravioli or //A grid of tatami mat cut into neat squares.” (p. 364). Sharon
Harris (2007) riffed on the identity labels “mama, mother, mom, mommy” in the
expansive, run-on, refusing to be definitive poem, “Family Mommy” (pp. 288–289).
One deciphers the naming of what is self and not self, an interanimation of the
relationship between self and others and self to self. Notely (2007a) punctuated the
self/child relationship as another layer to self, another circle on a Venn diagram that
contains the possible and actual relationships between roles and not a self-abnegation
85
in the poem, “Dear Dark Continent”, “because by now I am he, we are I, I am we.
//We’re not the completion of myself. //Not the completion of myself, but myself!/
through the whole long universe (p. 84).”
Children are not an exact copy of the self; though because of biology and parental
will we expect overlap.
The family that shares my DNA, my name, and in some cases my memory,
is getting out of bed, peeing, putting on slippers, walking out for the paper,
beginning to play.
Emerson says the private thought is the universal but it must never by construed
as the universal lest we kill its difference. (Carr, 2007, p. 295)
In Lee Ann Brown’s (2007a) “8th Month Couple”, we see an assertion of autonomy,
“and even though last month you supposedly finally figured out we have separate/
bodies and identities (You were your own self from the beginning, a focused//
discerning light so calm for a baby) You did not cry as often as most” (p. 361). The
question of how much biology, predisposition, and personality a child shares and
what the relationship is between the self and other, Rae Armantrout (2007b) posed
in her poem, “Fiction.” She queries the fictions we tell ourselves about a child; how
we want them to be like us, look like us, expect and predict them to be like us. “In
the Bach fugue it was difficult to know which theme was/the traveler with whom one
should identify. One’s self. (p. 139).” She also admits the fear of a child turning out
to be like us, like a despised parent.
Ugliness and ambivalence, other truths. Poets contended with the negative aspects
of mothering in their work, annoying children who always need and generally stifle
one’s desires, the desire to read uninterrupted, for instance, described by Armantrout
(2007a) in her poem, “Bases”:
You’re not crying because you can’t find the thing you’ve made,
but because she won’t help. She won’t because she’s comfortable,
reading—but not really because now you’ve stuck your
head behind her shoulder sobbing and pretending to gasp. (p. 146)
Acknowledging anger, resentment, disappointment and shock included
acknowledging the will to kill, the dialectic of obligation versus free love, the joy
and stifling pain:
That fondling, touching-activity, vocalization: these are to teach, they rise from
the forest like birds, so that beyond the sleeping, crying, feeding, shared by the
mother and child, is pride of accomplishment. It kicks, it waves wild arms, it
holds up its head up in its stem. It will roll over, crawl, grow teeth. At the same
time, anger. This is a prison. It exhausts the sap, the very juice. It does nothing
but open its mouth. Can she never regain her autonomous self, her sunny
86
wind-drenched leaves? She wants to kick—get off me, parasite. To kill it. To
go mad. (Ostriker, 2007b, p. 41–42)
A mother may and can love the child, yet find the tedium of childcare and mothering
distasteful. Mayer (2007b) catalogues the detritus of child rearing in “Midwinter
Day”, not the cute matching outfits and manicured home and body but lines as
streams of frenetic listing that are not neat and manicured. The connection between
self and child irritates a poet(parent) self because of the potential retribution as
Thylias Moss (2007) highlighted in “One for All Newborns.”
Then the dark constricting years,
mother competing with daughter for beauty and losing,
varicose veins and hot-water bottles, joy boiled away,
the arrival of knowledge that eyes are birds with clipped wings,
the sun a 30° angle and unable to go higher, parents
who cannot push anymore, who stay by the window
looking for signs of spring
and the less familiar gait of grown progeny.
I am now at the age where I must being to pay
For the way I treated my mother. My daughter is just like me. (p. 207)
Poetry that speaks to resentment and betrayal by motherhood, sometimes resentment
of an individual child, and sometimes resentment directed at the role, works to
highlight ambivalence. In an essay on motherhood poetry, Souffrant (2009) claimed
that poetic ambivalence, in content and form, does important work. “The most
interesting poetry by mothers about motherhood attempts to express the complexity
of this multifaceted emotional and physical experience” (p. 26). We saw poet’s
wrestle with the ambivalence of too much advice and not enough advice, as well as
not the right kind of advice. Gillian Conoley (2007) in Dr. B’s Poof and Dare takes
white-out and pen to a parent advice manual that her own mother was given creating
a corrective to authoritative advice versus parental intuition. Wright (2007) echoed
this sentiment in the poem, “What No One Could Have Told Them”:
Once he comes to live on the outside of her, he will not sleep through the night
or the next 400. He sleeps not, they sleep not.
Ergo they steer gradually mad. The dog’s head shifts another paw under the
desk. Over a period of 400 nights. (p. 208)
Jenny Browne (2007) points out all of the contradictory advice given to new mothers
in “The Season When Some People Will Say”. For some poets, writing about
mothering is a way to invoke and quell ambivalence as poet Camille Guthrie (2007)
believes and “wants to tell all the young women poets ambivalent about motherhood
that having a child has been the most profoundly creative time of her life” (Wagner
& Wolff, 2007, p. 447).
87
Memory. Poetry that uses language as remembrance captures the mundane,

remarkable, and quixotic details of mothering. Beth Ann Fennelly grafted the painful
details of birth to the poem, “The Gods Tell Me, You Will Forget All This” (2007b)
and the loss of small caretaking details due to time in “Elegy for the Footie Pajamas”
(2007a). The end of Lee Ann Brown’s (2007b) poem, “Scrawl”, contains a plea for
the recording of small moments.
seven weeks old and time is speeding past and I have not represented all of the
time I thought of her inside of me before she was and then she was there
and unrepresentable yet totally daily meant to be She is sleeping now. Who am
I writing this for? (p. 359)
Some write to remember, others write to assert difference. The audience for this
writing may not be a poet’s own children, as some children don’t care about what
their mothers write. Some poets consider their work an inheritance (Wagner &
Wolff, 2007). A new fear of mortality arrived starkly for some mothers from fear
of a husband turned father dying (Armantrout, 2007b, “When her husband was late,
she imagined him dead. Now that/he had a son, she feared, he could be killed on the
highway.”, p. 139) to the self turned mother (Forché, 2007, “When my son was born
I became mortal.”, p. 130).
Medicalization and Commercialization versus Embodied Knowledge
Female poets, who are mothers, contemplate mothering, experience loss and birth,
bring embodied knowledge to poetry; the body and the self and the poet and poetry
interwoven. This idea of strength, Sharon Olds (2007) explicitly states in “The
Language of the Brag”:
I have lain down and sweated and shaken
and passed blood and shit and water and
slowly alone in the center of a circle I have
passed a new person out
I have done what you wanted to do Walt Whitman,
Allen Ginsberg, I have done this thing,
I and the other women this exceptional
act with the exceptional heroic body.
this giving birth, this glistening verb,
and I am putting my proud American boast
right here with the others. (p. 175)
Writing about the body, and the female body in particular, as a site of knowledge
is seen in feminist work, though when the body is female, the knowledge may be
ghettoized, the poetry considered confessional in a pejorative sense. Poems about
sex after vaginal birth with fresh stitches and bruises (Olds’ “New Mother”), a
breast self-exam that unravels the meaning of breasts as nurturance, shame, pleasure
88
and suffocation (Kimiko Hahn’s “The Shower”), miscarriage (Deborah Landau’s

“Miscarriage: Five Acts”; Moss’s “Provolone Baby”), nursing (Amy Sara Carroll’s
“Let Down”; Hoa Nyugen’s “Up Nursing”), and of course, the exhaustion of birthing
and care-giving (Olds’ “First Few Weeks”) specify the minutiae of female bodies,
how speaking the physical details allows for a critical examination and resists an
essential universal understanding of mothering, thus creating a radical specificity
(Sotirin, 2010).
Alicia Ostriker (2007b) politicized the experience of mothering and birthing by
juxtaposing observations, dates, and questions about war (“What does this have to
do with Cambodia?”, p. 32) and personal experience through lyrical and narrative
passages in “The Mother/Child Papers”.
…I thought I knew what childbirth was supposed to be: a woman gives birth
to a child, and the medical folk assist her. //But in the winter of 1970 I had
arrived five months pregnant in Southern California, had difficulty finding an
obstetrician who would take me, and so was now tasting normal American
medical care. It tasted like money…They teach them, in medical school, that
pregnancy and birth are diseases. He twinkled. Besides it was evident that he
hated women. Perhaps that was why he became an obstetrician. (p. 30)
Carroll also critiques established medical authority in “Late Onset Particle
Capitalism”: “The white-coated herds that hoard expertise like pocket change
prove all too accommodating, commodity-trading interpellation: late onset GBS,
bacterial meningitis; each one of us, a petri dish, navigating a birth canal” (p. 453).
Baggott (2007) mused in “After Giving Birth, I Recall the Madonna and Child”
that depictions of birth are often unrealistic. The messiness of the physicality of
mothering is contrasted with a glowing portrayal of Jesus and Mary.
He’s never purple, blood-stained,
yellowed—like my babies—
by swimming in his own shit. (p. 262)
Mother(s). Poems that deal with multiple deviant identities, such as single mother
(e.g., Valentine’s “Single Mother”), queer mother (e.g., Kaltiak-Davis’ “Look at
Lesbia Now!”), mother of color (e.g., Coleman’s “‘Tis Morning Makes Mother a
Killer”), immigrant mother and mother on welfare disrupt dominant understanding
of mothering as a heterosexual middle-class enterprise (Kelly, 2009). In “Personal
Insurance”, Mairéad Byrne (2007) insists that buying insurance from the man won’t
improve her parenting, “I’m a single parent. I have to think about these things. My
dream is to have a whole rack of Mairéads back to back in my closet” (p. 213). Toi
Derricotte described Natural Birth, a work about the birth of her son at an unwed
mother’s home, as showing
that motherhood for me, and I was sure for many other women, was not the
motherhood of a Hallmark greeting card…I wanted to create a beautiful gift
89
for my son, and for others who would read the book, to say that all love even
mother’s love, is human. And not to be ashamed. (as cited in Wagner & Wolff,
2007, p. 11)
Mothering, Work and Poetry
The tired dialectic that one is a mother or an artist/poet is another predominant

contemplation in the NFMO collection. We saw the idea engaged with complete
integration to violent struggle to a rejection of mothering and poetry. For some of the
poets, mothering and poetry are symbiotic, recognizing and using the relationship
has made them better poets. Cooley (2005) stated in Thirteen ways of looking at
being a poet and a mother, that “this quality of persistent, close attention to the
world in its smallest aspects is very much what you need as a poet, and it was what
had been missing from my work during all the years I actually had time” (para. 9).
The experience of caring for a child is like caring for a poem.
If you hold each word as it were a newborn in your arms, then joy, and fear, and
love, and curiosity will all be present. If you follow every word down the street
as if it were a child taking his first steps then you will rediscover balance. For
me, using language requires the same physicality that being a mother requires.
(Rehm, as cited in Wagner & Wolff, 2007, p. 254)
In her collections of poetry (2010a, 2010b), Cooley interrogates compartmentalized
totalizing models of motherhood, intellect and activism to demonstrate they are
still predicated on a mind/body split, which is a utopian dream (Cooley & Kasdorf,
2008); PREGNANT AT THE ARCHIVE / where you are not supposed to have a
body/in Special Collections, in the reading room, in the straight-spined chair (2007,
p.378). Maxine Chernoff (as cited in Wagner & Wolff, 2007) reflected that she has
been a poet almost as long as she has been a mother. Notely’s (2007b) narrator in
“The Howling Saint T-Shirt” claims to love her children more than the self, but not
more than poetry. Because, in fact, loving poetry makes one a better mother.
My kids are like me superficially so I watch them
or, writing, ignore them, until they say something I like
I need their words for my poems, to speak for a
house we make together that’s fragile and strong
shaky in an American wind contrary to poetry.//
My saint’s T-Shirt, she’s howling but
not against natural exigency. I’m poet and not much else
I ripped out a normal face/and gave my kids the archaic voice of poetry.
(p. 114)
Bailey’s (2000) interview study of discourses of motherhood and discourses of
work emphasized a convergence of identities rather than highlighting the conflict
or separation between motherhood and employment. She argued that the separation
90
of the two spheres—public work and private home—was false. The work of poetry
and mothering is another false separation for many poets as they create poetry that
transforms mothering and work and time into something else. That is, the conflict
between roles becomes a poetic heuristic. “Art happens and happens because
women are not only creative, but creative with how to be creative” (Hahn, as cited in
Wagner & Wolff, 2007, p. 189). Lee Ann Brown (as cited in Wagner & Wolff, 2007)
considered the need for space for the poetic,
…—it takes a strangely fragile mixture of the belief in the hedonism of the
poetic moment to allow myself the luxury of going into the poetry mode—but
its not like a Calgon bath ad—it’s a difficult pleasure that comes of trusting
it has happened before in new ways now because of the impossibility and
groundedness of it all…—Life really becomes Art—. (p. 358)
The issue of writing time is well articulated by Brenda Hillman in “Time Problem”
The problem
of time. Of there not being
enough of it.
My girl came to the study
and said Help me;
I told her I had a problem
which meant:
I would die for you but I don’t have ten minutes. (p. 160)
In “Body Clock”, Eleni Sikelianos (2007) uses drawings of circles plus text to
illustrate disconnection between expectations about time and the experience of
time.
Of course, not having children is one solution to the child/poetry dialectic; the
choice split between being an artist/poet or a mother. Molly Peacock (as cited
in Wagner & Wolff, 2007) asserted that being a mother and poet were mutually
exclusive activities for her.
I felt I wasn’t able to make to be both a mother and an artist. There was agony
as I faced this choice throughout my childbearing years. But I acted out of a
conviction about myself that I could not stray from. Those very limits in my
life became the lines from which I created my poems. (p. 147)
Being childless may mean abortion, and both Lauterbach and Peacock write about
the decision with a nuanced pen to question easy decisions and harsh evaluations
(Wagner & Wolff, 2007). Peacock’s four poems about choice consider the decision
in relation to the self, other and work: how the decision isolates, how her actual
procedure coincided with a birth in a life-death scenario on the hospital ward, how
the decision brought relief and renewed energy for romance, and how the ghost of
the aborted fetus follows her in the poem, “The Ghost”
91
I never said goodbye to the ghost, for

I’ve forgotten it’s been there. That’s what it’s for.
The thought of my pregnancy somehow unmoors
the anxiety the choice still harbors. (Peacock, 2007, p. 150)
Lauterbach (2007) weaves in pieces of Ondaatje’s The English Patient, about naming
for loves (“the word name has man and men in it”) in “N/est”
Childlessness
brings estrangement//
I have been pregnant three times
two abortions while in college, one in Milwaukee without anesthetic
after which I bled
in the Emergency Room I was afraid they would send me to jail. (p. 153)
The musings about whether not having children stemmed from the relationship with
her father and his absences fuels the poem toward the “meaning/of the presence
of meaning” (p. 153). Marge Piercy (2007, p. 10) articulated how the question of
children in “Dividing the Room,” (“Do you have children? And I answer/No, out trots
the porcupine of silence”) brings judgment into sharp relief. Childless women can
clearly articulate the evaluations others make about their decisions from accusations
of selfishness, regret, disbelief, and lack of femininity, being voluntarily childless a
marked deviant identity (Kelly, 2009).
Poets can and do use children’s words, actions, voices, and imagined perceptions
in poems as a way to integrate the mothering and poet roles (e.g., Notely’s “January”).
Susan Holbrook (as cited in Wagner & Wolff, 2007) “decided to make her mothering
life work for, rather than against, her writing, and started composing a line every
time she nursed the baby” (p. 411). In her poem, “Nursery”, she uses a narrative
form with “Left:” and “Right:” to indicate, presumably, on which breast the child
is nursing and to reinforce a notion of mothering as fractured time (pp. 411–416).
Mayer incorporated children’s language, including word choice and syntax, in
“Marie Makes Fun of Me at the Shore”. “Chocolate Sonnet” relays how she uses love
of the sweet to get the children to sit through poetry readings: “poetry is as good as
chocolate/chocolate is as good as poetry is” (Mayer, 2007b, p. 125). Christine Hume
(2007) in “Hatch” goes further with an imagined conversation between mother and
fetus, mother asking questions with oblique replies from the fetus. “Can you bear the
sound of my voice?/Past the bridge, past the blink, past shifting animal shapes, past
this cesspool, I go/inward to check my traps” (p. 418).
Discussion
Through the contrapuntal analysis of mothering poetry, we demonstrated the political

power of the NFMO collection, expanded the idea of appropriate texts to analyze
92
using a relational dialectics theory framework, and highlighted how marginalized

mothering discourses converse with totalizing (dominant) mothering discourses
in an antagonistic struggle that transform some of the discourse into a hybrid and
in some instances, a new aesthetic moment. Baxter and Braithwaite (2008) urged
researchers to focus on two lesser-studied questions using RDT: The first being
the location of discourses from the larger culture and/or the relationship history to
anticipated judgments of others and relationship parties. The second issue is locating
how competing discourses “interanimate to create meanings in the moment” (p. 63).
This study contributes to RDT by focusing on the location of cultural discourses,
and the micro practices of talk, how competing discourses “unfold in the prosaics of
talk,” that is, poetry (p. 64).
Interanimation of Mothering Discourses
The interanimation or interpenetration of discourse present in NFMO can be

described as antagonistic-non-antagonistic struggle and polemical-transformative
struggle. Antagonistic struggle is characterized by a personification of the discourse
coupling a certain kind of speaker (e.g., bad mother) with the discourse rather than
depersonalizing, it is a struggle between different semantic positions (Baxter, 2011).
Polemical-transformative discourse describes discourses that oppose one another in
a competitive fashion to discourses that create hybrid (combination of dominant and
marginalized discourses) or new aesthetic moments (something new entirely).
Relationships between Mother and Child, Self and Others
Marginalized discourses are placed in the center and dominant discourses of woman =
mother left in the periphery when examining the relationship between mother and
other roles presented in many of the poems. This is political, the idea of poet(mother)
or mother(poet), a polemical-transformative struggle that speaks to the relationships
between mother and child, the self and others (Baxter, 2011). Poetry that speaks to
resentment and betrayal by motherhood, sometimes resentment of an individual child,
and sometimes resentment directed at the role, works to highlight ambivalence. This
ambivalence represents a transformative moment in which the dialogue between
discourses produces something new. Transformation occurs when one dialogue no
longer dominates; “discourses lose their zero-sum relation of opposition and become
open to the possibility for newly emergent meanings” (Baxter, 2011, p. 139). The
poems re-present multiplicities of possibilities rather than an either/or split between
body and mind. Ostriker (2007a) wrote that the poets in the anthology “have been
ravished, whacked, illuminated, blown away by the experience of motherhood.
Nobody here plays a standard mom role, although there are numerous gestures in
the direction of things moms do, like nurse babies and persist through exhaustion”
(p. x). The size of the volume and the variety of poets and poetics opens up new
spaces for new identities of mother, poet.
93
Mothering, Work and Poetry
The totalizing mother discourse that one is a mother or an artist/poet was contrasted
with other discourses (e.g., poet as better mother) in an antagonistic struggle. We
saw the idea engaged with complete integration to violent struggle to a rejection
of the combination of mothering and poetry. Some directly address dominant
discourse (e.g., being a poet has made one a better mother, refusing to accept the
split by writing about mothering and poetry), some imply the dominant discourse
(e.g., poetry about loving the craft more than children implies one is a bad mother)
and some disallow it by only presenting a marginalized perspective (e.g., using a
child’s view of the world). This struggle points out cultural discourses that influence
conceptions of good poetry, good poets, and good mothers. Poet(mothers) can feel
the judgment and anticipated judgment and expectations of the generalized other.
Indirectness is way to avoid direct interplay between competing discourses; it can
be used as a way to “temper the authoritativeness of a dominant discourse” (Baxter,
2011, p. 136). The effect in NFMO was to separate mother and woman. Kelly
(2009) asserted that both mothers and non-mothers are harmed by the conflation
of femininity with motherhood, with “maternalist ideology.” “If some space were
created between ‘mother’ and ‘woman,’ the many women who do choose to mother
would have increased freedom to pursue work, leisure, creative endeavors, activism,
community work, and other forms of care-work (both while raising children and in
the years before and after)” (p. 170).
Medicalization and Commercialization versus Embodied Knowledge
The portrayal of the physicality of mothering allowed poets’ to criticize and resist
a universal understanding of mothering, thus creating a radical specificity (Sotirin,
2010). This was a hybrid moment when some accepted dominant discourses
(universal experience) in the form of sentimentality (memory) as well as the denial
of it. NFMO is thus, not a collection of alternative poems on mothering, but it is a
collection of poems on mothering. This seems like Orr’s (2008) call for an exploration
of the connection between poetry and politics and leaves us with the impression that
a political poetry must include, no matter how indirect, a confrontation of a social
structure, and it must provide a space in which the audience can activate its political
potential.
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Sandra L. Faulkner
Communication & Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Bowling Green State University, USA
Cynthia Nicole
Independent Scholar
Boise, ID, USA
97
LORRI NEILSEN GLENN
7. RESONANCE AND AESTHETICS

No Place That Does Not See You
for here there is no place

that does not see you. You must change your life… Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke’s words say as much about inquiry as they do about poetry and its qualities.
What must we bring to inquiry and to poetry to effect change in the world? If
resonance, beauty and truth (rarely-used words in the academy) are hallmarks of
strong and fine poetry, how can poetic inquiry invite those qualities into our lives and
our work? What follows is a bricolage of poetry and prose that, as a poet and scholar,
mark in some small way my reflections about resonance and aesthetics. Some of the
pieces assembled here have been published; some have not. Each provides a small
glimpse of what I see as the promise and the challenges of contemporary poetic
inquiry.
***
analysis is a laser, lyric is a bell… Jan Zwicky
***
Resonance: We can look to Japanese haiku masters for images of flower petals
thrumming in the wake of a bell’s ringing. We can think of the Hindu god, Indra,
and the bejeweled net, each intersection marked by a jewel that reflects all other
jewels in an infinite relational resonance that marks, according to Hindu belief, our
connections to each other and the world. (Neilsen Glenn, 2010). We can touch a web
wet with rain and watch the shimmer, hear the drops. This is resonance. Resonance
is in the body and the mind: our bodies to the world as tuning forks. An ecosystem
of connected tissue.
***
For me, poetry is philosophy, inquiry, prayer; it is learning to pay attention, to

listen, to be awake. Poetry cuts deep to the bone, makes vivid the flesh and sounds
of the world and the pilgrimages of the mind and heart. Poetry asks me to ask
bigger questions, to take down the names of ghosts. Poetry asks me: what on earth
L. N. GLENN
are you doing here? It asks me to be fully in the world, to be compassionate, and
to be clear. Clear not only in the writing—to avoid posturing, spin, fog, ‘poemy’
language that has the patina of stage make-up—but clear, too, in how I respond
to what the writing asks of me. Poetry holds up a mirror and rips off the mask: it
shows me when I am wallowing, faking it, being precious or insincere. It reminds
me I know nothing. Poetry, in truth, has become my trickster; writing it, my crow
time, keeping me off-balance, humble, and in love with the possibilities of home
(Neilsen Glenn, 2012).
***
Note to a graduate student writing poetic inquiry from data:

1. Don’t rush this. Let yourself sit with the material for a very long time, so that you
are inside it. We are not puppeteers or furniture movers. We are meant to be tuned
instruments, and we must wait and listen to the material.
2. Lyric inquiry is a singing of the self. It is an embodied means of understanding and
communicating. The rhythm, cadence, tone of someone’s speech is as important
as the words. How can you communicate that on the page so that you honour your
participant?
3. Yes, you can rework your participants’ words, but do check with them. This
process is a conversation in itself. You can help give their ideas voice, but we
must always be true to their voice.
4. Read, read, read good poetry. Poetry isn’t chunks of syntax centered on a page. If
the words you are working with are more suited to prose, choose prose, or prose
poetry. White space matters; every line break matters. Less is more.
5. Poetry demands vivid, memorable language. Concrete, specific details. If you
are working with data that includes too many abstract words (love, hope, fear),
ask more questions. Your participant will have a story or a detail that makes the
statement come alive.
6. You are creating poetry together with your participant. Keep the conversation
open, and enjoy it.
7. Be mindful of our tendency to read what we think we want to read, and to sum
up accordingly. Every statement is this statement from this person at this time.
Even if we have heard something similar before, we must listen to what we are
hearing now.
***
Late in the spring, I planted trees next to the house in the hopes they would create both
privacy and a windbreak. The other day, I finally saw green tips on the evergreens,
saw the beginnings of dark purple clusters on the lilac. Promising. But those trees
have many feet of growth upward and outward before they can shield us from the
wind and protect us from the distractions of traffic. Time. Everything takes time.
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RESONANCE AND AESTHETICS
As an editor, a teacher, and a writer who works with others, I watch new poets
come to their craft with enthusiasm and a wish to be acknowledged in print. Nothing
sparks growth and confidence more in a writer than seeing their words in the pages
of a journal or a book. The ego needs nourishment, after all. But truth and beauty are
not about ego, and writing is not about publication. Growth – strong growth, with
deep roots and solid branches – takes time. If our inquiry is to maintain its authority
and credibility, if our efforts are to engage with the important issues in our world,
we owe it to our communities and to ourselves to be patient. We must take the time
to develop our art, make it honest and true; take the time to nurture and support
new researchers and writers, a seasoning process that can take months, even years;
and take the time with the materials we create to ensure they represent us and our
participants or phenomena in the strongest possible way. Difficult to do when the
ego wants immediate gratification, when the world wants everything now.
***
A note to my class of pre-service teachers:

Sunday evening, I walked along the Thames on my way back from the poetry
library at Royal Festival Hall. (I can hardly believe I can write that. I could
hardly believe I was there).
My weekend had been spent at a poetic inquiry conference in Bournemouth.
A group of poets/teachers from across Europe and North America, we had
gathered to talk about the ways we know, the ways that poetry – the reading
and the writing of it – helps us to know and imagine and learn. We talked about
schools, too, and asked question after question, even as we knew they had all
been asked before. Why is that, I wondered? Why are we still asking the same
questions?
I ask, too: why are we doing the same things in schools as we always have? Have
only hairstyles and technologies changed? Why, in 2012, are we still asking
students to read a poem and then answer test questions about its meaning? Why
are we testing people on their responses? Why are we asking students to write
poems using content as their motivation (write about what you know, write
about a scary experience, write about your summer holidays—all content-
driven exercises, regardless of whose ideas they are)? One of the presenters,
Kedrick James, introduced us to Oulipo, a French group that explores heuristics
for writing poetry using structural constraints. (Writing a poem without using
the word ‘the’ might be an example). Such constraints cause us to rethink our
conventional structures and forms. We see what happens when we ask students
to write a cinquain or haiku or limerick; we know that an agreed-upon form
can provide a certain amount of reassurance to new or emerging writers (or
even experienced ones). But what if the form is arbitrary? What if we play
with chance?
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L. N. GLENN
Form for the sake of form alone is as ineffective as grammar for the sake
of grammar. Form must be used in the service of something else – even the
imagination. And in the case of writing poetry, an Oulipo-inspired method
provides a writer with constraints, but not conventional, handed-down,
borrowed constraints. After all, neither reality nor the imagination has preferred
ways to be shaped. Why do we persist in looking for truth and meaning using
the same old structures?
A few weeks ago we took phrases from magazines, rearranged them and created
‘found poems.’ We craned toward meaning, toward invention. Something
happened: A stirring of the underground resonances of language that created
something deeper than we expected. We touched a spider web and something
shook. We fractured linearity and disrupted conventional sense-making. That’s
only the beginning. Imagine.
As I walked along the Thames with the sun setting behind Big Ben, I watched
the tourist buses fill with tired travelers laden with bags of gifts and mementos,
and I reminded myself that each of them is singular, unique, and each comes
from somewhere. There, in one of the most historic settings in the world, I
thought about how each of us is new – and can renew, and reinvent. Each day,
each step, is a way of breaking down and starting over.
Imagine.
***
In a poem entitled “Writing has always felt like praying” (Neilsen Glenn, 2010),
I explore the search for truth that marks our being human. Some look for a god,
whether the god is material or theological. The search for truth in inquiry began
with the rise of empiricism and has taken the physical and social sciences into
this century. The search to know has been conflated with the search for truth, with
mixed results. I long to know: most researchers and writers have a serious case
of epistephilia. But, I have written elsewhere, I recognize that knowing itself is a
fiction; it is a liminal, threshold space that is ripe with possibility. It is not the last
word; nor is it our destination. I consider learning to un-know, to disrupt, and to keep
moving to be not only a means of growth, but a truth unto itself, or, at the very least,
a truthful way to live. Not knowing keeps me moving; the here and now of this day,
this horror, this joy is given to me daily: the practice of poetry renews this awareness
like no other. This, to me, is enough. Embracing inquiry is, in itself, knowing. How
I inquire into and respond to the world teaches me humility and compassion. How I
see resonances and weave them into language – how I read others who do the same
– may be as close to the fusion of truth and beauty as I can come.
I pace back and forth on a cliff above the unknowable, lured
by slippery and maverick tales that call forth terror, crack
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RESONANCE AND AESTHETICS
the earth, shatter my bones with light. I have no need

to verify old brown marks of stigmata, translate Coptic fragments.
A burlap robe on display in the cold stone air of the Church of Santa Croce is
inscrutable: it tells me only that my body is a ragged garment
and will be discarded too.
But here, now, I am ready as a tuned string
to witness what is ravenous, mythic. Here I am holy, misbegotten,
gossip on the lips of the gods, forgotten by the time the cups
are washed and put away. So I start as I start every day,
cobbling a makeshift pulpit, casting for truths as they are given me:
Man, woman, child, sun, moon, breath, tears,
stone, sand,
sea.
REFERENCES
Mitchell, S. (1995). Ahead of all parting: Selected poetry and prose of Rainer Maria Rilke. New York,
NY: The Modern Library.
Neilsen Glenn, L. (2010a). Lost gospels. London, England: Brick Books.
Neilsen Glenn, L. (2010b). Resonance, loss. In M. Dickinson & C. Goulet (Eds.), Lyric ecology.
Markham, ON: Cormorant Books.
Neilsen Glenn, L. (2011). Threading light: Explorations in poetry and loss. Regina, SK: Hagios Press.
Neilsen Glenn, L. (2012). Homing. In S. Thomas, S. Stewart, & A. Cole (Eds.), The art of poetic inquiry.
Halifax, NS: Backalong Books.
Neilsen, L. (2002a). Learning from the liminal: Fiction as knowledge. Alberta Journal of Educational
Research, 48(3), 206–214.
Neilsen, L. (2002b). Lyric inquiry: Line breaks and liminal spaces. Invited address at the University of
Alberta, AB, 2002.
Neilsen, L. (2004). Learning to listen: Data as poetry, poetry as data. Journal of Critical Inquiry into
Curriculum and Instruction, 5(2), 40–42.
Lorri Neilsen Glenn

Mount Saint Vincent University, Canada
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Section 2
UNDERSTANDING
Poetry through Inquiry
This second section is devoted to responding to the challenge of moving to

deeper levels of thinking with some examples of utilising poetry in research
contexts. These chapters collectively use poetry as a powerful way to access
deep emotions (both on the part of researchers and participants). The chapters
invite new ways for scholars to take off the false mask of academic distance
and expertise to reveal, poetically, human dimensions beneath.
Chapters here offer poetic dialogues, crafting of poems as part of project and
research processes and also include perspectives from literary poets. Section
two aims to show diverse examples that extend the practices of poetic inquiry.
COLLETTE QUINN-HALL
8. POETICS IN A CAPACIOUS LANDSCAPE
Through Mercator’s lens

Columbus dances the
flamenco
With Isabella held
on solid decks
sleep between his eyes
In the bowels of a starbound ship
paused within the universe
adrift amongst star-mapped clusters
Costa draws chameleon charts
dreams of wanton wanderings
Laying down ghostly lines and wobbly grids
filling empty parchment
tautly stretched across
infinite starscapes
Unfolding distant names
new to the tongue
Siren constellations
seeping through portals
folding in on darkening
space seas
of un-named, un-known restless possibilities
Word Constellations
The yellow school bus slowed down to meet the road cut between two hills covered
in poplar and aspen and evergreen trees. Branches reach out to each other, secret
friends whispering an alert of intrusion to rustled sunbathing. Inside the yellow bus
children chatter and laugh, collect and organize, layer, cloak and zip up. The air is
abuzz with busy anticipation and the excitement that trails along school escapes
from the institutional walls of expectations and curricular outcomes. Each child
begins to check that deep in their backpacks are the cartographic writing tools they
need to take notice of the world they are about to experience, the familiar foreign
C. QUINN-HALL
landscape they have come to explore. Some of the children have travelled to Fish
Creek Park before; they have had picnics with their families or have walked with
parents and dogs along some of the twenty-two kilometres of pathways that track
throughout the river valley. Most of the children were unaware this oasis is nestled
in the southern suburbs of Calgary until this moment. All of the children are prepared
to use their notebooks and pencils to record the images, the shapes, the textures,
the skin prickles, the sounds and the smells they will encounter as they attempt to
“return to [their] senses” (Abrams, 1996, p. 65):
This intertwined web of experience is … the “life-world” [Husserl’s allusion]
… yet now the life-world has been disclosed as a profoundly carnal field, as
this very dimension of smells and tastes and chirping rhythms warmed by the
sun and shivering with seeds. (Abrams, 1996, p. 65)
Nicene Creed of a Poet
I believe in one matter-energy,
the maker of things seen and unseen.
I believe that this pluriverse
is traversed by heterogeneities that are
continually doing things.
I believe it is wrong to deny vitality
to nonhuman bodies, forces, and forms,
and that a careful course of anthropomorphization
can help reveal that vitality,
even though it resists full translation
and exceeds my comprehensive grasp.
I believe that encounters with lively
non materiality of all that is,
expose a wider distribution of agency,
and reshape the self and its interests.
(Jane Bennett, 2010, p. 122)
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POETICS IN A CAPACIOUS LANDSCAPE
The teacher gazes out the window at the picnic site the bus is pulling into.
Attuned to the voices around her, she is also attending to the children vibrating and
shifting in their seats. Can you try to imagine what she is thinking? Do you think
that she is aware this event will prove to be a space of return for her to while away in
(Jardine in Jardine, Friesen, & Clifford, 2008)? The teacher looks out the window
of the bus as it turns into the family picnic site that will become a home base for
the excursion. Is she wondering how she arrived at this location? Is she questioning
how she came to share in this journey with these children? Is she marveling at how
collectively eager the children appear to be to take out their notebooks and pencils
and draw and trace the space they are stepping into?
Not at all. The teacher is more concerned with the shower of rain that fell in the
morning, rain beading benches where she and the students are to gather together.
She is more concerned with the boy who is telling her his lunch bag is now sitting on
his desk back at school. No, her presence is taken up in the moment of teaching and
learning with these children. It is only now in the pages that you, reader, are sifting
through, her story begins to unfold and rewind and entwine amid other stories. Only
now in these pages does she reflect back on the events and read over the notebooks
from previous years, and become curiouser and curiouser, like Alice in Wonderland
falling into new landscapes. Only as she wrote the words collected between these
bindings does she begin to understand what stories and processes were put into play
and are in play every day as she experiences and comes to understand the world she
shares with these children. Only as she reconstructs the stories, rereads the stories,
reflects on the stories and lays down new tracks of words does she begin to hear the
voices of the children on the bus ring clearer. Stories stitched and patched together in
an attempt to tell someone of what she is coming to understand about cognition and
perception and recursive visits to those recorded sites bound in the notebooks she
filled as teacher. She is telling you some stories within stories, within more stories, of
her experiences with these children, her ruptured culture of education, the cacophony
of voices that sing in her head, and riparian poetry she writes.
These stories, this lyrical inquiry (Neilson, 2008) begins, ends and lives within
the contextual refrains of questions. How do we come to understand some thing?
What do educators mean when we talk about knowledge? How is my perception
of reality shaped as it is being shaped among students? What implications do these
anewed (Arendt, 1969) understandings have on the work and the world that I share
with the children in my classroom? What implication does a shifting perception
have on our shared returns to topics within disciplines? What implications does
an anewed (Arendt, 1969) perception hold for how we engage with topics within
disciplines? What does all this imply for teachers who are asked to interpret and
assess children’s writing for their skills and knowledge and understanding?
What role should educators take up to engender agency in students to un-dress
an ethnocentric worldview and re-dress their perceptions in cloaks of localized,
contextual assemblages of understandings?
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C. QUINN-HALL
On rainy days
we played Scrabble
Lettered tiles held in
a Royal, blue velvet bag
Draw open golden ropes
scatter regal alphabet bones
across a laminate table
Slice stories through
the skin of the earth
orchestrate cascades of repair fibrin clots, coagulated blood
festered formed scabs
Compelled fingers touch
rudimentary, red, regrowth
tissue tingles in painful pleasure
Raised worded scars
recede into flesh
Language comes home
The novelist Thomas King (2003) writes that “[t]he truth about stories is that
that’s all we are” (p. 2). In the first of his CBC Massy Lectures, he quotes Okanagan
storyteller Jeannette Armstrong,
Through my language I understand I am being spoken to, I’m not the only one
speaking. The words are coming from many tongues and mouths of Okanagan
people and the land around them. I am a listener to the language’s stories,
and when my words form I am merely retelling the same stories in different
patterns. (p. 2)
Stories converge in assemblages of possibility. We respond to other stories when
they resonate with our story and we hearken to stories that interrupt our story.
Maybe stories enable us to experience ‘things like this’ or a thisness or a ‘setting of
things side-by-side’ until we recognize the similarity or reshape our understanding
(Zwicky, 2003):
Ontological attention is a response to particularity, this porch, this laundry
basket, this day. Its object cannot be substituted for even when it is an object
of considerable generality (‘the country’, ‘cheese’, ‘garage sales’). It is the
antithesis of the attitude that regards things as ‘resources’, mere means to
human ends. In perceiving thisness, we respond to having been addressed (In
fact, we are addressed all the time, but we don’t always notice this). (p. 52)
Stories have a way of insinuating themselves into our conversations with each other
and our self-dialogues. Stories weave sticky tendrils throughout our notions of how
the world exists around us and how we are fastened within the world.
110
Laying on his stomach, propped up on elbows, his hands cupping his chin,
Damian scans the open newspaper laid out on the carpet. He is looking for the
article that he will clip out and pin to the current news board blocked out on the
wall beside the classroom door. He has acquired the position of news hunter after an
argumentative scene entitled Why do I have to read this shit all the time? This was
one of many heated scenes Damian had starred in during his educational drama with
numerous authoritative antagonists; Damian versus the teacher, Damian versus the
principal, Damian versus the lunchroom attendant, Damian versus the crosswalk
patroller; Damian versus the kid who just wanted to hang his coat on the hook he
had used the day before and did not understand the Damian- rotation rule; every
kid needs to move one hook to the right of the hook used the day before, except for
Damian because he made the rule. And, so after many discussions about reading in a
classroom, Damian has the position of news hunter gathering interesting stories from
around the world and in our community. He diligently reads the articles that capture
his imagination, takes in minute details and retells his filtered facts to his classmates.
What is His Code??
The boy wrapped around a desk
shapes a scrabble wor[l]d
from the end of a HB7
fitted carefully between gameboard
lines and squares
Shadows settle between
the story he tells
and tale I hear
Wor[l]ds explode from after-image traces
stilled in the air
letters shatter and clatter and scatter
about the room
I pick noetic shrapnel shards
from my neoprene skin
discard unfamiliar pieces
collect words that fit the file
and wrap them around the boy
wrapped around a desk
Damian gathers the sheets of articles into a pile and deposits them in the bin on
his desk. He picks up his backpack and bounces to the line of students getting ready
to board the yellow bus to Fish Creek Park. He pokes one of the boys he is partnered
with and they all laugh at the funny face he pulls. Behind him stands the adult
support worker who will be his ‘watcher’ on this excursion, a requirement insisted
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C. QUINN-HALL
upon by the school administration whenever a ‘Bridges’ kid leaves the premises.
Damian is a Bridges student, coded by our school board as a kid with behavioural
issues. The ‘Bridges Program’ is a Calgary Board of Education (CBE) program to
“help students overcome challenging emotional and behavourial issues” (Trustee-
zine, 2009). In the pages of his file, Damian exhibits oppositional deviance, he has
been aggressive, and he has been verbally abusive. All of these behaviours landed
him with a ‘code for behaviour’ and in a bridges program designed to ‘modify
his behaviour’ so he could be released from the ‘code’ and integrated back in to
a ‘regular’ classroom program. In most school settings, Damian would be placed
with a group of six or eight students isolated in a separated classroom. However, at
the present school his ‘behaviour modification’ happens amidst our classroom and
alongside our students.
Part of the process of ‘housing’ Damian, the Bridges student, in a classroom,
included a meeting with Damian’s family. In the weeks leading up to our fall return
to school, I sat in a room with his grandmother and a brother, the principal of our
school, the administrator for special programs, and this dark, curly- haired, powerful
entity whose raucous, academic story was written in a file six- inches thick. Those
file pages documented evidence of an articulate boy who hated just about everything
to do with formal schooling, in particular, reading and writing. But those file pages
did not tell the story of a boy raised by a grandmother in a home of violence and
escape; a mother never spoken of and a father incarcerated for some hidden crime.
Nor did the pages tell of this young gatherer of information who could remember
details of old events and conversations demonstrated by his abrupt interruptions and
gestures to errors and omissions in the stories told by the adults around the table.
Distracted by the file on the table and the words of the ‘experts’ and the angry,
dismissive gaze emanating from this little boy’s eyes, I didn’t notice he had must
have been playing with something in his hands during our discussions. Had I not
left my pens behind in the meeting room, I would not have returned to find a small
stone on the table where Damian had been sitting. It was one stone of thousands
found on a playground or along a river’s edge. It was merely grey. It was only a little
part of the earth, not much to see. I picked it up and held in my hand. The stone was
still warm. There were some raised etchings traced along the smooth belly of this
offering, unreadable and unremarkable. “What do I see?” I asked, but the stone did
not answer.
The first three weeks of school were bumpy. Damian was like a yo-yo wound too
tight and when he sprang there were erratic fits and starts and stumbles along the
way. There were many confrontations and long-after school discussions trying help
this boy find his way in the classroom and shifting and shaping the classroom to fit
this boy. And, slowly his volcanic eruptions began to subside and sporadically he
began to find a way to tell his story.
Once when painting landscapes, I settled in beside him as he sketched out an
image of a river with a whale-sized fish leaping from a wave. I was puzzled because
112
around the room were large colourful copies of Canadian landscape paintings by
Thompson, Harris, Jackson and Carr. His classmates were creating re-imagined
natural spaces drawn from these images. Here before Damian was this big aquatic
vertebrate absent from the others pictures. We began talking about the process, the
choice of colour, re-printed paintings he found appealing, natural landscapes he had
visited. Somewhere in the conversation I asked about the fish and why it held such
a prominent space in his drawing. His compact shelled body appeared to jell and a
wistful sigh sounded from his throat but he only hinted to a day spent fishing on the
Bow River with his father. The moment of reveal was brief and quickly recovered
in a forceful return to stroking out the river in thick pencil markings, but for that
moment he was transported and transformed.
Extraordinary ordinary happenings
in the garden
Imagine
A fledgling bird prematurely
bereft of a nest
Hops a scripted alarm across
our wooden deck
Pillaging crows cruise
from tree top to roof top
Above Below
Sonorous sparrows swoop
to the fence
perform birdsong sonatas
Intertwined whistle tunes
Transferred tales from Jurassic forebearers
Evolutionary avian storylines
Of flight translations
The next morning the little bird
joined the fence post choir.
Extraordinary ordinary happenings
in the garden
I often have an image playing in my head of worlds dancing together; it is a
shadow impressed upon my mind after reading a speculative fiction series by Doris
Lessing, Canopis in Argos: Archives. In the series of seven books published over
ten years, Lessing creates anthropomorphized planets actively involved in the
progressing stories of the characters. System theorists present images of living
worlds within worlds, within worlds engaged in an oscillating dance at times in
balance, at times out of step, circling and drifting within each other’s zones. These
living worlds exist from the sub-atomic to the expanding universe and they are all
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C. QUINN-HALL
co-originated by the dancers (Capra, 1996). In language we enact these worlds and
in experiencing these worlds we gather in language. Each story enacts the world that
nurtures the characters in the story. The stories that are told in these pages and the
poetry interrupting the narrative enact the perceived world of writing with children
as we experienced together. But even this story is nestled within other stories that
you will not hear because those stories call out for bigger spaces or they are stories
unknown. To speak to you in story and in poetry affirms a belief that linguistic
exchanges are expressive and poetic; meaning and understanding is a resonating
embodied experience that remains sourced within particular moments and in the
present. Poetry and story are irrelevant to time. Poetry and story are narrative devices
that are imagistic knowing (Steward, 2010) and provide moments of punctuated and
aerated thought. And to speak to you in poetry and story alludes to what remains
unknown, it is a way “into the presence of the numinous” (Lilburn, 1999, p. 17).
Language is alive in all that is worldly.
Language as a bodily phenomenon accrues to all expressive bodies not just
to the human. Our own speaking, then, does not set us outside of the animate
landscape but – whether or not we are aware of it – inscribes us more fully in
its chattering, whispering, soundful depths. (Abrams, 1996, p. 80)
Oh Hermes
You trickster
You lyrical midwife
Strung translated moon shine
across a tortoise shell
You birthed vibrating matter
into the world
Resonant resistor to
a solaton wave
You’d rather raise
reverberations
To find patterns midst
the aporia
of the
teacher/researcher/poet
Diving through collateral
learnings
These written words present a métissage (Hasebe-Ludt, Chambers, & Leggo,
2009) of three voices; the voice of the flaneur (the observer), the voice of the teacher/
researcher, and the voice of the poet. The flaneur is the after-image eye that remains
from a time when I believed it possible to watch students like an objective sightseer;
sorting, categorizing, and labeling each child to be collected, graded and filed. The
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teacher/researcher gestures to the embodied subjectivity of the reflective educator

now returning to experiences to write them “anew”. Each voice wraps the narrative
they spell around narratives of other tellers. Each story is present and temporal
and held in a collection of words. Each story is looking towards the same horizon;
writing with children and being written by children. And, each narrative whispers to
what is still left hidden in the shadows. Together, all the narratives open new spaces
for interpretation; spaces between each of the narratives and spaces between the
braided narratives and the reader.
i mine words in the
caverns of text
i mine words along
literary rivers
standing knee deep
in circular pools
of lucite waters
sifting through syllabled silt
collecting polished pebbles of prose
left behind on panhandles
i pluck the gleaming insights and
rearrange gems to wear
around a bare neck
borrowed words
borrowed language
to manipulate
strip, reshape, redress
fashion to wear with purloined pearls
to be shared again
enriched and empowered
i steal
from discourse fore bearers
idea sweaters to warm my spine
sing forth the life of thought
breathing in, breathing out
enfolding and unfolding
Theoria, praxis and poesis, are three forms of thought introduced by Socrates,
redefined by Plato and reconciled by Aristotle, conjuring up the notions of
contemplation, action and creation. In the role of a/r/tographer, Rita Irwin (2004)
resurrects these ancient Greek forms translating and interweaving the words into
theory/research, teaching/learning and art/making. Irwin drew my attention to
the space that opens up between these forms of thought when one is no longer
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C. QUINN-HALL
“embraced” over the other and all are perceived in a “multi-dialectical view that
encourages thirdness” (Irwin & Cosson, 2004, p. 28).
If we conceive of researching, teaching, and art making as activities that weave
in and through one another – an interweaving and intraweaving of concepts,
activities, and feelings – we are creating fabrics of similarity and difference. In
these interlingual acts, there is at once an acceptance of playing with particular
categories and a refusal to be aligned with any one category. Where two would
be inclined to dialogic opposition, a third space offers a point of convergence –
yet respect for divergence – where differences and similarities are woven
together. (pp. 28–29)
I find the image of theoria, praxis and poesis interweaving and converging
enchanting. I recognize poesis is enacted in the poetic words that shape my written
praxis of engaging with theoria. However, I am cautiously aware of how easy it
would be to believe these pieces of creative writing are singular events arising from
my personal genesis. Questions are always circling how to embed the world within
my words and my words within the world and how to language in ways to erase the
demarcation between the worlds and words.
The poet presents the tension the lies between words and worlds. The poems
gesture to what I understand and what I am coming to understand. The poet speaks
to the shimmering after-burn images that linger in the advents of interruptions. I
write poetry to try to unravel understandings about the world I engage in. Sometimes
when I come to the end of a poem, I can say, “Oh, that’s what that was about”.
Many times I come to the end of a poem and I can only say, “Oh.” And sometimes I
come to the end of poem and sense there is nothing to be said because a poem is not
always about the words. A poem is about the drift or the shift that happens between
the words. Maybe like my poems, the poetry of children in this work gesture to
those moments when something opens between their stories, their experiences, their
understanding, and their writing that only shimmers and shadows; moments that
are shapeless yet transforming, precursors to what is to become new or re-newed
pathways on their landscapes.
Together the braided three voices in this inquiry, the flanerie, the teacher/
researcher, and the poet, comprise a storyteller telling stories of ‘as if’. A storyteller
telling storied metaphors, living “species of understanding” (Zwicky, 2008,
p. 4) speaking of ‘if this is me then this is you’ and ‘if this is you then this is me’
simultaneously.
In metaphor we experience a gestalt shift from a distinct intellectual and
emotional complex to another “in an instant in time”. Metaphor is also a meta-
image. It is multiply resonant. (Zwicky, 2008, p. 4)
This is a lyrical inquiry, a marriage between lyrical language and research
(Neilsen, 2008). Lyrical language is the antithesis of rational, reductionist thought.
116
Lyrical language is taken up in narrative, poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, drama,

monologues, journal entries, and other imaginative ventures. Lyrical language finds
it difficult to become the this-is-how-the-world-is trope of the language of knowing
and the language of knowing has marginalized lyrical language. I am troubled
by school demands for saying what is ‘true’ in well- organized, standard-proofed
essays. I am vexed by the conviction the ‘truth’ of the world or a nation or a religion
or a science can be languaged into sentenced-cells behind bars of iron words and
argued into reality.
Lyrical language provides spaces for what Zwicky recognizes as opportunities to
“experience” an other “without appropriation, ownership, or reductiveness (Zwicky
cited in Neilsen, 2008, p. 95). Rather, it simply takes us to their space. Neilsen
(2008) tells us that Lyrical Inquiry is a “phenomenological process and practice
that embraces ambiguity, metaphor, recursiveness, silence, sensory immersion and
resonance, creating forms of writing that may become art, or may simply create an
aesthetic experience of the writer” (p. 101). Impact, in other words, can be achieved
with resonance as much as with report (Neilsen, 2008).
Space Between
There is a glossy alius imposter
peering from the frame at two
lovers risking misunderstandings
Words spoken
spiral dance
evoke tiklaalik
crawling from the devonian riverbed
where another man now sits opposite
you don’t see him but you touched
his flesh when I pointed
him out even when he
kissed you on parched lips
you didn’t know he was there
listening to shadowed words taking shape
between the story you tell
and the story I hear
Burned afterimages slip inside eye shutters
Your voice, his eyes, my hands gather the photo
place it on the mantel
Eyes watch from above
words whisper down in the stillness
Your voice, his eyes, my hands lay the image
under plastic collections
eyes bewildered by others
letters dance reality to light
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Your voice, his eyes, my hands push the boy

under river water
saturated transfer tissue
loosened gelatin
counter spectacles of pictures
dissolve
exposing tiklaalik
The poetry and stories speak to an event shared with a group of grade six students
in an east Calgary school. We were writing and exploring poetry and we were drawing
and imagining landscapes different from the city streets and cinder- bricked buildings
containing our bodies. We were telling each other the stories of our lives on the blank
pages where we wrote and we were drawing our sensorial return to the world on the
canvases we painted. We were trying to find a space between the ‘curriculum-as-
planned and the curriculum-as-lived’ (Aoki, 2003) and trying to attend to a world
lost to peripheral vision (Bateson, 1994) while learning along the way. And in our
stories, each one particular to the teller, both familiar and different, we were trying
to hear multiple voices singing together while watching and attending to the world’s
gestures (Abram, 1996) in the same space. Kingwell (2000) in describing the house
as a “place to dream” raises the idea of the influence of “third space possibilities”
(p. 175), the space between work and home. Maybe what we were trying to reconcile
was a ‘third space possibility’ between the classroom and the wild woods of Fish
Creek Park? Maybe we were trying to refocus images of riparian zones of nature
and concrete blind to us in the ‘everyday’ of schooling? Maybe in the polyphonic
voices in poems read and the stories told, we were being reminded of a knowing
long forgotten?
No words
Are mine
Only borrowed language
To manipulate
Strip, reshape, redress
To be shared again
Enriched and empowered
Stolen
From discourse fore bearers
To call meaning
Ideas resonant
Sing
The life of thought
Breathing in, breathing out
Enfolding and unfolding
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I have wondered if our poetry was/is language that takes up the interpretative space
between experience and understanding in this complex dance of living a practice, a
practice of living. This is difficult. It is difficult to try to articulate the notion that we
are engaged in a living practice. I am taken up by Ted Aoki’s (2003) eloquence when
he says “curricula-as-live(d)—experiences of teachers and students—a multiplicity
of curricula, as many as there are teachers and students” (p. 2). And, this practice is
taken up as theory, understanding and learning, and action. Theory is really just the
stories we tell ourselves about the world, about the people in the world around us,
about ourselves. King (2008) recites the following story about telling stories about
stories:
One time, it was in Trois-Rivieres I think, a man in the audience who was
taking notes asked about the turtle and the earth. If the earth was on the back
of a turtle, what was below the turtle? Another turtle, the story teller told him.
And below that turtle? Another turtle. And below that. Another turtle. The man
quickly scribbled down notes, enjoying the game, I imagine. So how many
turtles are there? he wanted to know. The storyteller shrugged. No one knows
for sure, she told him, but it’s turtles all the way down. (p. 13)
Stories are the threads, the in-betweens that keep us afloat in the complex cosmos
of whatever social organism we are performing in; our families, our working space,
our city, our country. The stories are what we tell ourselves to keep us woven
into the fabric of the existence we have enacted with everything around us. Hans
Gadamer (2004) tells we are thrown into a world already teaming and steaming with
others and so we continually are trying to interpret our relationship within a living
world and a living world of our own making. And these multiple stories of all us
others living in the world make up a very complex story of no singularity but only
intersecting plains of spaces where we might share part of the story; nodal points of
intersection or ‘contact zones’ where we might engage in a topic. Multi-perceived
horizons (Gadamer, 2004) where we might come together to build a bridge, or agree
to ground our kid because she forgot to call to tell us she was not coming home from
drinking in the city. Other than rainbowed points of intersection in this woven story
of being together, the colours and threads are all very different.
Understanding and learning is interpreted in language. For humans, language
is our tool to unravel and reweave these stories, our theories. We are languaged
beings. We enact our existence in language. As biological creatures we enact our
existence with the world around us. As social beings living in a living world we
extend that enaction through language. And, language is complex and ephemeral and
dangerously binding. And, language makes for shifts and drifts within our stories,
within our theories of the world. Language can imprison us with a ‘truth’, deliver
us to one ‘true’ story we tell and tell again to the demise and horror of the ones who
don’t know the story or don’t care about the story or don’t agree with the story. We
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can become isolated and caged within the words of ‘absolute’ methods and technical
descriptions of ‘the way things are’. Many a horrific event has been and continues to
be perpetuated because of adherence to‘one story’.
Language is the way we have interpreted our stories to inform our actions or
inactions. What we do in the living world can either hold our stories firm or reveal
the fissures, the bare threads or frayed binding in our stories causing us to try to
interpret something anew (Arendt, 1969). Plunging into an event or a statement or an
email from an educator, can put us consciously back in circling steps of the practice
dance (think Safety Dance by Men Without Hats). Trying to understand can have
us seeking other arrangements of language to try to catch our relationship with the
world and the other within it.
Ah, not be cut off,
Not through the slightest partition Shut
out from the law of the stars.
The inner – what is it?
If not intensified sky,
Hurled through with birds and deep
With the winds of homecoming.
Rainer Maria Rilke
The ‘doing’ of living can have us retelling our stories differently. It’s a circle
dance, the practice dance; it is the dance of theory, of understanding and learning, of
doing. It is the dance of theoria, praxis, and poesis. But, it’s more complex than just
a circle dance. Our dances have a culture and a history of their own guiding the steps.
There are dosados and pirouettes; there are partner exchanges and concentric circles.
There are tunnel prances, and figure eights and a lot of free-styling. And, there is
remembering dance is also performed on the earth and an awareness that the dancers
need to be mindful of where bodies touch the ground (Hasebe-Ludt, Chambers, &
Leggo, 2009). Dancers need to note the sensations arising between the bodies of
each of the dancers as well as the sensations that arise between the dancers’ feet and
the earth on which they dance.
Here is the space for writing; a creative poesis, a way to understand something
is to write it. In a textual world this makes sense. It makes sense that writing and
reading need to be taken up together because reading and writing provide spaces for
interpreting together. Reading and writing provide nodal points where we may all
talk to some thing, interpret together some thing; gaze at a horizon. In writing we
can concretize the speaking so it becomes a point of intersection. In reading we can
each re-visit the written space re-formed anew (Arendt, 1969); re-writing the space
each time we return. These points of intersection can be between us and the world,
or us and another or between our selves. These points of intersection are spaces for
recursion, reflection and renewed interpretations to feed back into the practice dance
and possibly shift the con- joined steps or consolidate the moves. It appears we are
always in the social nodals but there needs to be spaces to interpret individually in
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order to affect our personal stories, our relations with the world, and with others.
And this is in writing.
Writing has the ability to be open to shifts and drifts but poetry is about shifts
and drifts. Poetry is a capacious medium; it holds with “plurality” as the condition
of humanity “because we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody
is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives or will live” (Arendt, 1958,
p. 8). In poetry we can engage in “transformation into a communion, in which we do
not remain what we were” (Gadamer, 1975/2004, p. 341). In those nodal spaces of
writing I can ask how do educators read the blues of our students? How do educators
read the wonder of our students? How do we hear their loss or joy as different and
similar to ours? I want to understand more of how to listen to other stories and mine
as they intertwine. Poetry denies the binary thinking of this or that and of either, or.
Poetry gestures to the possible andbeckons the reader/re-writer of the poem to hear
the ‘and’.
A Poem by Damian
Water crashes
Against the
Cliffs like clouds
Crashing into each other
Rocks crumble Down the
hills
Fish jump between waves
Singing love songs
Far across the lake.
See our boy crouched beside an eddy, captured between a fallen tree and the
riverbank. He is scooping up minnows in the cup of his hands and carefully placing
them back into the flow of the Bow’s currents. You can see his pockets bulging
with the small, plain stones he has collected along the pathway. Each stone is an
unremarkable mystery. I am more interested in the discourse of poetry/writing than
in the discipline of poetry/writing.
Writing Constellations
Surrounded by his pack of pals, Joey clamps his hand on his toque and punches the
arm of the kid laughing beside him. The boys in this gathering have already packed
up what they will take on the excursion on the yellow bus and have positioned
themselves as close to the classroom door as possible. They know that if they are the
first on the bus then they can claim the coveted back seat. Ensconced in those back
rows of diesel benches, they will experience the bumps and rolls of the road and
maybe get a chance to howl at the cars on the highway. The opportunities to ‘live
free’ are fleeting. Joey and the boys will try to slip into the cracks between bus rules
and excursion etiquette to etch out some ‘we got away with it’ pleasure.
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By grade five Joey had already decided that he was not a writer. He drove into any
piece of literature about all-terrain vehicles. He scanned the morning newspaper for
articles on his favourite hockey hero. He attentively listened to the stories read out
loud to him. But, he would not write. And then, a few months into an exploration of
poetry and the work of the Group of Seven, Joey composed Darkness Rolling to sit
alongside his acrylic landscape painting at a school-based art show.
Darkness rolling
Over the sky.
Like spilled ink.
Dead forest mist
Drifting
Like winter’s sheet.
The trees
Crackling down
As blackness crowns
The silence of the forest.
What allowed Joey to let go of what he knew about himself? What reflective
response opened up the space to help him to generate these words and shape them
into the poem?
Poets make things, but they don’t make poetry; poetry is present to begin with;
it is there, and poets answer it if they can. The poem is the trace of the poet’s
joining in knowing. (Bringhurst, 2007, p. 138)
In elementary classrooms literacy is always at the forefront. Educators use the
word literacy when talking to the programming that will be taken up in the classroom.
The traditional definition of literacy has been the ability to read and write. In the New
World Encyclopedia, the notion of literacy has evolved to reflect its very complex
nature in our languaged world:
Literacy is usually defined as the ability to read and write, or the ability to use
language to read, write, listen, and speak. In modern contexts, the word refers
to reading and writing at a level adequate for communication, or at a level that
lets one understand and communicate ideas in a literate society, so as to take
part in that society. Literacy can also refer to 15 proficiency in a number of
fields, such as art or physical activity. (New World Encyclopedia)
And, I wonder if the integrated and complex (word and world) wor(l)d of literacy
has somehow broken apart in the classrooms of Canadian schools and whether
reading has come to mean literacy? I wonder if speaking of literacy we have shaved
away at the complex living language we engage in every day in order to control
the wor(l)d and lock language into the boxes of knowledge we parse out over the
course of a school day. I wonder about empowering reading as literacy because in
early education teachers emphasize reading as literacy. Educators program guided
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reading, we program reading aloud to young children, we provide book bags to

parents for home reading and we assess (sometimes to access) reading levels with
myriad tools. Writing has a place in conventional writing skills; when a child is ready
to report on a frog, or write a story for an exam, or learn the format of a diamante
poem, we are ready with practical writing tools to hand over to the children to etch
away at the proper forms of writing. I wonder about the text as a site of knowledge
when I listen to the lament of junior- and high-school teachers as they scramble for
time to get their students ‘through the textbook’ before the end of the year. I wonder
at the text as ‘the word’ in knowing as I witness seeking teachers perusing Calgary’s
Teacher Convention floor for the best guide in ‘how-to’ teach poetry to the Grade
11 students. I wonder if, although educators agree that reading and writing share the
same living space, they really only think reading when they think about literacy and
we only think literacy when we think about language.
Desks are arranged in small clusters throughout an elementary classroom. An
on-looker might be intrigued by the silence and the purposeful actions of the young
readers attending to their particular task. There are more than the usual number of
adults in the room because for the next two hours every adult in the school as been
‘called to action’ under the banner of Balanced Literacy. Each adult in the room
leads a small group of children in a guided literacy activity. Groups of children circle
one adult holding the picture book that they are sharing together. The adult hands
them yellow post-it notes with words written in blue ink. The children set about
matching the word on their singular post-it note to a word in their reading book. One
group of children sits before an easel of chart paper. On the large lined paper before
them is a list of events foreshadowing what is to come in the story they are about to
read together. Another group of children are before a SMART board. The adult has
written two headings on the top of the SMART screen and one child is called upon
to sort one of the many words scattered across the bottom of the screen under one of
the two headings.
If you set your gaze along the bank of shelves that span across the windowed
wall you will notice rows of red bins filled with trade and picture books
meticulously sorted, ordered and labeled by reading levels from AA to Z. Each
book is identified and measured against the standards set out in the Fontas and
Pinnell (2001) reading guide co-related to the Fontas and Pinnell (2001) reading
assessment tools that during the year the teacher will use to test and label her
readers. The children who are not engaged with a teacher directly in the classroom
are scattered around the room sitting in their desks with their eyes directed towards
the books in their hands. One adult is free from working with groups of children
toremind the ‘independent’ readers to stay on task and focus on their reading.
One child stands before a red bin labeled D. She knows that she is a D reader and
that from this bin she can ‘freely’ choose her own reading material. Some of the
children at their desks have plastic zip-lock baggies containing two or three books
all matching the lettered label on the outside of their reading bag. Many have read
the books inside their bag several times and are prepared to read these stories to a
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partner or to another adult. There is a very hive-like busyness about the room. An
intentioned purposefulness that emanates from the assembly of readers and adult-
guides that feels processed and sterile.
Maybe an observer is beginning to notice throughout the two hours he or she has
been peering into the room that there has not seen a pencil used for anything other
than recording words or the number of pages read. Maybe the observer is beginning
to wonder about when a child could open a notebook and write to the ideas books
before her generate. Maybe the observer is wondering how a child might respond to
something startling him in a story or a collection of words causing his heart to skip.
But wait, shift your gaze to today’s agenda outlined on the calendar by the SMART
board and you will see writing will notoccur until the afternoon. There is a half an
hour planned for writing at 1:30.
Caravans of
alphabetized camels
emerge amid swiftly, sinusoidal sands
In Avicenna’s Persia
thousands of books
transport thousands of voices
never seen but echoed in pages
across the desert.
Caravans of hormones and enzymes
transport the mind
across the whole body
busily making sense of
catalogued wonders
we name
touch, taste, smell, hear
and vision.
Caravans of red, plastic bins
align across a
classroom wall
Literacy locked and labeled
AA to Z
Only a brave reader
can rescue a story
from celled categories.
I wonder if something has gone amiss in forgetting about writing’s relationship
to reading given we are languaged beings; beings who shape our world through
language. And I wonder if as educators we have let go of a powerful reflective
space to interpret the world. Zwicky (2004) reminds us “all that confronts us is the
world, gesturing at us” (p. 114). Zwicky tells of “patterns” in the world, “of which
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our thinking is a part” (p. 114). We can be at home (Lilburn, 1999) in the world
because it feels good to experience the patterns in the world and we experience
these patterns in words. Recognizing the patterns in the world and experiencing
these patterns, reminds us of our presence in a living ecology: it is one way of
coming home.
Travel across
imaginary earthscapes
extend experience, invert failure
Dispossessed of assumptions
perception walks barefoot
between tree-lined lashes
To linger in dew drops trapped
in purple irises
Geographies of children
stretch toward the sun
Unhitched by springs possibility
voices unfurl brazen-mouthed
Green beneath black soil
furrowed into wailing terrains
still clutching hold
to rhizoidic navigations
Wayfinding trendrils wrap around
contact zones bending
deep
To nurture ambiguous contours
eroded into orienting compass
rose petaled pathways.
I want to spend a little time tugging at a thread hanging from the story of writing
as a space to interpret the world. Like the poet philosopher Bringhurst (2006), I have
to begin by asking the question “what is language” (p. 10)? Bringhurst hints at a
complex and living language when he writes language,
is what speaks us as well as what we speak. Through our neurons, genes and
gestures, shared assumptions and personal quirks, we are spoken by and speak
many languages each day, interacting with ourselves, with one another, other
species, and the objects—natural and man-made—that populate our world.
Even in silence, there is no complete escape from the world of symbols,
grammar and signs. (p. 10)
Reading and writing are particles of the solid forms of language Bringhurst alludes
to. And they are particles that only exist because they live in language and language
is alive in the world.
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In A History of Reading, Alberto Manguel (1996) outlines the development of the

solid form of language from the tallying sheets of the Egyptian builders and sellers
in the markets to the production of liberating texts by the printing presses. Prior to
the written recording of the Homeric tales (Abrams, 1996, p. 107) our languaged
world was taken up in oral stories. Language was held in memory, shared across the
fire, or between the arms of mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers.
Oral language is an ephemerally flowing form of language. Oral language is literacy
on wings and interpreted in the words that sail between the teller and the listener.
Sini (in Massimo & Burch, 2002) cautions us not to think only of the historical
appearance of writing as a “technical device” rather to hearken to the “complete
change” in our languaging “habit and practice” (p. 16).
First of all, what was fluid, ever changing, dependent on inspiration, subject to
place and time contingencies, as well as on the highly innovative and creative
transience of oral memory, was fixed in a stationary mould, which has been
kept comparatively constant ever since. (Sini in Massimo & Burch, 2002,
p. 16)
This is a difficult space to go back to, to reflect on, to write about. While
transforming our oral tellings into a written solid form (Bringhurst, 2002) we
silenced our first-familial tie to language. In shaping the ‘golem’ of language, the
walking breathing solid body of writing modeled out of the clay of language, we
profoundly shifted the way we know ourselves in the world and how we come to
recognize each other. How the listeners of Homer’s tales knew the world could not
longer exist for the philosophizing omnipotent thinker. With each tablet raised or
parchment rolled, we strained the connective tissue that held our bones within the
earth until the desire to unveil the ineffable snapped the tenuous attachments and our
bones where scattered to rattle in pages of books.
In Between Philosophy and Poetry (2009), Sini tells of three particular effects
of the solidification of oral language into written words. “First of all, writing
isolates meaning from its original context of life, from the gesture of the living word
experienced in concrete situations” (p. 17). The spoken word is rooted in bodily
experience: the baby who cries in hunger, a genealogical bonding of a people, or
etchings of food systems by elders. Transposing words breathed to the listener into
words visible on a page, “the Greek scribes effectively dissolved the primordial
power of air” (Abrams, 1996, p. 252) and began the distancing of western humanity
from the earth. “Secondly, only the practice of writing made it possible to improve the
techniques of arguing, refuting, and demonstrating, techniques subject to objective
and intersubjective control” (Sini, 2002, p. 18). Plains of writing provided by written
pages are recursive spaces of return. Language can be adapted and modified to better
express an idea. Language can be repeated and replicated and provide a process by
which ‘good’ ideas can be disseminated to many listeners/ readers. Words can be
shaped and manipulated to pare away at any doubt that the idea the orator tells to the
listener/reader is the ‘one true story’.
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Thirdly, alphabetic practice, by generating the autonomous nature of logical

truth, that is, the exact and homogeneous sense of speech, produces the very
idea of reality. Here, the habit of telling the truth is not opposed to that of lying,
but it turns into the ability of reproducing the same thing in a correct form.
(p. 18)
Over time, through the assemblage of words in the “correct form” western humanity
enacted a world dominated by objective reality where every glimmer of awe could
be analyzed and controlled. And if something cannot be identified, codified and
controlled by ‘good’ ideas, then ‘the unknown’ is either ‘out of our hands’ and in
the realm of god or ‘in our hands’ in creative arts. Into whichever space the western
thinker tosses the ineffable, what cannot be known, what could be possible, or
remains ambiguous, can’t get in the way of a ‘good idea’.
And what is the elephant?
In a story of seven blind mice
Each take a turn to travel
And uncover
A part of an elephant
Unknown to them
Together
Share their images
Tell their vision into reality
And what if the elephant is a zebra?
But, the story of how we live in the world is not really a single solid line. The
story is not closed. The story is perforated; it has holes into which the world’s breath
can whisper through. Our stories are globally rhizoidic stories that shift and drift
within the liminal spaces enacted between the words and the listener or the words
and the reader and their particular experiences amid the living world.
We can speculate on this notion of language possessing a ‘poetic’ existence. We
can speculate on language being taken up in stories that remain netted and relational
with spaces for other possibilities. Davis (2009) draws our attention to cultures
around the world that hint at how our ancestors may have generated oral stories to
exchange with each other when foraging into the land. Stories predicated on symbolic
representation of natural phenomena. In The Wayfinders, Davis’ (2009) Massey
Lectures, he tells of the “Peoples of the Anaconda” living in the South American
forests of Piraparana for whom “the entire natural world is saturated with meaning
and cosmological significance” (p. 108). Davis speaks of the cultures of peoples
like the Barasana, who have struggled to avoid the assault of western colonization
by adapting and protecting their cultural identity rooted along banks of the Amazon
River. He suggests that in listening to their stories “we can glimpse something of the
beliefs and convictions that allowed untold millions” (p. 115) to live in the world
before the advent of the ‘solid word’.
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There is no separation between nature and culture. Without the forest and the
rivers, humans would perish. But without people, the natural world would have
no order or meaning. All would be chaos. Thus the norms that drive social
behaviour also define the manner in which human beings interact with the
wild, the plants and animals, the multiple phenomena of the moon, the scent of
a blossom, the sour odour of death. Everything is related, everything connected
as a single integrated whole. (p. 109)
hear
the interruption
sound of an other’s
way of knowing
i’m folding back
arrested by an echoed moment
thought is spring-river fast
fleeting
down-bank ideas
await in eddies
multiple mappings current along
converge, connect
constrain flow
thought released
understanding pools
As language began to take on its ‘solid form’ (Bringhurst, 2008), the whisper
of living in the wor[l]d continued to seep through the holes in the story. Manguel
(2008) speaks of Socrates whose words where recorded by Plato:
To Socrates, the text read was nothing but its words, in which sign and
meaning overlapped with bewildered precision. Interpretation, exegesis, gloss,
commentary, association, refutation, symbolic and allegorical senses, all rose
not from the text itself but from the reader. The text, like a painted picture, said
only “the moon of Athens”; it was the reader who furnished it with a full ivory
face, a deep dark sky, a landscape of ancient ruins along which Socrates once
walked. (p. 59)
I have to re-member, re-collect, re-assemble, the knowing that for Socrates language
existed only in its oral form. Not until Plato were the words of Socrates recorded for
others to read. Manguel (2008) is alluding to something, to a shift in the relationship
of teller and told to the reader and read; this carrying of a sensual connection to
the words as breath upon the listener and the evanescent nature of words into air
to be breathed in by the listener and shifted into something anew (Arendt, 1969).
Somehow these wor[l]ds deny our modern, economic notions of the ‘correct’ words
empowering and controlling what is known in the world.
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Poetry
Writ—worlde—ing
Lang—w[or(l)de—uage
Prac—world/word/we—tice
Lang—w[or(l)de—uage
Writ—worlde—ing
Poetry
The spiraling language story that I am typing out here is my attempt at “wayfinding”
(Chambers in Hasebe-Ludt, Chambers, & Leggo, 2009; Davis, 2009) through the
texts and tellings that have come my way these past few years. Even as I practice
this writing of these words I am surrounded by piles of words gathered by Gadamer,
Bateson, Grumet, Hurren, Nielsen, Lilburn and many, many more. And every time I
stop and reread the words preceding this spot I am re-writing the story on the page
again and again. These pages are providing a space for recursive reflection and a
re-membering of other voices and experiences that read into these events. I roll back
up the pages and slip in another collection of words or take away something non-
sensible. I move words around in an attempt to convey some meaning to the readers
while remaining cognizant of the reader’s “third space” of re-writing the text. A
space for interpretation. A space open to poetry.
Up until the advent of the printing press, the text was limited to monastic
scholarship and those few literate assemblies who had access to the hand-copied
and sparsely circulated texts of Christian and philosophical tracts (Manguel, 2008).
However, with every disseminated text western cultural readers became more and
more distanced from the spoken breath of the words. I think back to the words I read
by Italian philosopher Sini (2008),
Writing isolates meaning from its original context of life, from the gesture of
the living word experienced in concrete situations. (p. 17)
Somewhere in that distance between breath and word we lost sight of the reflective
space within the words on the page and the reader’s eyes. What do I mean by this?
Somehow I am left in the classroom with a legacy of the text as being the word
and not the place that is re-written with every telling. Even though through-out
the historical story of reading and writing you can hear ancestral voices drawing
our attention to just that; the recursion, reflection, and revision that should occur
between the spaces of the written word and the reader. Even though we can sense
how every time a reader reads a text, they are re-writing it, somehow the reflective
space has been silenced. And, within that silence we forget that the reader/writer is
changed and transformed through time. Poetry points to the ambiguity of the word.
Poetry gestures to the light seeping through the perforations in words.
I want to make this argument for writing to be a reflective space; a space where
thoughts can be re-envisioned by the reader. I want to take up an idea that writing is
a tool for silencing the cacophony of voices one swims in when one reads or engages
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C. QUINN-HALL
in conversation with others or experiences something new and, writing remains a

loci for re-examining understanding and shifting stances that I hold on to. Again,
I am listening to the voice of Sini (2008) and my attention is drawn to the notion
that the gathered words on a page have always been a space for new understanding
to occur. Sini (2008) posits it was the “practice of writing that made it possible to
improve the techniques of arguing, refuting and demonstrating, techniques subject
to objective and intersubjective control” (p. 18). This practice of writing, turned into
a “habit of telling the truth” (p. 18) in “a correct form” (p. 18) may have emerged
from a confluence of historical, political and cultural events that vied to place texts
of knowledge before texts of reflexive storytelling. Nestled in a Cartesian world-
view ‘true’ words have more influential power than the stories of a lifeworld in flux.
Somehow we need to recreate “the third space” between poesis and noesis hinted at
by the ‘polyhistorical’ poetics of Herakleitos, Sappho and Parmenides elevating the
performative nature of language to the realm of logical truth (Sini, 2008).
Dead men are gods, men are dead gods, said
Herakleitos. And furthermore,
mortal immortals are immortal mortals,
the breath of the one is the death of the other,
the dying of one s the life of the other
mortals are deathless, the deathless are mortal,
living in the body the death of the other,
dying into air, earth and fire, siring
the other, the utter
incarnation.
(Herakleitos translated by Robert Bringhurst, in
Poetry and Knowing, 1995)
I used to weave crowns.

yes! radiant lyre speak to me
become a voice
as the sweetapple reddens on a high branch
high on the highest branch and the applepickers forgot—
no, not forgot: were unable to reach
(Sappho translated by Anne Carson, in Fragments of
Sappho, pp. 215–225)
Racehorses take me. They stretch me. They pulled me

as far as the heart can hear when they ran with me
straight up the track that passes through everyone’s voices.
They carried me, a non-god, open-eyed the whole way,
down a holy being’s trail.
(Parmenedes translated in Bringhurst, 2007)
130
Who are these students mounted on wooden tablets?

How do they write
this time? To Master John the English Maid
this space? A horn-book gives of gingerbread,
our place?
How does this mutative space write them? And that the child may learn the better,
Ring-around-the children As he can name, he eats the letter.
Ring-around-the parents
Ring-around-the teachers –Matthew Prior (1717)
We all fall down
On pages sailed across hallways and rooms
Contained within bounded walls
Behind discomfited doors.
Do you know how lovely
the warm horned handle feels in the
palm?
Bleached and waxed floors beckon
enter Plato’s tide. HORNBOOK … a leaf of
Trickling water fountains arch across time paper containing the alphabet,
into semiotic worlds. the Lord’s Prayer, etc.,
hidden within hornbooks of brick and mortar mounted on a wooden tablet
pregnant possibilities. with a handle, and protected
fractured by the light of sun, ice, by a thin plate of horn.
steam and clouds Sensual –The Canadian Oxford
schooling Dictionary (1998)
etching experience onto bodies
transversing spaces
responding to touch
learning to speak
responding to love HORNBOOK … a treatise on the rudiments of a
learning to hate. subject: a primer
Writing our stories
shelved and read by others. –The Canadian Oxford Dictionary
Stories of diseased bodies
maimed bodies
endowed bodies.
Body and self untwinable, pleated together
Navigating life worlds.
131
C. QUINN-HALL
REFERENCES
Abram, D. (1996). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world.
Toronto, ON: Random House Press.
Aoki, T. (2003). Locating living pedagogy in teacher “research”: Five metonymic moments. In E. Hasebe-
Ludt & W. Hurren (Eds.), Curricular intertext: Place/language/pedagogy (pp. 1–9). New York, NY:
Peter Lang Publishers.
Arendt, H. (1969). Between past and future. London, England: Penguin Press.
Bateson, M. C. (1994). Peripheral visions: Learning along the way. New York, NY: Harper Collins
Publishers.
Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Bringhurst, R. (2007). Everywhere being is dancing: Twenty pieces of thinking. Kentville, NS: Gaspereau
Press.
Capra, F. (1996). The web of life: A new scientific understanding of living systems. New York, NY: Anchor
Books.
Davis, W. (2009). The wayfinders: Why ancient wisdom matters in the modern world. Toronto, ON:
House of Anansi.
Friesen, S., & Jardine, D. (2006). 21st century learning and learners. Retrieved from
http://education.alberta.ca/media/1087278/wncp
Gadamer, H. (1975/2004). Truth and method. New York, NY: Continuum.
Hasebe-Ludt, E., Chambers, C. M., & Leggo, C. (2009). Life writing and literary métissage as an ethos
of our times. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing.
Irwin, R. L., & de Cosson, A. (Eds.). (2004). A/r/tography: Rendering self through arts-based living
inquiry. Vancouver, BC: Pacific Educational Press.
Jardine, D., Friesen, S., & Clifford, P. (2006). Curriculum in abundance. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, Inc.
King, T. (2009). The truth about stories: A native narrative. Toronto, ON: House of Anansi.
Kingwell, M. (2000). The world we want: Restoring citizenship in a fractured age. Lanham, MD:
Bowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to
western thought. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Lessing, D. (1979/1993). Canopus in Argos: Archives. London, England: Jonothan Cape.
Lilburn, T. (Ed.). (1995). Poetry and knowing: Speculative essays & interviews. Kingston, ON: Quarry
Press.
Lilburn, T. (1999). Living in the world as if it were home. Dunvegan, England: Cormorant.
Manguel, A. (1996). A history of reading. Toronto, ON: Alfred A. Knopf Canada.
Maturana, H., & Varela, F. (1992). The tree of knowledge. In H. Maturana & F. Varela (Eds.), The tree
of knowledge: The biological roots of human understanding (Rev. ed., pp. 239–250). Boston, MA:
Shambhala Press.
Neilsen, L. (2008). Lyric inquiry. In J. G. Knowles & A. Cole (Eds.), Handbook of the arts in qualitative
research (pp. 93–102). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Sappho. (2003). If not, winter: Fragments of Sappho (A. Carson, Trans.). New York, NY: First Vintage
Books.
Sini, C. (2002). Gesture and words: The practice of philosophy and the practice of poetry. In M. Verdiccio
& R. Burch (Eds.), Between philosophy and poetry: Writing, rhythm, history (pp. 15–25). London,
England: Continuum.
Sini, C. (2009). Ethics of writing (S. Benso with B. Schroeder, Trans.). Albany, NY: SUNY.
Stewart, S. (2010). The grief beneath your mothertongue: Listening through poetic inquiry. Learning
Landscapes, 4(1). Retrieved from http://www.learninglandscapes.ca/current-issue#
Trustee-zine. (2009, June). Students find re-live relevance in class. Retrieved from http://www.cbe.ab.ca/
trustees/ezinejune09/special/meaning/index.htm
132
Turchi, P. (2004). Maps of the imagination: The writer as cartographer. Texas, TX: Trinity University
Press.
Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch E. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human
experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Zwicky, J. (2008). Wisdom & metaphor. Kentville, NS: Gaspereau Press.
Collette Quinn-Hall
Educator for Arts Centred Learning
Willow Park School, Alberta, Canada
133
JACQUIE KIDD
9. WHITE SKIN, BROWN SOUL

A Poetic Autoethnography
INTRODUCING MYSELF AND MY PROJECT
I have white skin and look like a European woman. I am of New Zealand
Māori descent, which means my way of living in and explaining the world can be
radically different to European ways. I am an autoethnographer and poet. These
three statements coalesce in my current research into the embodied experiences of
ethnicity for white skinned Māori.
The national identification of ethnicity in New Zealand has moved from the
colonial labelling of race as a fixed, biologically determined classification, to the
more dynamic understanding of ethnicity as a social construction (Cormack, 2010;
Kukutai, 2004; Kukutai & Didham, 2009). In line with the notion of ethnicity
being socially constructed, New Zealand literature asserts that Māori identity is
established through exposure to whakapapa knowledge (this includes the knowledge
and application of genealogy and tradition), land and language (Edwards, 2009;
Moeke-Maxwell, 2006; Nikora, 1995). However, while skin colour, facial features
and behaviour are no longer considered to be indicative of ethnicity, these are
still frequently used as indicators of ethnicity by observers (Callister, 2008;
Krieger et al., 2011), with police and media frequently assigning an ethnic identity
to people who have been unable to assert their own. Conversely, some fair skinned
Māori women describe being externally judged as being ‘not real Māori’ by virtue
of their appearance (Bevan, 2000; Gibson, 1999). It seems that in ‘real life’, the
separation of appearance and ethnic identity has persisted.
It seems that it would be very difficult for anyone without Māori features and/or
a strong connection to Māori networks, including language and land, to assert a
Māori identity. When combined with the poor health outcomes and inequitable
levels of social deprivation experienced by Māori (Baxter, 2008; Robson & Harris,
2007), one must ask why anyone would choose to be Māori when they could easily
pass as Pakeha? This is an important question, and one which cannot be answered
by categorising and counting. My identity is performed as a verbal dance wherein I
am moved and shaped by what is inside me as well as the people and environment
around me. My dance troubles the idea that ethnicity is shaped by society or
biology; my steps move through and around the language of race, identity and
social position.
J. Kidd
The four poems that follow re-present my confusion, recognition and eventual
celebration of the differences that I embody.
*****
Being White
My secret life of brown-ness

(the surprise of seeing White skin in the mirror)
torments me
Confusion
Kaleidoscopes through my life as I juggle colours
Dropping the white balls to be brown
(Not Allowed, I’m white)
Dropping the brown balls to be white
(The lies of passing
do not let me
Sleep)
Juggle both colours
Becoming a little bit of both
Less of both
Not enough
Of either
I am not enough
Not Maori enough to be Maori
Not Pakeha1 enough to be Pakeha
Adrift in both worlds
…disconnected…
I am not enough
*****
136
WHITE SKIN, BROWN SOUL
Connectedness
I am
a shell
a white shell
A White, Privileged shell
My whiteness
veils
my nakedness
My whiteness
shrouds
my connection
to the sea
to the earth
to my essence
Under the shell-veil-shroud
Is me
*****
137
J. Kidd
Voices
The voices of my ancestors whisper into my academic brain

lightly caress new-old patterns into my white psyche
trace moko2 into my receptive heart
delicate
indelible
insistent
A template for my existence
piercing my delusions
The voices of my ancestors
shatter my Self
into
Beauty
*****
Tihei mauri ora!3
I clear my mind of the muddiness
It is life!
The mucus of my birth

I am here
I am whole
All is well
Tihei mauri ora!
My voice rings out
With warmth
Assurance Strength
I am here
I am whole
All is well
Tihei mauri ora!
I inhale the colours of these worlds I inhabit
I exhale my personal kaleidoscope
Translucent jewels in motion
Colouring my words with the
Power
Of my Self
Tihei mauri ora!
138
WHITE SKIN, BROWN SOUL
I am here
I am whole
All is well
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Autoethnography connects the personal to the social, political and cultural (Ellis,
2004), thereby carrying with it the question of ‘who cares?’ The relevance of this
project to the society in which I live and work is that there is more to the issue of
ethnicity than is currently appearing in the literature. As I produce my poetry for my
colleagues to experience, I ask them to understand that I am more than I appear to
be, but less than I want to be. I explain my position, locating myself as Other to the
binaries that currently exist, but Self in ways that are inexplicable using the language
of ethnicity and categorisation. Such language acts to exclude me; poetry provides a
subversion, a space that allows me to re-define and re-present my struggle in ways
that make my world accessible to others. As I dance my way into that space I find
that my struggle has simply become my story, and as my story becomes visible I am
no longer Other or Self, but I simply Am.
NOTES
1
New Zealand European.
2
Tribal tattoos.
3
Literally means “I sneeze and I am alive”. This refers to the clearing of mucus in the newborn, and is
used metaphorically in oration to symbolise the clearing of the throat with the intention of speaking
important words.
REFERENCES
Baxter, J. (2008). Māori mental health needs profile summary: A review of the evidence. Palmerston
North, New Zealand: Te Rau Matatini.
Bevan, K. (2000). Exploring personal and political issues of identity for white Māori women. Whakatoro
te Torangapu me te Ake o Nga Kaupapa Tuakiri mo nga Wahine Māori Ma (Master of Philosophy
thesis), Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand. Retrieved from http://mro.massey.ac.nz/
bitstream/handle/10179/2125/02_whole.pdf?sequence=1
139
J. Kidd
Callister, P. (2008). Skin colour: Does it matter in New Zealand? (Working Paper). Wellington, New
Zealand: Victoria University.
Cormack, D. (2010). The politics and practice of counting: Ethnicity in official statistics in Aotearoa/New
Zealand. Wellington, New Zealand: Te Rōpū Rangahau Hauora a Eru Pōmare.
Edwards, S. (2009). Titiro whakamuri kia marama ai te wao nei: Whakapapa epistemologies and
Maniapoto Maori cultural identities (PhD Doctoral thesis), Massey University, Palmerston North,
New Zealand. Retrieved from http://mro.massey.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10179/1252/01front.
pdf?sequence=2
Ellis, C. (2004). The ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. Walnut Creek, CA:
AltaMira Press.
Gibson, K. (1999). Māori women and dual ethnicity: Non-congruence, “passing” and “real Māori”. In
N. Robertson (Ed.), Māori and psychology: Research and practice: The proceedings of a symposium
sponsored by the Māori and psychology unit. Hamilton, New Zealand: Māori and Psychology
Research Unit, Waikato University.
Krieger, N., Waterman, P. D., Kosheleva, A., Chen, J. T., Carney, D. R., Smith, K., W., … Samuel, L.
(2011). Exposing racial discrimination: Implicit & explicit measures – The ‘My body, my story’ study
of 1005 US-Born Black & White community health center members. PLoS ONE, 6(11), e27636.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0027636
Kukutai, T. (2004, December). The problem of defining an ethnic group for public policy: Who is Māori
and why does it matter? Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, 23, 86–108.
Kukutai, T., & Didham, R. (2009). In search of ethnic New Zealanders: National naming in the 2006
census. Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, 36, 46–62.
Moeke-Maxwell, T. (2006). Inside/outside cultural hybridity: Greenstone as narrative provocateur.
Retrieved from Mixed Race Studies: Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience website:
http://www.mixedracestudies.org/wordpress/?tag=tess-moeke-maxwell
Nikora, L. W. (1995). Race, culture and ethnicity: Organisation of Maori social groups (A working
paper). Hamilton, New Zealand: University of Waikato Psychology Department.
Robson, B., & Harris, R. (Eds.). (2007). Hauora: Maori standards of health IV. A study of the years
2000–2005. Wellington, New Zealand: Te Ropu Rangahau Hauora a Eru Pomare.
Jacquie Kidd
Centre for Mental Health Research
Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences
University of Auckland, New Zealand
140
JANE Piirto
10. POEMS WRITTEN IN SERVICE OF “SERVICE”
Introduction
Faculty members in U.S. universities are charged to perform in three areas: Teaching,
Research, and Service. Service includes contributions to the profession, institution,
college, department, students, and the community. This chapter contains 12 poems
about various categories of service: attending professional conferences, serving as a
grant reader, serving on external dissertation committees, serving on external tenure
and promotion committees, giving speeches to community groups, meeting students
outside of office hours, etc.
J. PIIRTO
AT THE EDUCATION CONVENTION, 1
The chair takes

the rest of the time
as we wend our times
to the end of the time
allotted and so it’s time
to go to lunch until it’s time
to find trends over time;
sometimes time moves slow;
sometimes time moves fast;
Oftentimes.
142
POEMS WRITTEN IN SERVICE OF “SERVICE”
AT THE EDUCATION CONVENTION, 3
Any disruptive deep innovation in science

is a result of a small group of gifted individuals
possibly supported by groundwork
of a larger group producing products
that cannot be produced except
through Open Source communication.
The nerd at the node
is known to all who matter.
143
J. PIIRTO
CHOIRS OF CHILDREN SING
Choirs of children sing

in the vast halls of
the convention center.
Their young voices lift
to the trestled domes,
surround the open pipes
in harmonies of heaven.
Tears pop.
Sudden mascara
gravitas. Why do
adults weep and sigh
when the children sing?
Soars of chills proclaim
the closest contact
we can get in life
to God.
144
DEAR EDITOR
I have read the article submitted by

Blank
And here is my decision.
Accept with minor revisions.
I have indicated my edits
Using the Review Toolbar
Set to “Blind Reviewer”
So the author doesn’t know it’s me.
I see that this author
did not cite me.
How could that be?
I am the major researcher in this field.
My ego is wounded.
That is why I must really
re-think this accept with minor revisions,
and I think I will say
Reject.
Of course, if the writer
of the article
were to rethink his/her/their literature
review and the model they/he/she/uses
and were to cite mine
I would reconsider.
I look forward to reading
this paper again, revised as suggested.
145
J. PIIRTO
DEAR PROMOTION AND TENURE COMMITTEE
I have been asked to be

An external reviewer
of the promotion/tenure
application of Dr.
(blank) (blank) (fill in the name here)
I am so pleased to do so.
Dr. (blank) (blank) is a fine
fellow/fine woman. (Check which.)
She/he has exemplary
Teaching and Service reviews.
She/He has a research line
that is on the cutting edge
and she/he has published
substantially in peer-reviewed
tier one journals in our field
and has written chapters for
his/her friends’ edited books.
He/she is my acquaintance
but we have not been good friends.
In fact, I barely know him/her.
In fact, I am wondering
How did you get my name?
Never mind.
He/she is great and deserves
this promotion and/or tenure.
Let me quote from his/her
application documents:
“I am great and deserving.
Give me promotion/tenure.”
I concur. Sincerely yours.
Trustees’ Professor (blank blank).
146
EXTERNAL READER
We are sitting at the committee table in a bright room on the 3rd floor.
I have read the dissertation and have been flown here to comment.
The candidate sits, scared, smiling tremulously.
The members of the committee are quantitative researchers.
The chair is my good friend (who died too young).
“I do have comments.”
“Qualitative data is obtained from interviews, observations, and documents.
You did no observations. Why?”
“How do you know he teaches the way he says he teaches?”
“Why did you not interview his supervisors?”
“Why did you not look at his former peer and student observations?”
“Why did you think that interviews were enough?”
“What correction do you have for bias?”
“Why did you not interview more students?”
“How can you assure validity?”
You have 400 pages of thick, dense description and data.
But why didn’t you do these things?
Why didn’t your quantitative researcher chair, make you?
I like you.
So I pass you,
recalling our raucous and winey dinner in Barcelona,
and seeing your willingness to edit, and your fear.
You send me a soft and expensive thank you – a leather diary—
by international mail,
after our celebratory lunch at the faculty club.
147
J. PIIRTO
KEYNOTE
I show the powerpoint

ripe with art, bulleted
and the poem at the end
I always read.
Tears in the audience.
“Your very words are poetry
in the lecture I mean”
she gushes.
I just want to go back to my room.
This performance, this honor—
to keynote the education conference.
I want to go back to my room
but the maid is there.
I sit on a couch in the hallway
replaying it all
word by word in my mind.
Presenting my research—
“poets have the highest suicide rate”
“performers have the lowest”
which am I?
148
PARENTS’ MEETING SPEAKER
Here, in the vocational school gymnasium,

We are gathered, I to speak, you to listen.
Or here, in the conference room at the big hotel,
We are gathered I to speak, you to listen.
Or here, at the university auditorium,
We are gathered, I to speak, you to listen.
I give my generic powerpoint
based on my book which is based on my opinion and experience
“How to Parent the Gifted and Creative.”
My 13 points:
• Provide a Private Place for Creative Work To Be Done
• Provide Materials: Musical Instruments, Sketchbooks, Fabric, Paper, Clay,
Technology, Sports Equipment
• Encourage and Display The Child’s Work, but Avoid Overly Evaluating It
• Do Your Own Creative Work and Let the Child See You Doing It
• Set a Creative Tone
• Value The Creative Work of Others
• Avoid Reinforcing Sex-Role Stereotypes
• Provide Private Lessons and Special Classes
• Use Hardship to Teach the Child Expression Through Metaphor
• Discipline and Practice Are Important
• Allow the Child to be “Odd”: Avoid Emphasizing Socialization At the
Expense of Creative Expression
• Use Humor
• Get Creativity Training
You wait patiently afterwards to speak to me about your wonderful children.
Don’t you know your very presence here tells me that they will be all right?
149
J. PIIRTO
THE GRANT APPLICATION READER, I.
Here I sit in Washington, D.C.!

Of course I haven’t seen much except
for this small, cramped, nondescript
motel paid for by the U.S. Dept. of Education,
sitting here reading these huge notebooks
3 ring giants
from randomly selected applicants
for the small amount of federal money
for gifted child programs—a mere 8 million dollars
the Javits grants.
Last night we all had dinner.
We are the mandatory American Indian,
African-American, white woman,
2 white men, even though our field
has 9 times more women than men.
I read the directions over again
rate the sections of the grant applications
on the rubric sheet.
We meet in a small conference room
across the hall
to discuss.
There is the pity proposal,
written by a classroom teacher
on an Indian reservation in New Mexico.
One resumé. Permission from the principal.
She wants $1 million for 25 kids to
take a trip to Washington, D.C.
There is the professional proposal,
by a team of Ph.D.s and graduate students
from a Research I institution
wanting us to re-fund their research center.
150
There is the regional education center proposal

a coalition of collaborating school districts,
urban, rural, suburban—
wanting to identify young gifted children.
Again. Their product will be another notebook,
a few inservices, and a plan
no one ever reads. The notebooks will be sent
to people who have too many notebooks
on their shelves already.
There is the innovative proposal,
a plan to write curriculum based on a
successful template with many iterations
of field testing, with a pre- and post-assessment.
Of course, they will fail, as they are working with
people and schools are moving targets.
They want to include migrant children,
which makes it even worse to research,
as these kids disappear from the rolls.
There is the suburban proposal.
It will not be funded, though it is the best.
Well-thought out, well-planned, with
a population that can sustain a 2 X 2 design.
Because the grant must target underserved
children of poverty, these normal, middle-class
kids in decent school districts don’t qualify.
We share our notes and discuss.
Then we run to our rooms, check out,
Cab to the airport, and we never hear
who got funded –.
The thank you note is generic.
We get paid $100 a day.
151
J. PIIRTO
THE GRANT APPLICATION READER, II.
This year
Javits grants have $5 million.
We meet in a conference call.
I am sitting at my kitchen table.
The others are in their offices
or so they say.
We will be paid $1,000.00.
We follow the powerpoint sent to us.
The U.S. Office of Education official, an old friend of mine,
warns us: “Don’t tell anyone
you’re on this proposal evaluation committee.
Don’t tell anyone.”
We are broken into teams.
We receive the 4 grant proposals
our team has been assigned
and discuss them one by one.
We follow the protocol
to rate them,
then discuss our ratings.
The moderator interprets us
and sometimes scolds us
and then cajoles us
and emails us and calls us
several times each of the three weeks.
We reach a point of near agreement.
We speak our minds.
At a conference a couple of months later
I have dinner
with one of the applicants.
We discuss lots of things
but not her grant proposal,
(which we had ranked very high).
When the funding information
is made public, I am glad
I followed the no tell admonishment
because her grant was not funded.
152
THE CAEP COORDINATOR REPORTS
at the faculty meeting.

I am on one of the committees so I must listen.
He shows us some slides:
CAEP is becoming more comfortable with the transition.
CAEP is not making “rules.” We are to make a case for meeting standards.
Meeting Standards will require effective, valid, and reliable data.
-CAEP doesn’t want expensive data.
-Sometimes the simplest data is the best.
Standard Three: Recruitment and Selectivity provided a “lively” discussion.
College and Career Readiness must become a focus of our programs.
Several areas still need concentrated work:
-Partnerships is not an area we are leveraging very well.
-Recruiting, Selectivity, and Quality
-Impact on P-12, Employability, Satisfaction
How do we train our supervisors?
“We need to come up with some common language for that.”
Baffled, we go to the breakout meetings
in various classrooms to.
Discuss.
153
J. PIIRTO
WAITING
It is after 5 on Friday.
The college is empty.
I am the only one still here.
Waiting.
She arrives, breathless,
her hair flyaway,
her cheeks rosy,
her denim teacher jumper
with its apple and alphabet letters,
appliquéd a little askew.
She talks about traffic,
an accident on the freeway,
losing her way,
finding a place to park.
Finding a place to park?
All the parking lots are empty.
“Sit down.
Settle.
Here is your study.
This is what you need to do.”
Jane Piirto
Ashland University
Ashland, Ohio, USA
154
JOHN J. GUINEY YALLOP
11. Finding Grandma

Memories, Stories, Gifts
Introduction
After a decade of research about identities (Guiney, 2002; Guiney Yallop, 2008),
particularly my own, at the age of fifty years I found out for the first time that
my material grandmother was Aboriginal. Soon afterwards, I began a new research
project to explore the memories, stories, and gifts my material grandmother had left
for her family and for her communities. The project concluded with the printing and
distribution of a limited edition book (Guiney Yallop, 2011). During my research for
this project I interviewed participants who knew my grandmother. I also visited the
communities where my grandmother was born, and where she spent her early years.
As well, I went back to my childhood community where my grandmother spent the
last sixty years of her life. In addition, I examined church and government records.
I was one year old when my maternal grandmother died. In this chapter, I describe
how I used poetry to find my grandmother, to get to know her, and to enable her to
find and to get to know me. I share details of my methodology as well as some of
the poems I wrote as part of what became a two-year study exploring memories and
stories, and from which I received a lifetime of gifts.
Context is, if not everything then, something
In my doctoral dissertation (Guiney Yallop, 2008) I used poetic inquiry,

autoethnography, and queer theory to create a research project in which I explored
emotions, identities, and communities. Titled OUT of place: A poetic journey
through the emotional landscape of a gay person’s identities within/without
communities, my dissertation had grown out of my Master of Education research
(Guiney, 2002), a narrative inquiry titled School life for gays: A critical study
through story. It was during those two research projects that I discovered the
power and the value of inquiry through story and poetry, and through the study
of one’s own life, one’s own memories, as one’s life and memories intersect with
and connect with other lives, other memories—all of which can be explored in
narrative and/or in poetry.
J. J. GUINEY YALLOP
The year following my dissertation defense, Monica Prendergast, Carl Leggo, and
Pauline Sameshima (2009) launched their ground-breaking book, Poetic Inquiry:
Vibrant Voices in the Social Sciences. Monica, Pauline and Carl, and the contributing
authors to the publication, take the reader inside, around, and through poetic inquiry.
In the same year, another space to explore poetic inquiry, this time an online space,
was offered by Monica, Carl, and Pauline, and by yet another array of authors; with
Lyn Fels as Academic Editor, Michael Boyce as Managing Editor, and Marshall
Fels Elliot designing the animation, educational insights (2009) published an issue
dedicated to poetic inquiry.
The next year, LEARNing Landscapes (2010), another online journal, published
an issue titled Poetry and Education: Possibilities and Practice. Lynn Butler-Kisber
was the Editor, with Mary Stewart as Managing Editor, David Mitchell as Copy
Editor, and Maryse Boutin as Graphic Artist for this special issue of LEARNing
Landscapes; Timothy Scobie and Jeremy Dubeau provided the Technological
Direction and Support, with Zegapi providing the Web Integration. That same year,
my own book, Of Place and Memory: A Poetic Journey (Guiney Yallop, 2010), was
born out of my doctoral dissertation.
As I was working on this chapter, another edited book, The Art of Poetic Inquiry,
edited by Suzanne Thomas, Ardra L. Cole, and Sheila Stewart (2012), joined the
growing and powerful literature that both demonstrates and celebrates poetic inquiry.
Some of those edited publications (books and journals) have grown out of the First
and Second International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry, held at the University of
British Columbia and the University of Prince Edward Island, respectively, with the
latter being co-hosted by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University
of Toronto. The Third International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry, held in October
2011 at Bournemouth University, United Kingdom, promised more publications of
and on poetic inquiry; the book in which this chapter has found a home is one of
them, and a special issue of Creative Approaches to Research (2012) edited by Kate
Galvin & Prendergast is another.
It is among this rich literature that I distributed, with humility and pride, as
well as with gratitude, a limited edition printing of a collection of poetry about my
maternal grandmother (Guiney Yallop, 2011). The book of poetry was a result of a
research project I created to explore the memories and stories I and others had of
my maternal grandmother, Mary Jane (Crocker) Harvey, and the gifts she left for her
family and communities. The catalyst for the research project was my hearing for
the first time, at fifty years of age, that my maternal grandmother was Aboriginal.
This chapter comes from that research, and from the performance I gave at the
Third International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry, and it is offered here with, again,
humility and pride, as well as with gratitude. It is also offered with hope that you, the
reader, will have here an experience like that of one of my colleagues at the Third
International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry. Catching up with me in the corridor
following my performance she said, “I am happy to have had the pleasure of meeting
your grandmother.”
156
Finding Grandma
The Genesis of this research
In July of 2009 I spent a week at Hagan’s Hospitality Home in Aquaforte,

Newfoundland. The proprietor of Hagan’s Hospitality Home was the late Rita Hagan.
Rita, although I had never met her before, was my mother’s godchild. I attended
Baltimore Regional High School with Rita’s eldest daughter, Anne Marie (www.
annemariehagan.com). Anne Marie Hagan and I weren’t friends in high school; we
respected each other, but we weren’t close. Some months before staying at Hagan’s
Hospitality Home, I was visiting my sister Catherine who was dying of cancer. Anne
Marie and I reconnected during one of those visits, and, through sharing our stories,
developed a deep friendship. It felt right, therefore, that after my surgery for prostate
cancer on April 14, 2009, and following my return to work in June, when I felt I
needed an additional emotional break, I went for a week to Hagan’s Hospitality
Home where Anne Marie was living and where I met Rita Hagan for the first time.
Rita had lived the beginning years of her life in Admiral’s Cove, a small community
with a population of just over one hundred people, the same community where I later
grew up. When her family moved to Long Run, an even smaller community, about
a mile away from Admiral’s Cove, Rita walked to Admiral’s Cove for school and
often ate lunch at my maternal grandmother’s home, which was just up the hill from
the school. Talking with Rita about my grandmother was an enlightening experience.
Although I had heard the stories about my grandmother being a midwife, I had not
heard the stories of her being a person who laid out the dead (prepared the dead for
burial), nor of her enormous generosity, particularly towards children. Rita told me
many stories of my grandmother—moving stories of my grandmother’s thoughtful
attention to a young girl who, in Rita’s words, “didn’t have much.”
Rita told me that I reminded her of my grandmother, that I stood tall like my
grandmother, that I had some of my grandmother’s mannerisms, and that I walked
like her as well. Then Rita said, “She wasn’t from around here, you know; she was
Native.”
“Native? What do you mean, ‘Native’?”
As the conversation continued, I heard, for the first time, that my maternal
grandmother was Aboriginal.
For over ten years prior to that conversation with Rita Hagan, I had been researching
identity (Guiney, 2002; Guiney Yallop, 2008), specifically my own identity, so you
can imagine the impact of this new information. It changed who I was, who I am.
Going for a drive later with Anne Marie, I said, “I know what my next major research
project is going to be.” I decided that I would research my maternal grandmother’s
life, that I would explore my own memories and other people’s memories of her, and
that I would reflect on the stories from those memories to discover some of the gifts
my grandmother, even from her grave, was continuing to offer to her family, to her
friends, to her communities.
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J. J. GUINEY YALLOP
The Process of this research
After writing up a research proposal with the help of Jennifer Phillips, a graduate
student and research assistant, and after receiving the necessary ethical review and
approval by Acadia University’s Research Ethics Board, I contacted people for
interviews. The responses were generous. Both Jennifer and I conducted interviews
with many of the participants. In some cases, I alone conducted the interviews. I
also received written stories and had conversations by phone with some participants.
I received photographs participants had of my grandmother and I took additional
photographs of the communities as I explored the places where my grandmother
lived. I spent considerable time in the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and
Labrador (PANL) at The Rooms (http://www.therooms.ca/) in St. John’s. Jennifer
also researched at the PANL. I requested true copies of official documents from
the PANL. I drove and walked through Admiral’s Cove, Cape Broyle, and Heart’s
Content. Admiral’s Cove, as noted, is where I grew up; it is also where my
grandmother spent the last sixty years of her life. Cape Broyle is a community near
Admiral’s Cove where my grandmother worked after leaving her family following
their move from Heart’s Delight to Heart’s Content. After Jennifer and I collected
the data, I used the data to write poetry. Tom MacIsaac, another graduate student and
research assistant, helped with the final editing and layout for the limited edition
printing of the book of poetry.
I decided to do a limited edition printing of the collection of poetry immediately
at the conclusion of the project because, as well as intending to use poetic inquiry to
engage with and to present the data, I wanted to return something to the participants
who had been so generous in sharing their memories and stories of my grandmother.
Given that my grandmother died in 1960 at the age of 79 years, some of the
participants who remembered my grandmother were, themselves, elders. I wanted to
distribute the book at a time when all of the participants could enjoy the collection of
poetry and the artifacts I included in the book. Between the printing and distribution
of the limited edition of the book of poetry and the publication of this chapter, two
of the participants, Rita Hagan and Herbert Crocker, died; I remember them with
gratitude, and I imagine that my grandmother has welcomed them on that other side
of death.
I had some guiding questions during my research. Who is Mary Jane Harvey?
Who is this woman, who, fifty years after her death, is still having an impact on
individuals, on families, and on communities? What memories has she left? What
are her stories? What are our stories about her? What gifts does she offer? What
might we learn from her? What might she have to teach us about who we are? What
might she be able to show us about how to live our lives?
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Finding Grandma
The Poems
Some of the poems for this work were written prior to the interviews and prior to the
collection of data from other sources. Other poems were written using the data from
sources such as the provincial archives of Newfoundland and Labrador while others
were written using notes from the interviews. The poems are an effort to capture
the stories shared with me by participants, to bring together the data collected from
other sources, and to weave a narrative of my maternal grandmother—Mary Jane
(Crocker) Harvey. While the limited edition printing contains thirty-one poems, I
selected seven of the poems from the book for inclusion in this chapter. Two of the
other poems in the limited edition printing previously appeared in other venues;
a version of “Two spirits: A gift from you” appeared in an article written with
Carmen shields, Nancy Novak, and Brenda Marshall (2011). A version of “Gathered
memories” appeared in a chapter I wrote for inclusion in The Art of Poetic Inquiry,
edited by Suzanne Thomas, Ardra Cole and Sheila Stewart (2012). I will make the
remaining poems available to wider audiences in future publications.
A Prologue Poem
This exploration begins
with a question.
Who is Mary Jane Harvey?
A grandson asking
“Who are you, Grandma?
Where are you?”
A grandmother responding
“I am here, child.
Come to me, child; come
and ask me your questions;
I will show you who I am.”
First Letter to My Grandmother Harvey
Grandma,
where are you?
What have you brought
to me?
How long have you been waiting
to give me this gift?
A new identity
to explore,
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J. J. GUINEY YALLOP
to embrace,
to know
myself,
and others,
through.
Your Journey
What kind of day was it
in the late 1800s
when you set out from Heart’s Content?
Heart’s Delight was your original home, where
on December 9, 1879, Peter Crocker, a bachelor
of twenty-six years, married
Julia Button, a spinster
at the age of twenty-four.
Scilly Cove
you often called to, your
Scilly Cove.
Around the top of the Avalon Peninsula
of Newfoundland
you would travel,
stopping, perhaps,
in St. John’s,
and a few coves along the shore
until you arrived in Admiral’s Cove,
or Lance Cove,
or Brigus South,
or Cape Broyle, the latter where you worked
in service
for a well-off family.
Was it foggy?
A clear day?
Were the waters rough,
or did you have a smooth trip around the capes?
All leavings are rough, for someone;
whose was yours for?
Were there warm, tearful good-byes,
or harsh words
that leave their sting across space and time?
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Finding Grandma
You already missed your father,

the man who cared for you
and gave you the name Crocker.
Peter died after your second sibling was born;
your heart didn’t move with your mother, Julia,
from Heart’s Delight
to Heart’s Content;
your heart not delighting
in being content,
you left to find your own new life.
And now, I travel along roads
in a boat on wheels
to find you,
and the memories, stories and gifts
you left for me,
and for others.
I search through Heart’s Content,
and Heart’s Delight
and Heart’s Desire,
and I search through others’ hearts,
desiring
to find
you,
delighting
in contentment
when I do.
And I do
find
you.
I find you in stories recalled and shared, with
affection, with
laughter, and with
tears.
I find you in memories passed on, when
those memories could be shared, when
silences could be broken.
I find you in census documents, in
church records, and in
photographs.
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J. J. GUINEY YALLOP
I find you in walks along roads

where you would have walked,
in waters
where you stepped, waters connecting places
you called home.
I find you in the old graveyard in Cape Broyle,
where we used to visit you with Mom,
your youngest
daughter.
And, finally, I find you and your parents
on the internet,
sent to me as a link, linking me
with my great grandparents,
and with a man,
your nephew,
whose father told him stories
about you.
When I Find You in the 1921
Nominal Census
of Newfoundland
When I find you in the 1921
Nominal Census
of Newfoundland,
you’re in the district of Ferryland,
on page 88,
at entry #31
in dwelling house 31,
which is household 31.
The town is Admiral’s Cove.
You’re female.
You’re the Wife
of head
of family,
which means you’re married
to Thomas Harvey,
fourteen years your senior.
The others are listed as his, too.
Sons of head of family:
Patrick Harvey, age 17;
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Finding Grandma
Albert Harvey, age 14;

Michael Harvey, age 12;
George Harvey, age 10;
Joseph Harvey,
who always said he was a Crocker,
age 3.
Daughters of head of family:
Bridget Harvey, age 6;
Jane Marie Harvey, age 2.
The census tells us that you were born in July
of 1880,
and that you were 41 years old
on your last birthday.
The census also tells us
that you were born in Admiral’s Cove,
but when I was growing up, we were told different;
Heart’s Content
is where we were told you were from.
I used to love to hear that; someone I knew
came from Heart’s Content.
But I didn’t know you really,
although you had known me, would always
know me.
NATIONALITY: English
RELIGION: Roman Catholic
Newfoundlanders are defined off shore
by the king or queen of England,
and the pope of Rome.
STATE WHETHER PERSON
IS A MICMAC INDIAN:
No.
It doesn’t say if you were asked.
It doesn’t say if you said, “Yes,
but don’t write that down.”
It doesn’t say if you said, “Not MICMAC, but...”
It doesn’t say if you sought any clarification,
or if any would have been given.
I know what no feels like
when I know it isn’t really no.
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J. J. GUINEY YALLOP
Just because I’ve been saying yes

for so long
doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten no;
besides, no remembers
even when we don’t.
An Anecdote
As part of my research, I was attempting to prove my maternal grandmother’s,

and my own, Aboriginal Ancestry, and determine the Aboriginal community my
grandmother came from. I was looking in church and government official records to
find the evidence for this proof. When, at the Poetry Reading in The Old Admiral’s
Cove Church, I was asked if I had been able to find proof of my grandmother
being Aboriginal, I said that I had not been able to find any documents that I could
say proved that she was Aboriginal, and that I felt I likely never would find such
documents. An audience member then pointed out to me that the official documents
did not appear to be that reliable anyway, given that they record my grandmother
as being born in three different places and that her age difference with her husband
changes by ten years between documents. It was at that moment I realized that I
was going in the wrong direction; I was seeking proof from church and government
documents, a Euro-centric approach to research, when what I should have been doing
is paying more attention to the stories, an Aboriginal approach to research. I began
to shift my practice away from putting the documents first to putting the stories first.
There were many stories of my grandmother being Aboriginal. The photographs I
was able to get of her tell their own story. Through those stories, both oral and visual,
I am able, again, to listen to and look at my own stories. I am hearing and seeing, and
I am telling, new stories of who I am and of where I come from.
An Expletive for Cape Freels
The teacher pulled
the map of Newfoundland
down
over the chalkboard; white chalk dust fell
from her fingers.
“Where’s Cape Freels?
Show me Cape Freels.”
The teacher held the pointer
with both hands
knuckles pointing out
from her hips;
she glanced left at the class
expecting,
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Finding Grandma
and getting,
silence.
Your youngest daughter,
the girl who would become my mother,
stood,
her body turned towards the teacher,
her head turned towards the map,
her eyes darting over the shape of the island
that always reminded me of an old woman
in a rocking chair.
“Show me Cape Freels.
Where is Cape Freels?”
The teacher glanced left again
to assure a silence
that had not been broken.
Your youngest daughter,
the girl who would become my mother,
clenched her fists, as
her mouth became more dry, as
her eyes became more moist, as
the map became less visible.
“Cape Freels.
Where is Cape Freels?
Show me Cape Freels.”
“Fuck Cape Freels.”
Mom used to tell us
that she never finished school
because she had to help out at home;
that was Mom’s story,
but I suspect Cape Freels
was her exit pass.
At home, afterwards,
what did you say to her?
I imagine that consequences
were in order,
that the work Mom claimed to us was there
did come to be there,
that you gave her another exit pass,
one she could tell us about.
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J. J. GUINEY YALLOP
I doubt that harsh words

left your mouth.
In fact, I suspect that you felt
relief
and took some delight
in the new found voice
of your youngest daughter,
the girl who would become my mother.
I suspect that you knew
that voice would resurface
somewhere along your lineage,
that a child of your youngest daughter
would someday
need to talk back to power,
power demanding,
that he know,
find,
point.
Sacred Wildness
When you were in service
in a Cape Broyle home
you danced on the floor upstairs
while downstairs,
your employers were on their knees
saying the rosary.
All that stopped
when you met my grandfather;
or maybe not.
He wasn’t the first to woo you;
none would tame you
When the Mounties arrived
to take shell-shocked Uncle George away,
and they took out the straightjacket,
you stopped them.
“He’ll leave here wearing his shirt,
and with his own jacket,”
was your message to the Mounties.
As you caught babies
from other women
166
Finding Grandma
stories were told and retold

behind doors which men wouldn’t open
without your “okay.”
After dressing one man for his final rest,
you turned to his widow,
and putting something else to rest said,
“I could’ve had him, too.”
Then one night, while your youngest son
sat sober
in preparation for grieving,
and another son lay awake
in prayer,
you
with your daughters’ and neighbour’s help,
left your rocking chair for your bed; asleep
after the priest’s blessing, you woke,
spread your crow wings,
cawed three times,
and flew home.
acknowledgements
This research was supported by grants awarded from the Acadia University
Research Fund, for which I am grateful. Gratitude is also expressed to all others who
helped in any way with this research. I am particularly grateful to the individuals
who participated in this research project. Their willingness to share stories of
my grandmother made this work possible. I am hopeful that the contents of the
limited edition book and of this chapter honour what the participants so generously
contributed. Gratitude is expressed to Rita Mary Hagan, Kevin Guiney, Mary Carew,
Anna Best, Martin Best, William Guiney, Susan Guiney, Helen Williams, Herbert
Crocker, James Harvey, Richard Harvey, Bernadette M. Carew, Molly Embanks,
Wesley George Lovelace Embanks, Mary Aspell, and Patrick Molloy.
References
Creative Approaches to Research. (2012). Special issue: Poetic inquiry. Retrieved from
http://www.aqr.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/CAR5_2.pdf
Educational Insights. (2009). Poetic inquiry. Retrieved from http://www.educationalinsights.ca/
Guiney, J. J. (2002). School life for gays: A critical study through story (Unpublished Master of Education
Research Project). St. Catharines, ON: Brock University.
Guiney Yallop, J. J. (2010). Of place and memory: A poetic journey. Halifax, NS: Backalong Books.
Guiney Yallop, J. J. (2008). OUT of place: A poetic journey through the emotional landscape of a gay
person’s identities within/without communities (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). London, ON: The
University of Western Ontario.
167
J. J. GUINEY YALLOP
Guiney Yallop, J. J. (2011). Who is Mary Jane Harvey? A grandson’s poetic exploration of memories, stories
and gifts (Limited Edition Printing).
LEARNing Landscapes. (2010). Poetry and Education: Possibilities and Practice, 4(1), Autumn.
Retrieved from http://www.learninglandscapes.ca/archives/76-autumn-2010-vol4-no1-poetry-and-
education-possibilities-and-practices
Prendergast, M., Leggo, C., & Sameshima, P. (Eds.). (2009). Poetic inquiry: Vibrant voices in the social
sciences (pp. 219–228). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Shields, C., Novak, N., Marshall, B., & Guiney Yallop, J. J. (2011). Providing visions of a different life:
Self-study narrative inquiry as an instrument for seeing ourselves in previously unimagined places.
Narrative Works: Issues, Investigations & Interventions, 1(1), 63–77. Retrieved from http://journals.
hil.unb.ca/index.php/NW/article/view/18474
Thomas, S., Cole, A., & Stewart, S. (Eds.). (2012). The art of poetic inquiry. Halifax, NS: Backalong Books.
John J. Guiney Yallop

School of Education
Faculty of Professional Studies
Acadia University, Canada
168
Lori E. Koelsch
12. The use of I poems to better

understand complex subjectivities
Madison’s I poem
I was just being
I had a skirt on
I think
I even let him
but I wouldn’t let him
I shouldn’t have
I mean
I was letting him
I shouldn’t have
I just
I don’t think
I was being
I was really excited
I didn’t really like
I hadn’t
I guess liked
I guess
I just like
I really really wanted
I didn’t know
I was just kinda
well I’m here
I like the attention
I don’t really
I usually don’t
I usually don’t
I’m not asking for it
This poem tells us something about Madison. We don’t know the facts of her
situation, and we are left without a traditional linear storyline. However, Madison’s
L. E. KOELSCH
poem guides us to focus on her use of the pronoun “I.” Why should we maintain this
focus on “I,” and what can we understand about Madison from this poetic structure?
Madison’s poem, an I poem, was created by following the steps of the Listening
Guide (e.g., Brown & Gilligan, 1992), a qualitative feminist method. Originally
called the Reading Guide, this method was developed to attend to silenced voices
and, in particular, to pay attention to the multiplicity of a single voice. This chapter
will serve as an introduction to those readers unfamiliar with the Listening Guide,
provide a literature review of research that has utilized the Listening Guide, and
situate I poems within the larger field of poetic inquiry. Through the use of examples
from my research, I will also show how I poems help us see, understand, and care
about the subjective experiences of others.
Methodological framework: The Listening Guide
While researching girls’ moral development, psychologist Carol Gilligan and

her colleagues (1982) noticed that their participants’ stories were multilayered
and complex, and that it seemed as if each individual spoke with several voices.
Gilligan felt that traditional qualitative coding methods could not capture these
multiple voices and sought to develop another method that would honor, rather than
reduce, complexity (Gilligan, Spencer, Weinberg, & Bertsch, 1992). Thus, instead
of analyzing away or pathologizing the contradictions, the Listening Guide was
developed in order to understand the layers and nuances inherent in storytelling.
Detailed, step-by-step instructions for the Listening Guide can be found in
Gilligan, Spencer, Weinberg, and Bertsch (2003), but I will briefly outline them here.
The Listening Guide is typically used with data obtained through either individual
interviews or focus groups. The interviews are then transcribed and the researcher
reads through the transcripts four times, attuned toward a different voice during
each reading. Two standard, separate voices are found during the first and second
readings. The first is the “plot voice,” which is the voice the participant uses to
tell her story; this is how the researcher determines “what” happened. The second
reading locates the “I voice,” which reveals how the participant positions herself
within her own narrative. The researcher finds and extracts all instances of the use
of the pronoun “I,” and through this process the poems (I poems) are created. In
the final two readings, the researcher reads with an ear toward contrapuntal voices,
which are “strongly differentiated and embody different perspectives” (Sorsoli &
Tolman, 2008). The nature of these voices will vary, as they are dependent on the
subject matter and theoretical framework of the research. For example, Sorsoli and
Tolman described the contrapuntal voices in a study of survivors of sexual abuse; the
first voice expressed a need to talk about the abuse and the second voice expressed a
need to forget. Neither voice was seen as more “real” than the other; both needs (to
talk about and to forget) were seen as valid.
Since its inception, the Listening Guide has been used to study many different
topics and populations. It was originally used to attend to the voices of girls
170
The use of I poems to better understand complex subjectivities
(e.g., Brown, 1997) as they spoke about topics such as their own development
(Brown & Gilligan, 1992), sexual desire (Tolman, 1994), and anger (Brown, 1998).
Researchers have also used the Listening Guide to listen to the voices of boys (Way,
2001), urban youth (Way, 1998), “third culture kids” (Walters & Auton-Cuff, 2009),
young women with BRCA mutations (Werner-Lin, 2008), individuals with cancer
(Kayser, Watson, & Andrade, 2007), first-generation college students (Stieha, 2010),
dieticians (Gingras, 2010), and other populations. The Listening Guide is appropriate
to use when the researcher expects to hear nuanced tales and works particularly well
when the subject matter is taboo (e.g., girls’ sexual desire) and complex.
I poems
One way to express the complexity of voices is through poetry. After locating the
I voice during the second reading, the researcher can complete an I poem, like
Madison’s poem in the beginning of this chapter. In order to construct the I poem, the
researcher extracts instances of “I” and includes the accompanying verb to create an
“I phrase.” Some researchers (e.g., Kiegelmann, 2007) also include other pronouns
that refer to the self (e.g., “me”). In addition to the pronoun and accompanying verb,
the researcher may include other words to complete the “I phrase,” but these phrases
are typically kept short. Words may be omitted, but none should be added, and the
order of the phrases is maintained.
This poem allows us to understand participants as beings with complex
subjectivities. By returning to Madison’s poem, for example, we can see her as a
feeling (“I was really excited”), opinionated (“I didn’t really like”), thinking (“I
think”), desiring (“I really really wanted”) subject. Additionally, we can see the ways
in which she has narrated her own story. At times she judged her own behavior (“I
shouldn’t have”), at other times she asserted herself (“I’m not asking for it”), and
at other times she was not sure how to understand or convey her experience (“I
guess”). The I voice resists simple categorization; by isolating these phrases, we
can’t conflate her story with similar narratives and we can’t reduce her to a simple
stereotype.
Although the Listening Guide was created within the field of psychology,
examples of I poems can be found in many other disciplines, including education
(Stieha, 2010), reading (Woodcock, 2005), and business (Balan, 2005). Despite
using the same general guide, these poems vary. For example, Woodcock (2005)
kept the I phrases of her poems fairly short (about 3–4 words per phrase) and
generally included only one instance of “I” per phrase. Balan (2005), on the other
hand, used longer phrases and often included multiple instances of “I” per phrase
(e.g., “I think my judgment was impaired, I don’t think I was probably as clear”
[p. 73]). Although longer I phrases can also be found in other I poems (e.g., Zambo
& Zambo, 2013), this strays from the original intent and structure of I poetry. While
using longer phrases does not necessarily create a bad poem, Gilligan, Spencer,
Weinberg, & Bertsch (2003) recommend “cutting the text close and focusing in on
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L. E. KOELSCH
just the I pronoun, the associated verbs and few other words” (p. 163) in order to
maintain focus on the participant’s subjective experience of her sense of “I.” By
adding many more words, the I poem begins to resemble the plot voice and loses
focus on the “sounds, rhythms, and shifts in…[the] usages of ‘I’” (Gilligan et al.,
2003, p. 163). With too many details, the reader can become invested in the story
rather than the storyteller.
Despite agreeing with Gilligan, I have found it challenging to create sparse
poems, particularly when the plot voice is rich and compelling. I study the sexual
experiences of young women, particularly experiences that are troubling, confusing,
or unwanted. It is difficult to create poems that leave out the details of their stories;
however, over time I have found the value and beauty in repetitive, simple I phrases.
The following I poem was created a few years prior to Madison’s poem, which
appears in the beginning of this chapter.
Megan’s I poem1
I didn’t think anything about it being weird
because I trust,
I have a certain level of trust
I don’t have any classes with [him]
Um, I talk to
I mean
I’ve hugged, it’s not like high school
I mean
I’ve hugged
I still didn’t do anything
I don’t know why
But I didn’t, didn’t
I just like pretended
I just acted like it never had even happened
I never told anyone
I had a friend who was actually sexually abused
I don’t know
I guess
I’m just like trying to deal with it
I want to see if
I can report
right before I graduate
I mean it wasn’t that big of a thing
I don’t have to
I
I definitely would not want to be alone with him again
I don’t
172
I think
I’ll just…
I don’t know
I’m just trying to learn from that situation
Next time I get into that situation
I just wanted to act normal

So I just did
and I don’t know
If I handled it right or wrong
I don’t
I just…
So I just want…
While writing this earlier I poem, I was concerned about the narrative structure. I
wanted it to tell a story. For example, I added a word, “him,” to the line “I don’t have
any classes” since this added to the narrative flow of the poem. I wanted the reader
to be aware that Megan was referring to the man in her story. Although it is still a
fairly sparse poem in comparison with other examples (e.g., Balan, 2005; Zambo &
Zambo, 2013), some of the I phrases are quite long and include details that direct the
focus from self to plot. Rather than targeting the shifts in Megan’s use of I, the poem
has a broader focus. I still believe that it is an interesting and valuable poem in its
own right and that the narrative structure makes it compelling, but the focus is not
quite on Megan’s subjectivity. Megan’s poem can be contrasted with Jodi’s poem,
which was created during the same study as Madison’s poem and several years after
Megan’s poem.
Jodi’s I poem
I mean
I’ve been
I was
and I didn’t want
but I did
I mean
I mean
if I didn’t
I just didn’t
I was just
I
I don’t wanna deal with that
so I just
I think
I guess
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L. E. KOELSCH
I kind of liked him

I was
I was like
I’m really tired
I have work
I was just
I was just
I can
I was like
I’ll just pretend
I don’t know
I was just like
I
I mean
I was just like
I didn’t want to
I was like
I didn’t want
I was like
I knew
I was like
why I would
I just continued
By including only the pronoun “I,” the accompanying verb, and very few additional
words, the focus is on Jodi’s subjectivity. As with Madison’s poem, we can look at
each line and attend to the “sounds, shifts, and rhythms.” For example, we can note
how often Jodi used negative statements such as “I didn’t” or “I don’t.” We can also
note how Jodi used phrases that suggest she wanted the listener to understand her
position (e.g., “I mean”). What we can’t really gather from the poem is the content
of Jodi’s story. In contrast to Megan’s poem, we have less of an understanding of the
plot of the story. While the two poems have a similar structure and follow the basic
I poem guidelines, Megan’s poem contains more details about the story, while Jodi’s
poem maintains a focus on her voice.
Even with varying phrase lengths and other differences, all of the poems presented
above and described in the preceding paragraphs are I poems. Other researchers,
in contrast, overtly modified the poetic structure such that they are no longer true
I poems, and have different goals. Walters and Auton-Cuff (2009), for example,
created “woman poems,” which focused on the complex process of moving from the
identity of “girl” to “woman.” Kayser, Watson, and Andrade (2007) composed “we
poems,” in which they isolated the participant’s uses of “we” to create “we phrases.”
These poems highlighted the relational nature of participants’ stories. In another
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interesting iteration, Woodcock (2010, p. 374) constructed a poem divided into four
columns (I, You, It, and They) with phrases arranged under the appropriate heading.
In this version of the I poem (which Woodcock refers to as a voice poem, an earlier
term for I poetry), the reader is able to see when the participant discussed herself (“I
remember”), distanced herself from her own story by switching to second-person
narrative style (“you feel”), referred to an object (“it makes me”), and posited the
positions of others (“these women”). In this iteration, Woodcock (2010) kept the
phrases short so that her version of the poem maintained a close focus on subjectivity
rather than story.
Not all researchers who have used the Listening Guide created poems as part
of the process (e.g., Brown, 1997; Gingras, 2010; Werner-Lin, 2008). It’s not
clear why some leave out this step, although it is not unusual for researchers to
modify the Listening Guide. For example, Werner-Lin (2008) used the Listening
Guide to develop codes, although the Listening Guide was developed partially in
response to the assertion that the “coding process ‘disappeared’ much of what was
most compelling in narratives” (Sorsoli & Tolman, 2008, p. 496). In other cases,
researchers noted that they constructed I poems, but that the poems were not included
in the write-up that was eventually published (e.g., Kayser, Watson, & Andrade,
2007). It is unclear if the authors chose not to include the I poems or if they were
asked to remove the poems by peer reviewers or journal editors.
I poems and poetic inquiry
As part of the arts-based research movement, poetic inquiry has been gaining
traction in the social sciences over the past few decades (Leavy, 2009; Prendergast,
2009). By incorporating traditions from the arts, researchers can engage with data in
different and meaningful ways. Leavy (2009) argued that poetic representation “is
not simply an alternative way of presenting the same information; rather, it can help
the researcher evoke different meaning from the data, work through a different set
of issues, and help the audience receive that data differently” (p. 64). Poetry may be
the best way to present data if the goal is to engage with the reader/audience at an
emotional level. Some researchers argue that poetry carries emotional meaning better
than traditional prose, which is different from natural speech patterns. Richardson
(2002), for example, has argued that poetic form is more true to human speech, given
that human speech rarely follows a linear narrative form. Indeed, when I have shared
minimally edited quotes with participants as part of the member check process, they
have often been shocked by how dissimilar their speech is to the dialogue they see
on television or in movies. Instead, raw participant data is often fragmented; it is
filled with false starts, fillers such as “um,” and meandering sentence structure. The
researcher certainly has a heavy hand in crafting poems out of a participant’s words,
but perhaps it is not so different from the process of crafting a narrative.
Given that arts-based research is different from traditional inquiry, there must
be separate standards for rigor and trustworthiness. When derived from interview
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L. E. KOELSCH
transcripts, the researcher must decide how to apply a poetic structure while also
maintaining some sort of fidelity to the participant data. Sometimes, this is in the
form of predetermined rules. Glesne (1997), for example, created three rules for
her poetic transcription: 1) the words must be the participant’s own, 2) the phrases
can be taken from anywhere in the transcript, and 3) the words and phrases should
maintain the participant’s rhythm. Glesne clearly indicated that she did not intend for
these rules to be universal, but it is important to note that she carefully considered
structure both before and during the poetic transcription process. Her rules encompass
a respect of poetry as a craft as well as a respect of her participant. For I poems, it
is important that the researcher follow the rules set forth by the Listening Guide in
order to maintain the integrity of the poem. If the researcher decides to modify the
structure, it is then necessary to clearly explain and justify the changes.
Leavy (2009) argued that poetic inquiry requires extra rigor since one must pay
attention to the craft of poetry itself. In her critique of inferior poetry, Piirto (2002)
noted that some qualitative researchers without formal training or experience in the
discipline of poetry nonetheless created poems as their final projects. While it is
unclear how Piirto would judge the I poems presented in this chapter (and in other
published works), it is important to note that the Listening Guide provides a poetic
structure. For the researcher who has an inclination to produce poetry but does not
have much formal training, I poetry provides a set of guidelines that, when used
properly, produce the terse, rhythmic I phrases that form the poems.
I poems, as part of the Listening Guide, were developed out of the tradition of
feminist psychology, and those who use the Listening Guide are not typically (to my
knowledge) in dialogue with the current arts-based movement. I poems were created
by psychologists, not poets, and were not intended to be the final endpoint of a
research process. Instead, they are part of a larger method, and are typically presented
with additional narrative analysis. Despite this, I poems share many similarities
with other forms of poetic inquiry from the arts-based movement. Like these other
forms of poetic inquiry, I poems are concerned with the affective experiences of
participants (Pendergast, 2009). These multiple experiences are presented instead
of a single authoritative judgment about a certain topic or group of participants.
Arts-based research, in general, favors complexity and resists an omniscient narrator
(Brearley, 2000; Furman, 2006). While the arts may often strive to access truths
about the world, subjective experience is highlighted when I poems are used as part
of the research process.
In her review of the state of poetic inquiry, Pendergast (2009) divided research
poetry into three categories: 1) literature-based poems, which are often theoretical
or critical in nature; 2) researcher-voiced poems, in which the researcher uses her/
his own notes, memories, or journals to create poems about the research process; and
3) participant-based poems, which are composed of data drawn from participants.
I poems belong to this last category, also referred to as “Vox Participare.” This
category has received the most methodological attention and acceptance, which is
likely due to the fact that the poems can be traced back to participant data and thus
176
appear somewhat objective (Lahman et al., 2010). For those disciplines grounded in
positivism, this type of poetry is most palatable.
seeing, understAnding, and caring
Trish’s I poem
I first lost my virginity
I was drunk
I’ve ever had
I was like
I’m not ready for this
I was like
I was a senior
no I was a junior
like I said
I was like “no”
“I want to wait”
I-he like put it in
I don’t know
I was
I might as well
I obviously didn’t want to
While using poetry does not guarantee that a listener will approach these stories with
an empathetic eye and ear, the I poem structure directs the reader to the subjective
experience of the storyteller. Through the use of I poems, we are able to see how
Trish positioned herself within the story; we can understand the complex way she
understood her own story and we can care for her, rather than judge her. If we look
at Trish’s poem, for example, we can see instances in which she clearly stated her
resolve (“I’m not ready for this”; “I was like ‘no’”), and the moment in her narration
when she shifted from an active agent to someone else’s object (“I-he like put it
in”), how she is still unsure how to process her experience (“I don’t know”), and
how she eventually broke her resolve and agreed to participate (“I might as well”)
while still maintaining her original perspective (“I obviously didn’t want to”). We can
understand that she both held a strong opinion and engaged in an act counter to her
opinion. Additionally, we see how the poem began in the past tense (“I was drunk”)
and shifted to the present (“I’m not ready for this”), perhaps indicating the immediacy
of her feelings and lasting impact of this experience. In the poem, Trish spoke as both
a strong woman with a strong opinion and also as someone who submitted.
We will never be able to determine how close to the truth Trish’s story comes,
and we don’t know what version of events we would hear from the man involved
in her story. What the second reading of the Listening Guide method highlights,
however, is how Trish narrated her story. Doucet and Mauthner (2008) explain that
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L. E. KOELSCH
what we can understand is the “narrated subject.” While we cannot determine how
well Trish’s story matches up with the objective truth (indeed, when can we ever
determine such a thing?), we can focus on honoring Trish’s subjectivity. We can
better care for her by listening to both her agency and her submission. By using
poetic inquiry, Trish’s story is left open and her voice is in the forefront.
conclusion
As part of the Listening Guide method (e.g., Gilligan, Spencer, Weinberg, & Bertsch,
2003), I poems were created to carefully listen to the voices of girls. Since its
inception, the Listening Guide has been used to study various topics and populations
with fidelity, more or less, to the original structure and intent of the method. I poems
present a unique opportunity to see (listen to), understand, and care about others.
Due to the open language of poetry, readers/listeners are able to engage at a personal
level (Todres & Galvin, 2008). Created from the second reading of the Listening
Guide, this openness is directed toward the participant’s experience of self. A well-
crafted I poem does not impose a linear narrative or single voice; rather, it allows
for fluid movement between different moments and contradictions. By maintaining
a singular focus on “I,” we can understand our participants as complex and often
contradictory beings. With this understanding, we can better care for our participants
and their stories.
Note
1
This poem originally appeared in Koelsch and Knudson (2008).
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Lori E. Koelsch
Psychology Department
Duquesne University
Pittsburgh, PA
USA
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SEAN WIEBE
13. WHAT IS GOOD FOR THE POEM IS

GOOD FOR THE POET
An Experiment in Poetic-Psychoanalytic Therapy
INTRODUCTION
As Kittay (2001) suggests, and later Sedgwick (2002), literary myth holds promise
for better understanding the deep-rooted systems and processes which produce and
enforce normalcy. One predominant human myth is transcendence of the body, with
variations from ‘enhancing’ the aesthetic body to complete mastery of the body,
culminating in the self—as master—transforming the body at will. Informed by
Lacanian theory, it seems reasonable to understand the normalcy myth as avoidance
of the body—where the self exists autonomously and separately from a body which,
antithetical to the self’s desires, might limit the self in place, time, culture, or history.
With minimal flexibility in thinking, it is a small stretch to connect normalcy of
body to textual norms, where, for example, the question of what is a good poem
is metaphorically understood in relation to possessing a good body: consider
Faulkner’s (2009) thorough work which explores the human body/poem connection:
on the one hand there are “sloppy [and] ill-conceived” poems (para. 1) which are
not aesthetically pleasing. Then, on the other hand, there are “physically fit” poems
with lots of muscles and no fat (para. 32). Faulkner’s (2009) serious investment in
her project (para. 2) comes from a frustration that some poets have too much poetic
licence (para. 1), and she is calling for increased attention to craft so that poets,
particularly academic poets, might prevent shoddy or sloppy-looking poems from
appearing in their poetic representations (para. 1). As with the human body, efforts
to separate the wheat from the chaff are more pimply than smooth skin, and, as
to be expected, Faulkner’s participants struggled with defining good poems and/or
giving descriptions of good poetic processes (para. 9, 16). One participant resists the
question of good/bad poetry, locating “these absolutes” in his early career thinking
(para. 9). Other participants often become overly existential, mentioning the need
for good poems to be authentic (para. 12, 15) and show vulnerability (para. 14). In
my view, aesthetic projects such as Faulkner’s propagate normalcy myths of the
body, both in the diegetic sense (the poem’s body) and in the extradiegetic sense (the
human body).1 Below I will consider the aesthetic propagation of the normal body
through a Lacanian lens, arguing that an autonomous self which can master the body
to its desires is a form of body avoidance.
S. WIEBE
ESTABLISHING A THEORY FOR ADDRESSING THE POEM AS A LIVING BEING
Taking as my starting point Bunia’s (2010) claim that there is epistemological merit
in examining the contiguous relationship between an author/speaker’s diegetic
and extradiegetic presence, my thesis is that addressing a poem as a living being
is more than just a playful literary trope, and that such an address offers enough
provocation in the social imagination to explore and contest normalcy myths and
their propagation of body avoidance. Emphasizing the transformative potential in the
nature of address, Lewis Hyde (1983) suggests that “the way we treat a thing [like the
body of a poem] can sometimes change its nature” (p. xiii). Having a Heideggerian
sense that Hyde’s point can be applied to the nature of being, I address the poem “Go
Out into the World Now” (GOWN) as a living being, affording to it an autonomous
presence which can master its body. I develop this extradiegetic possibility via the
patient-analyst relationship as commonly understood in the traditions of literary
psychoanalysis and clinical psychiatry.
Given that there is already a familiar language for labelling and speaking of
poems as having bodies, addressing the unconscious of a poem seems like a natural
step in the evolution of what it might mean to be a poem. The epistemological
merits of understanding the phenomenon of a poem’s being can be situated
historically via the similar struggle for psychoanalysis to be accepted as making
legitimate contributions to the human sciences. Recalling Freud’s interview with
Einstein in 1934, Sels (2011) situates psychoanalysis between science and myth,
emphasizing that “Freud and Einstein were kindred spirits in as far as both of
their theories dealt with the relativity of (systems of) knowledge” (p. 56). That the
psychoanalytic process can itself become part of the diegetic world of the myth—
as it does below in my experiment with poetic-psychoanalytic therapy (PPT)—is
consistent with Sels’ conception of knowledge systems. She writes: “[Mythology]
resembles psychoanalysis itself: both disciplines deal with the irrational, both work
with stories, and both have to do with interpreting metaphorical language” (p. 57).
Delineating the controversy between Freud and Jung, Sels also points out how
late in life Freud came to accept Jung’s approach to psychoanalysis “as just one
more way of telling stories” (p. 59). According to Hearns (2011), “Whether it is
through the psychoanalytic interpretation of an unconscious mechanism or a critical
interpretation of a poem, both psychoanalyst and literary critic become one and the
same” (para. 2).
My hope is that as we enter GOWN’s emotional world, the PPT process will
offer a new methodology for considering the relationship of poets to their poems.
In GOWN’s specific case, my intent is to consider the deep hurt of internalized
abnormalcy in new poems. I am interested in how normalcy takes up residence
in the social imagination as its chief occupant, barring the door to anything other
than an “independent” and “able-bodied” subject (Kittay et al., 2005). By way of
a disclaimer, I will point out that I am not a clinical psychiatrist, and, while I am
growing in my understanding of Lacan, I am neither in any formal, disciplinary
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WHAT IS GOOD FOR THE POEM IS GOOD FOR THE POET
sense a literary psychoanalyst. PPT is not a writing therapy per se, but nevertheless
acknowledges Bishop’s (1993) concern that therapy implies a trained expert. Bishop
resolves the “authority” issue by emphasizing the process (p. 504). PPT similarly
privileges process, and presupposes potential practitioners will employ poetic
license prudently and prepare personal patient protocols that pertain to the process
proviso. With emphasis on process, my license to proceed is undoubtedly a poetic
one, and with apologies to Faulkner, and likely a good deal of others, I will continue
with this Frankensteinian project and connect the electrical leads to the body of a
poem and wait for lightning to strike.
CONTEXTUALIZING A METHOD FOR POETIC-PSYCHOANALYTIC THERAPY
I find heartening Leggo’s (2011) turn from the question of “What is a good poem?”
to “What is a poem good for?” Leggo’s shift in focus from the individually good
poem to the social systems within which the poem exists also acknowledges the
disciplinary tension between literary understandings of poetry and the use of poetry
in the social sciences. Following Leggo, James (2011) has posed what might be
understood as the therapist’s question, “What is good for the poem?” (October 20th,
2011, personal communication), and it is this question which I will pursue as it
addresses the poem as a living body, and in so doing makes it possible to consider
body avoidance in the ways poets propagate poetic myths in the practice of their
craft.
PPT, concerned primarily with unconscious utterances, addresses the poem’s text
as the interior process of thinking. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis, the PPT
practitioner listens for the poems’ unconscious desires and how these are constructed
in the symbolic domain. Understanding the poem’s tendency toward closing the gap
between signifier and signified to create a coherent narrative, the PPT practitioner
attends to the unconscious energies which seem to be driving the narrative. PPT
is thus (1) providing the expressive space whereby internal constructions of the
coherent narrative can be dialogically considered, (2) restoring the gap between
signifier and signified to open an imaginative capacity for a more dynamic and
flexible self, (3) co-constructing with the poem new scripts for understanding the
self-other connection, and (4) creating with the poem reflective processes to facilitate
her/his own re-authoring.
DESCRIPTION OF THE VISITS: THE SOCIAL WORLD

OF THE DEVELOPING POEM
GOWN entered my office having been repeatedly rejected for publication. He also
reported a significant change in socio-economic status; within the past year he had
graduated as part of a manuscript for an MFA program, but was now underemployed,
uninsured, and living in a city park as part of a local occupy movement. That GOWN
admitted ongoing feelings of rejection is connected to my provision of an expressive
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S. WIEBE
space for his narrative to be considered; even so, his sequencing of events leading
up to his feeling of rejection is vague and inconsistent. The only consistency in his
narrative is the recollection of a painful workshop experience where surgical scrutiny
lead to significant feelings of body loss. I was able to verify that a subsequent lack
of post workshop care also contributed to GOWN’s ongoing feelings of depression.
Knowing others who have benefitted from workshop/surgery, immediately
striking to me in GOWN’s narrative was my own feeling of annoyance. After the
first session, when I considered my countertransference reactions, it was hard not to
conclude that the social data of my world would also be relevant. Two weeks later,
GOWN told a variant story of the same workshop/surgery and lack of post op care,
and described himself as being hopeless and depressed. He attributed his difficulties
to being alone, and then confirmed that keeping up his physical appearance was
difficult while not living in a stable home.
During the third session, in addition to repeating the dominant narrative of the
traumatic workshop/surgery, GOWN said, “I’m going to keep coming until you get
it right.” During that session GOWN also revealed a potential family connection,
his brother, who could help him get back on track. But when I contacted his brother
and there was no interest in being available to help, it was clear that GOWN was
on his own. With the exception of a final visit a few months later, GOWN stopped
our communications. He returned to say goodbye and report that he was going to be
traveling to the east coast to stay with his mother who had recently taken ill. GOWN
reported that she was a nurse, and that it was now his turn to take care of her.
ANALYSIS OF THE TRANSCRIPTS FROM THE VISITS:

NORMALCY AND SELF-HATRED
In my view, GOWN could not be properly considered until the functioning of

the social systems of valuing poetry was addressed first. When I tried to contact
additional players in the drama of GOWN’S rejection, it became clear that in the
social world encompassing GOWN there was little sense of an ethical responsibility
to care for poems that had undergone workshop/surgery. I was able to find a chart
dated a few months earlier where one editor wrote, “reject, submit elsewhere” and
then promptly discharged GOWN to the digital trash bin. I also found out that
GOWN came to expect this treatment, visiting journal after journal in vain hopes
that another exam would change his bodily reception. I was also a significant person
in this drama: Looking back, GOWN’s observable transference attachment to me
pointed to a lack of alliance with anyone, which in all likelihood, also points to the
loss of his maternal home and an inability to grieve that loss. His determination that
I would get it right reveals an idealized maternal expectation that she would get it
right.
In reference to the repeated rejection of his body, I also wonder what
physiological changes might have developed had GOWN been able to acknowledge
his loss and adequately mourn. To highlight one of my main points, it appears his
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mother was the soothing defense against the panoptic judgments of his environment.
Every rejection enforced a dominant culture norm, and without his maternal defense,
he lived in fear of being insignificant, of not being taken seriously. During PPT, I
was not able to find an opening to discuss my wonderings, and that lack was parallel
to GOWN’s defensive maternal projections and self-displacements, the point being
that because he was not presenting as having any difficulty, his learned self-hatred
was carried internally but projected as conflict with those around him. GOWN had
turned the anger toward his own body, and he needed a means by which he could
deconstruct these destructive beliefs. In my mediating role, I was not able to act as a
mainstay for healthy self-functioning.
DESCRIPTION OF THE BODY
Go Out into the World Now
I named you Judith Scott, no Judas reference here, by which we can profit,
ah, the excess which cannot be contained,
and so we bury it to signify what you say without a voice:
Go out into the world now and shake it up, get down, baby, baby, bow down.
How does an outsider go out? Is the same costume applied,
a dab and puff to soften up the hard edges, to cover over
the potential moment of a pimple being noticed? Great Scott! Is that not a
pimple breaking through the skin, even now bleeding you,
another gaze as sharp as nails pinched together on opposable thumbs?
I send you mail, attach a letter to the underside of the paperclip,
dog eared, wedged kitty-corner, a take care of this bear note
as a query for adoption, to leave you here
for your own good, for the prospect of better prospecting,
that chance you might be more than a lump of coal, stand on your own
two feet, evolve, walk right into the mailroom, up the elevator,
take the transporter to the bridge.
ANALYSIS OF THE BODY: A SELF OTHERING SUBJECT POSITION
Consistent with Lacanian psychoanalysis, my focus was to open a more imaginative

capacity for a dynamic and flexible self by restoring a gap between the signifiers and
signifieds that constrained GOWN’s understanding of self. As relayed in his visits,
GOWN had been repeatedly rejected during the review process and had internalized
into a singular script a coherent story of his abnormal body. In a short period of
time, his feelings of powerlessness and inferiority became self-imposed. As is the
case with human bodies in contexts of inferiority, internalized abnormalcy is when
derogatory messages about the body are received into a coherent belief of the self.
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S. WIEBE
This belief then regulates incoming messages and fits them into a central narrative
that defines the self. As such, the individual becomes an active agent in narrating
his own abnormalcy. All subsequent messages are constructed and internalized to
confirm the abnormal body.
This self othering process can take a self-hate trajectory, depending on the
strength of external conditions which make up what normal is, and whether the self
projects them as a preferential aesthetic. In GOWN’s case the external conditions
for normal are the anthologized poems of English literature: these dominant poems
celebrated in the literature need not have produced any overt coercion or threat,
as the values and codes of the dominant poems are self-enforced and perpetuated.
Through the PPT process, health and wholeness in the poetic body would have been
dependent on GOWN’s ability to construct different scripts of internalization for
understanding the self-other connection. Had the visits continued, this would have
involved locating GOWN’s psychoanalytic subject positions which he could not
verbalize directly except as significations in the poetic body.
Within GOWN’s body, the most dominant ‘I’ position is the namer, presumably
his mother (line 1). Second in prominence to the mother voice is the plural “we,” a
combination of the maternal strength of the first ‘I’ position and the dependent body
(lines 1–2). The “we” subject position receives profit and buries it: this is consistent
with Judas narratives that foreground guilt and shame as part of the repression.
The third ‘I’ position is narcissistically fragile and receives the euphemistic subject
position of “you” (lines 2, 6, 8, 10–12); it is characterized by its distance from the
maternal—“an outsider” (line 4). In GOWN’s body there are no direct answers to
what is being repressed, the nature of his guilt, or his fantasy projections.
As is apparent, PPT is not mechanistic in the sense that following a methodology
ensures an accurate reading for constructing new scripts of self-belief. However,
understood within the myth of transcendence of the body, where mastery of the body
is a kind of body avoidance, it is possible to offer additional thoughts on what might
be employed to rescript GOWN’s destructive self-narrative.
Inscribed in GOWN’s body is a combination of debilitating insecurity and doubt.
His strength and future hope are relayed entirely via the dominant maternal subject
position. The conviction of his body, initially articulated without a voice, “get down,
baby, baby” (line 3), suggests lightness and dancing, but the ambiguity of that hope
withers as the imagery soon becomes subservient and passive. There is no further
statement of hope for GOWN to push his way out or express a thought distinct from
the maternal subject. The imagery of skin seems to suggest GOWN’s individuated
thoughts and feelings trying to get out: the more intense the efforts for escape,
the more suffocating the skin becomes. GOWN appears to have regressed to (and
become trapped in) the mother-infant body merger. This has the effect of creating
“pimples” which break the surface but are undesirable and eventually cause bleeding
within, similar to the aggression Lacan theorized in the mirror stage when the infant
can see a more whole and capable version of his/her body-self.
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In his lecture, “Desire and the Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet” Lacan explains
how a person’s desire can be lost in another’s (as in Hamlet’s case), and that this
tragedy of desire is resolved through death. Similarly for GOWN, the dependence
of his desire on the stronger maternal figure will likely only be re-oriented through
death. What needs to die is the fantasy body that is nurtured by a maternal narrative
that equates a good body with good prospects. The fantasy body is alluring: the
script says GOWN’s body can be transformed through strength of character and
dedication. But the kind of hope the maternal narrative provides turns out to be
self-destructive because it preempts the possibility of becoming satisfied with the
body in its present form. Because the self-narrative has become so dependent on
the maternal narrative for survival, what needs to die is the fantasy body. While
tragic, the resulting catharsis, as theorized in Aristotle’s Poetics, is soul-cleansing
and as good as anything a physician might prescribe (Daniels & Scully, 1992). Had
GOWN’s visits continued, the gradual process of PPT would focus on helping the
poetic body experience individuation and create the conditions for establishing
a healthier script for self reflection. The building blocks are the thoughts, ideas,
beliefs, and feelings that can mourn and come to accept imperfection, loss, tragedy,
and death.
DISCUSSION: THE WHOLE POEM AS DIALOGICAL SELF
DeSalvo (1999) emphasizes the importance of sufferers verbalizing their feelings

(p. 168). To not do so, she says, is more the source of trauma than the trauma event
itself (p. 168). For DeSalvo the important parts of the verbalizing process include
a non-judgmental space and focused efforts to reinterpret unyielding negative
thoughts (p. 90). Bird (2000) adds that the object of verbalizing is to deconstruct a
subjectified-singular understanding of self so that it can be experienced as “always
in relationship” (p. 7). Leggo (2007) brings a poet’s perspective to this important life
process of understanding positionality within the self:
[I am] always seeking to know who I am, to gain a clear sense of identity and
positionality in the midst of memory, desire, heart, and imagination, especially
in relation to others… We are always engaged in a meaning-making process of
becoming human. (p. 27)
Later in his paper, Leggo considers Jean Vanier’s (1998) important concept of
being human (pp. 30–31). The distinction between a “human being” and a “human
becoming” importantly highlights that wholeness and health are less about knowing
a singular and stable self and more about the journey of not yet being a being. I
am a human becoming. This poetic and linguistic shift respects the complexity and
mystery of the dialogical exchange of various selves within an individual body.
Updating his earlier work with Kempen (Hermans & Kempen, 1993), Hermans
(2002) describes the self as not only dialogical (having multiple ‘I’ positions that
each have a voice), but also as socially constructed. His point being that within the
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S. WIEBE
body the dialogue of the selves is not equitable: “The dialogical self works as a
society with oppositions, conflicts, negotiations, cooperation and coalitions between
positions… Like a society, the self is based on two principles: intersubjective
exchange and social domination” (p. 147). As illustrated above, an important aspect
of PPT is addressing the multiple ‘I’ positions in the poem’s body that present as a
singular and stable subject, while also considering each ‘I’ in the lived experience
that is represented to the PPT practitioner.
Looking back on my sessions with GOWN, part of the difficulty was creating an
opening for verbalizing painful memories. GOWN had developed a strong defensive
script which allowed him to survive within his narrative of self-hatred. Combined
with a somatic culture which so emphasizes bodies, it is not surprising that GOWN’s
avoidance of loss and suffering parallels a cultural dissatisfaction with anything
disordered, disabled or displeasing. Were GOWN able to verbablize his feelings,
it would have been helpful to pursue the notion of being a “human becoming,”
constructing with GOWN a capacity to employ a self-narrative that allows for failure
and loss. What GOWN did want was for me to “get it right.” This desire is also
consistent with a kind of somatic pathology in our culture. Presumably I was needed
to intervene on the body of the poem, to cut out anything that creates feelings of
hurt. The foremost revisionary practice, to cut, thus becomes commensurate with
the surgeon’s approach to providing medical service. GOWN’s desires are not all
that surprising given a somatic culture that cannot listen to a poem, cannot hear the
circumstances of her/his conception, nor hear the existential pangs of brokenness.
Within the larger social imagination of perfection, of action, of value conscious time,
GOWN’s being a human becoming (a kind of first draft poem) is functionally without
value, and what the revisionist cannot help but imagine is the potential of the poem
(social preferences), and so goes about getting rid of the symptoms and behaviors
which might interfere with a better-bodied poem emerging, the fantasy body of the
“good” copy. As noted above, not only is the self dialogical, but it becomes subject
to the most dominant voice—in GOWN’s case, it is a voice of self-hatred nourished
by a maternal and cultural aesthetic of better bodies.
CONCLUSIONS
Following Bunia’s (2010) claim that there is epistemological merit in examining

the contiguous relationship between an author/speaker’s diegetic and extradiegetic
presence, my task has been to address GOWN as a living being in order to consider
how, in our practices of reading and writing poetry, the pursuit of improving a
poem’s body carries the same traumatic possibilities for the poet. With this in mind,
I return to the questions of—what is a good poem, what is a poem good for, and what
is good for the poem—as these will serve to make a short application for those who
work with poetry in educational settings.
For teachers and students, it seems to me that the difficulties one experiences with
poetry are related to the singular pursuit of the good poem without simultaneously
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considering what is good for the poem. Like Frankenstein’s drive to create a perfect
specimen by selecting the ideal body parts from graveyards, the teacher/student
pursuit of the fantasy “good” poem all too often leads to abhorrence of the created
specimen. This avoidance of the poetic body is underscored by the fact that poetry
simply receives so little social attention both inside and outside the classroom.
Genuinely listening to poetry simply takes more time that is typically allotted for
it in the formal curriculum. What is good for a poem is a reading, a safe reading,
a place where the poem can exist, can tell stories, can speak of itself existentially.
This is also what is good for young poets who are in the process of negotiating and
narrating the various voices which influence how they come to think of themselves
in the world. In classroom settings it might be helpful to “do poetry” in ways where
less emphasis is placed on the task of writing a good poem and more emphasis
is placed on the project of students writing themselves into the world as poets.
According the Moghadden (2004), literature and psychology operate at their best
when approached as equal partners. My experiment with PPT is an attempt to create
such a partnership, one where creating a hopeful world for the poem also creates a
hopeful world for the poet.
NOTE
1
Regarding the terms diegesis and extradiegesis, while Genette’s (1980/1972) theory of narratological
poetics provides a starting point for the contiguous relationship of the poem’s body and the narrator’s
body, Bunia’s (2010) recent paper offers a better case for the importance of examining the narrator’s
presence and how she/he lives in the world of the text that s/he has constructed (diegesis). He argues
that a narrator’s presence between the diegestic and extradiegestic “is an epistemic phenomenon”
(p. 79).
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program administration. Journal of Advanced Composition, 13(2), 503–516.
Bunia, R. (2010). Diegesis and representation: Beyond the fictional world, on the margins of story and
narrative. Poetics Today, 31(4), 679–720. doi:10.1215/03335372-2010-010
Daniels, C., & Scully, S. (1992). Pity, fear, and catharsis in Aristotle’s poetics. Noûs, 26(2), 204–217.
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MA: Beacon Press.
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good and effective poetry. Educational Insights, 13(3). Retrieved from: http://www.ccfi.educ.ubc.ca/
publication/insights/v13n03/articles/faulkner/index.html
Genette, G. (1980). Narrative discourse: An essay in method (J. E. Lewin, Trans.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell
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Hyde, L. (1983). The gift: Imagination and the erotic life of property. New York, NY: Vintage Books.
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of Whole Schooling, 3(1), 27–37.
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Sean Wiebe
Faculty of Education
University of Prince Edward Island
Canada
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suzanne m. thomas
14. geopoetics
An Opening of the World
Figure 1. Suzanne Thomas, 2011. Digital photograph
… to inhabit the world is to live life in the open.

(Ingold, 2008, p. 1796)
Woven Landscapes
Historically, the remoteness and rugged features of Scotland’s Western Isles have
provided compelling creative sources of inspiration expressed through literature,
poetry, music and art. This narrative emerges from my sojourns through the Inner
and Outer Hebrides and Orkney Isles, my immersion in the diverse uniqueness of
their cultural landscapes, while steeped in Scottish Island poetry.
S. M. THOMAS
Islands ignite the poetic impulse and exert a “tenacious hold on the human
imagination” (Tuan, 1974, p. 118). Small islands in particular, Gillis (2001) suggests,
“loom largest in contemporary consciousness” (p. 7). A small island instils in us a
glimmer of knowingness through its finite nature; we can traverse the body of its
land; we can cover its topography on foot and circumnavigate its shores by sea; we
believe we may come to know its topographical features intimately. As we explore
the island as a familiar terrain, so its paths, shorelines, textures, and contours are
incorporated into our bodily knowledge in what Bachelard (1958/1964) terms as
“muscular consciousness” (p. 11). Navigating in, around, and through islands,
landscapes become “woven into life, and lives are woven into the landscape, in a
process that is continuous and never-ending” (Tilley, 1994, pp. 29–30).
Sites of Immensity
A small island acts as a flicker of form, a shimmer of the imagination, offering the
allusion of wholeness and completeness in a seemingly finite world. One might think
of an island as a “room” of containment, yet as Ingold (2008) reveals, such concept
holds duplicity—a sense of openness and closure of space and place (p. 1797). The
forms of an islandscape emerge as synchronizations of movement within a relational
field. Islands are topographies of connected spaces and places of interrelations and
subjectivities that embody the “intimate immensity of a limitless world” (Bachelard,
1958/1964, pp. 184–186). Bachelard defines immensity as a philosophical category
of daydream. Daydream, he contends, “… contemplates grandeur; … daydream
transports the dreamer outside the immediate world to a world that bears the mark
of infinity” (p. 183). The sensation of island infiniteness is connected to both the
imagined world and experiences of “topographical intimacy” (Lippard, 1997).
Place of Dreaming
“…we dream over a map, like a geographer”, writes Bachelard (1958/1964,

p. 204). We also search for that which is tangible in the bodies of water surrounding
islands and the shorelines to connect with particular geographical locations. As one
explores island topography—its patterns, quality of light, scents and sounds become
incorporated into our embodied knowing and being. The body as a repository of
sensation, memory and meaning, is reflected in a poem by the Scottish poet, Norrie
Bissell, from his book Slate, Sea and Sky: A Journey from Glasgow to the Isle of
Luing (2007).
Sounds
Sometimes here
it’s hard to tell
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geopoetics
the sound of the wind

from the sound of the waves
or the sound of the waves
from the sound of the rain
or the sound of the wind
and the waves and the rain
from the sound of my breath.
(Bissell, 2007, p. 79)
It is through such embodied encounters that the island manifests itself as, in the
words of Deleuze (2004), “the dream of humans and humans the pure consciousness
of the island” (p. 10). Deleuze (2004) refers to the élan that draws humans towards
islands as a double movement. Dreaming of islands is “… dreaming of pulling
away … yet the island is also that toward which one drifts … or it is dreaming of
recreating, beginning anew” (p. 10). Island dreaming evokes place memories and the
immensity of imaginative topographies. Scottish poet, Kenneth White, in recounting
memories of his island experience, distils a moment of time captured in this excerpt
from his book, House of Tides.
In the immense stillness, only the sounds of the seabirds … In the shallow
water, a shoal of little blue eel-like fishlets. Glistening spider-webs on the
rocks of Île-aux-Lapins. The sun will leave a coppery path on the pale grey of
the sea …
(White, 2000, p. 41)
A world that is inhabited is woven from the strands
of their continual coming-into-being.
(Ingold, 2008, p. 1797)
Lyric as Longing
Robert Finley (2006) describes lyric as “a form of attention … a desire to ‘let

be’, for the thing to say itself, … a way of opening up a field for attention around
something, rather than closing it in the trap of a name” (pp. 19–20). Lyric is found in
places where the eye stops and lingers in wonder and longing. The richness of lyric
poetry is punctuated by observations of the rugged, wind-swept Isles—the scent
of honeysuckle and bog myrtle, incense of heather, half-burnt peat banks, pungent
smell of seaweed, dampness of turf on walls of ancient stone, craggy mountainous
outcrops, nuance of menacing shadows, shifts of light and darkness. Observation
is an act of looking at things—seeing what is transparent and opaque, what reflects
and absorbs, and what erupts in a torrent of words. Patrick Friesen suggests, “every
lyric gesture, is a song of longing”—longing for wholeness, integrity, a homecoming
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S. M. THOMAS
(in Zwicky, 2006, p. 93). The works of many Scottish poets reveal a deep spiritual
connection to islandscapes and their geological roots expressed through lyric
language, often celebrating, or longing for physcal surroundings. In his poem
Bayble, Derick Thomson describes his experience as an anchoring that binds him to
the rhythms of island life, community, and the human spirit.
Bayble
On the edge of the arable land, between two
lights, the plover runs and stops, and runs and
stops, the white foam of its breast like the star of
evening, discovered and lost in my looking, and
the fragrance of summer, discovered and lost by
my nostrils, and the topmost grains of the wave of
content, discovered and lost by my memory.
Bayble Bay below me, and the village on the
skyline, the eternal action of the ocean, its seeking
and searching between the pebble stones and in
the rock crannies, and under the sand of the
cove; the everlasting movement of the village,
death and christening, praying and courting, and
a thousand hearts swelling and sinking, and here,
the plover runs and stops, and runs and stops.
(Thomson in MacNeil, 2011, p. 61)
Lyric as Song
Gaelic language, traditionally transmitted in the form of verse, is reflected in

evocations of natural melodic qualities of tone, rhythm, texture, pitch, pattern and
cadence found in contemporary Scottish poetry. In These Islands We Sing, MacNeil
(2011) recounts, “Historically, poetry, often in the form of a prayer or a song, was
woven into daily island life” (p. xviii). Many of the tasks men and women performed
involved shared rhythms such as rowing or spinning wool. Songs were routinely
sung to heighten these rhythms and lighten the workload, bonding islanders in their
creation of lyrics. It is in this way that “poetry [became] commonplace” (MacNeil,
2011, p. xviii). Contemporary Scottish poetry interwoven with rich traditions of
oral folklore depicts cultural expressions often re-enacting historical accounts of
social erosion, resurgence, and revival. Poet, Donald Murray, highlights the historic
predominance of poetry while uncovering tensions in the reclamation and resilience
of the Gaelic language.
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geopoetics
Language
Gaelic was sewn into us like grains of oats,
turnip seed, split potatoes
ploughs folded below earth each spring.
It took root among the small talk
villagers stacked at peat-banks
or found gleaming in green fields.
Or when the sharp blade of their tongues
cut through each crop of scandals
that was the season’s harvest in some homes.
Yet now croftland lies fallow.
Winds keen through rush and nettle.
Cold showers of thistledown blow
Where potatoes stalked and blossomed
and the words of English broadcast on the air
find strange, new seed-beds on our lips.
(Murray, 2010, p. 26)
Robert Finley (2006) describes the poet’s responsibility as “the same responsibility
… we bring to every aspect of our engagement with the world as individuals and
as communities: to find a language that listens, to find a way of speaking which is
also and essentially a way of listening, to attend—the ordinary motive for song” (p.
21). Scottish verse embodies a strong affinity with the natural world exemplified
in the works of Island poets who infuse poetry with symbolic landscapes as an
inseparable means to reflect social consciousness and the wider human condition.
Poetic roots are deeply embedded in socio-cultural, literary, and political layers
as poets confront issues related to oppression of language and struggles of people
against social injustices such as land ownership and forced clearances. “Lyric knows
the world is whole, that every part of it is integrally related to every other part and
knows that we cannot be other than overwhelmed by this recognition” (Zwicky,
2006, p. 97). A song of wholeness is reflected in Alison Flett’s poem, Island Song,
revealing lingering reverberations of her lived experience of Orkney Island.
Island Song
This island
with its membrane skies
its skeins of light
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S. M. THOMAS
its skin-tight wind

its strips of stretch-mark clouds
this island
with its pinprick larks
its lapwing flap
its swallow sweep
its torn-out gull-shaped gaps
this island
with its salt-spray kiss
its puckered waves
its hungry shores
its harkening and calling
this island
with its small dark holes
its close-held cairns
its ancient angst
its blackness honed to silence
this island
with its whispered roads
its singing hills
its harboured hills
its fanfare and its dirge
this island
with its bludgeoned sun
its unkempt moon
its scraps of stars
its speckled universe
this island
breathing
in and out
in and out
like this
(Flett in MacNeil, 2011, pp. 208–209)
To inhabit the open … [is] to be immersed in
the fluxes of the medium.
(Ingold, 2008, pp. 1803–1804)
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geopoetics
Transitional Space
Islanders orient themselves to, and in terms of, land and sea with an awareness of
body in relation to space and place. The seas surrounding an island are at once
smooth yet always open to striation; there are openings for one passage to another,
possibilities for voyages from one mode of spatialization to another—reversals.
Deleuze and Guattari (1987) dispel the idea of spatial fixity in their dialectic of
smoothness and striation, illustrating a co-existence—as each space is constantly
becoming translated or transformed into another (p. 474). Island localities surrounded
by these transitional spaces are assemblages, sites of potentialities and multiplicity:
semiotic, material, social, poetic, cultural and aesthetic. Island spaces are not static,
but are part of a continuous process of being and becoming as they enfold multiple
layers of place, memory, history, emotion, and imagination. In The Hill Burns,
Nan Shepherd uncovers layers of connections between past / present landscapes
and natural / human processes. Her poem reveals poetic attentiveness to changes
in topography and natural forces that have shaped and transformed the islandscape
from a geological past.
The Hill Burns
Out of these mountains,
Out of the defiant torment of Plutonic rock,
Out of fire, terror, blackness, and upheaval,
Leap the clear burns,
Living water,
Like some pure essence of being,
Invisible in itself,
Seen only by its movement.
(Shepherd, 1934, pp. 18–19)
Fluid Geography
Islands embody complex multiplicity as places of fluidity and flux. Fletcher (2011)
characterizes the island as a “place in process” and as “a site of cultural production”
and suggests that approaching islands from the perspective of “performative
geographies” foregrounds the dynamic relationship between places and the ways
in which they are depicted (pp. 4, 7). “Places”, Ingold (2008) expands further, “are
formed through movement”…. “[Places] do not so much exist as occur … along
the life paths of beings” (p. 1808). To know a place involves active receptivity and
deeper spaces of feeling, sensation, and perception. This perceptual orientation
is not from a point of fixity, but, rather, along what Gibson (1979) refers to as a
197
S. M. THOMAS
“path of observation”, in a continuous journey of movement (pp. 195–197). We

experience islands as corporeal encounters in a “mobility of performance”—a series
of embodied practices, affective orientations and sensations of movement (Vannini,
2012, p. 213). It is through spatial mobility and enacted patterns of movement that
the island becomes a porous and pulsing geography. Meg Bateman’s poetry explores
cultural engagement and movement through natural / urbanscapes with echoing
issues of emigration, exile, and de-placement reflected in an excerpt from her poem
Remoteness.
Remoteness
Alas, remoteness, where are you?
Where but at the bleak edge of the cities,
in the towerblocks between motorways
where people are removed,
edged out from power,
the same hurt squint in their eyes
as is seen in the emigrants’ sepia faces
(that I had fully expected
Nature to have made beautiful).
(Bateman in McNeil, 2011, p. 177)
[The open world] is a world … of formative
and transformative processes.
(Ingold, 2008, p. 1801)
Geopoetics
The centrality of the interrelationship between human beings and the natural
world and importance of re-engagement and renewal is emphasized in the field of
“geopoetics” originally conceived by the Scottish poet and scholar, Kenneth White
(1992). Its roots emerge from geological foundations of the landscape and connections
between people and place. Open world poetics or geopoetics is concerned with a
relationship to the earth and an opening of the world as a multisensory experience.
Bissell (1992) suggests: “It is about … seeing ourselves … in the wider context
of the development of the earth, its geological formations, vegetation and many
life-forms” (p. 180). Geopoetics calls for expansion of our thinking, a heightened
awareness and sensitivity towards the environment, a “sensation of immensity — a
sense of relativity and topography” (Bissell, 1992, p. 165). Geopoetics also implies
“new wording, new working, and new worlding” (White, 2004, p. 247). Such new
working brings forth reclamation of language that communicates poetic imagination
198
geopoetics
and ecological thought, re-establishes intimacy with our geological past, while
renewing interwoven processes of place and “presence-in- the world” as depicted in
Norrie Bissell’s account of his Hebridean home.
Slate, Sea and Sky
An island on the rim of the world
in that space between slate, sea and sky
where air and ocean currents
are plays of wild energy
and the light changes everything.
(Bissell, 2007, p. 15)
[To inhabit the open is to be immersed in]
interwoven lines of growth and movement …
[in] a meshwork [of] fluid space.
(Ingold, 2008, p. 1796)
The Open World
I envision an opening of and to the world in terms of the Greek root, aesthesis, to “make
visible,” and as touching the intangible through island imaginings and experiences
of immensity that Bachelard (1964/1958) notes, “reside within ourselves”. My own
poetic approach renders understandings of the relationality and interconnectivity
of island topographies by capturing the “flesh of life” (Suwa, 2007) and textures
of the world that are “salty and learned” (George, 2007). Islands evoke poetic
impulses to create a locus centred in the weaving of intricate connectivities between
contours of topography, art and aesthetics, the island as a material and subjective
reality. Geo-aesthetic texts make visible terra incognita (Wright, 1947), a realm of
the geographical unknown, in transitional zones that shift from a human-centred to
earth-centred consciousness. Islands looming on the seas are intimate topographies
that evoke the imaginative spirit, suspended in dynamic tensions of the natural
and cultural, social and spatial, geophysical and poetic. Islands stand as centres
of meaning, and as inextricable from experience, they are at once imagined and
perceived. My island sojourns into topographical unknowns embody an omniscient
presence, elusive spaces of transience and dwelling, and within their surfaces and
folds—a place of dreaming.
Inspired by the work, I am an Island that Dreams, composed by Prince Edward
Island writer, Elaine Harrison (1974), this following poem reflects my experiences
of Canna, a small archipelago located within the Inner Hebrides and former home of
Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, a bailie, and noteworthy Gaelic poet.
199
S. M. THOMAS
Ode to Canna
I am an island that dreams
and my dreams
weave in and out
warp and woof out of the days. (Harrison, 1974, p. 1)
my face scored by basalt lava flow
my lime-rich body, beds of bolder, fertile soil
streaked by crofting,
shieling-huts rest under the lee of my cragg
as low lying flats lie moist with my damp breath
and cattle loom like shadows in menacing light.
Càrn a’ Ghail, rocky hill of the storm
archipelago between mountains of Rùm, peaty moorlands
bog, machair wild thyme,
marram grass, and rock-strewn marshes everlasting
my ancient pillory rises from steep scree slopes
as waters rolling toward far off heads, foam at my lips.
stretched barren into rain-charged cliffs
Atlantic barrier of Western Isles
ghosts of perpetrators dance on my rocky pinnacles
while the Cuillin wails from its torn bedrock
fèis, a song of longing, songs of home-coming
echo back to the breast of my shores.
and I see things
through the warp and woof of time. (Harrison, 1974, p. 24)
References
Bachelard, G. (1958/1964). The poetics of space: The classic look at how we experience intimate places
(M. Jolas, Trans.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press. (Original work published 1958)
Bissell, N. (1992). Open world poetics. Edinburgh Review, 88, 179–181.
Bissell, N. (2007). Slate, sea and sky: A journey from Glasgow to the Isle of Luing. Edinburgh, England:
Luath Press Ltd.
Deleuze, G. (2004). Desert islands and other texts 1953–1974 (M. Taormina, Trans.). Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press.
200
geopoetics
Finley, R. (2006). Readingwritinglistening. In R. Finley, P. Friesen, A. Hunter, A. Simpson, & J. Zwicky

(Eds.), A ragged pen: Essays on poetry and memory (pp. 15–21). Kentville, NS: Gaspereau Press.
Fletcher, L. M. (2011). “some distance to go”…: A critical survey of island studies. New Literatures
Review, 47/48, 17–34.
George, B. (2007). Earth aesthetics: Sallis’ topographies pioneers a Deleuze and Guattarian aesthetics
of the earth. Retrieved from http://rhizomes.net/issue15/george.html
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Gillis, J. R. (2001). Island sojourns. Geographical Review, 97(2), 274–287.
Harrison, E. (1974). I am an island that dreams. Charlottetown, PE: Fernwood.
Ingold, T. (2008). Bindings against boundaries: Entanglements of life in an open world. Environment and
Planning A, 40, 1796–1810.
Lippard, L. (1997). The lure of the local: Sense of place in a multi-centered society. New York, NY: New
Press.
MacNeil, K. (Ed.). (2011). These islands, we sing: An anthology of Scottish islands poetry. Edinburgh,
England: Polygon.
Murray, D. S. (2010). Small expectations. Ullapool, England: Two Ravens Press.
Shepherd, N. (1934). In the Cairngoms. Edinburgh, England: The Moray Press.
Suwa, J. (2007). The space of shima. The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures, 1(1),
6–14.
Tilley, C. (1994). A phenomenology of landscape: Places, paths and monuments. Oxford, England: Berg.
Tuan, Y.-F. (1974). Topophilia: A study of environmental perception, attitudes, and values. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Vannini, P. (2012). Ferry tales: Mobility, place, and time on Canada’s West Coast. New York, NY:
Routledge.
White, K. (1992). Elements of geopoetics. Edinburgh Review, 88, 163–178.
White, K. (2000). House of tides: Letters from Brittany and other lands of the West. Edinburgh, England:
Edinburgh University Press Ltd.
White, K. (2004). The wanderer and his charts: Essays on cultural renewal. Edinburgh, England: Polygon.
Wright, J. K. (1947). Terrae incognitae: The place of the imagination in geography. American Geographical
Society, 37(1), 1–15.
Zwicky, J. (2006). Lyric, narrative, memory. In R. Finley, P. Friesen, A. Hunter, A. Simpson, & J. Zwicky
(Eds.), A ragged pen: Essays on poetry and memory (pp. 87–105). Kentville, NS: Gaspereau Press.
Suzanne M. Thomas
Independent Scholar, Writer & Photographer
Tancook Island and Toronto, Canada
201
Section 3
CARING
Poetry with and for Ethically Sensitive Practice
This final section presents chapters that explore care and an implicit ethical
call from a range of disciplinary perspectives ‘in the service of’. This includes
topics that span health care, nursing, psychology, and teaching, strongly focused
on participant perspectives within poetic inquiry as one way of offering new
insights that may inform professional practice.
Chapters in this section offer new knowledge and forms of evidence that
honour ‘a taking care’, or offer a critique of caring. The bringing together of
the art world of poetry with the social science world is a welcome move in the
crafting of richly textured pieces that can do justice to the matter in hand and/
or to what participants have generously shared.
FRAN BILEY†
15. WAKING UP FOLLOWING BREAST SURGERY

An Insight from the Beats, Burroughs and the Cut-up Technique
I imagine the grimy décor to have been several different shades of nicotine stained
chocolate brown. I imagine the floorboards will have creaked in response to any
kind of movement, and sometimes as a result of no movement at all. I imagine the
buzzing and crackling of the dim electric lightbulbs will have illuminated little, and
sunlight would barely ever stream through the small and rarely washed, perhaps
never washed, windows. I imagine an aroma of carbolic, and of coffee, coming from
a gently bubbling, always-on pot, and of always-chain-smoked Gauloises or Gitanes.
I imagine an unremarkable tall-thin building, one in a long connected row, in
the narrow street of a seedy and somewhat disreputable arrondissement. A tall-thin
building with a small entrance hall, watched over by an equally small, stern and
officious, always-present madame.
Now long replaced by a four star hotel, the building I imagine was a cheap
rooming house on the Left Bank in Paris, France. It was Number 9, rue Git-le-Coeur
to be more precise. The madame was Madame Rachou, the proprietess and owner
of the hot-water-only-on-alternate-days hotel. And despite (or perhaps because of)
being cheap and shabby but not-so-chic, the “flea-bag shrine” (Norse, 1983) was
mostly inhabited by a wandering bohemian crowd of artists, photographers, models,
writers and poets. In early years, patrons included Monet and Pissarro, but in 1957 a
forward recognisance party, consisting of Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Peter
Ovlorsky, moved in (Miles, 2000). They were quickly followed by a rear guard that
included, among many others, William Burroughs and Brion Gysin. The creative
output over the next five or six years (up until the time that the hotel closed in 1963)
was considerable.
Burroughs finished his groundbreaking novel The Naked Lunch, Corso wrote the
poem bomb, Norse wrote Beat Hotel, and Ginsberg began working on his poem
about this mother, Kaddish.
Whilst at the hotel in 1959, Burroughs identified the value of a text-based cut-up
technique after Brion Gysin realised that interesting results could be obtained by re-
arranging pieces of newspaper that he had inadvertently cut when making collages.
Burroughs stated, “Returning to room #25, I found Brion Gysin holding scissors,
bits of newspaper, Life, Time, spread out on a table, he read me the Cut-ups that
later appeared in Minutes to Go” (Miles, 2000, p. 194). Gysin said “...several layers
F. BILEY
of printed material were laid on top of each other and cut through with a Stanley
blade and one simply chose the morsels and put them together” (Miles, 2000,
p. 194). According to Miles (2000, p. 204), Burroughs considered that cut-ups were
“like a doorway into the unconscious, a way of accessing things that you already
know but that are buried”. A cut-up text created the possibility to “make the writer’s
medium tangible – to make the word an object detached from its context, its author,
its signifying function” (Lydenberg, 1987, p. 44). For Burroughs “the patterns and
methods of cut-up writing extend beyond the actual manipulation of texts to our
conscious and unconscious experience” (Lydenberg, 1987, p. 46). We are “liberated
from the sentence, from grammar and logic, from our roles as speakers or listeners,
from the opposition of inside and outside” (p. 47), creating feelings of “familiarity,
dislocation, premonition” (p. 48). Land (2005) argued that “Burroughs basic notion
is that language produces a ‘false’ appearance of subjective coherence and narrative
continuity. In a way then the cut-up is an attempt to break down this coherence”
(p. 459).
Burroughs enthusiastically launched himself into a thorough exploration of this
new ‘writing’ technique, but there were early detractors. David Lodge, writing in
Critical Quarterly (1966), concluded that the results of a Burroughs cut-up are “so
uninteresting. We can all produce our own coincidences – we go to art for something
more” (p. 210). Quite rightly perhaps, as anybody who has tried the technique will
affirm, Land (2005) identified that “the cut-up is in many respects a fairly blunt
critical tool that in the wrong hands can knock language utterly senseless rather than
opening up new modes of sensibility within language” (p. 462). But almost half a
century following the Lodge polemic, Robinson (2006) concluded that “As ‘cult’
authors go, William Burroughs is perhaps one of the best known...and is one of the
most influential” (p. 72). Burroughsian scissors seemed to push “language beyond
the limits of representation and open[ed] his texts to a radical reconfiguration of
human subjectivity” (Land, 2005, p. 450).
Burroughs preoccupied himself with using the cut-up technique throughout the
1960s, producing a range of publications that included Minutes to Go (with Brion
Gysin) and the Nova Trilogy, three novels entitled The Soft Machine, The Ticket
that Exploded and Nova Express. He also moved beyond cutting up text and into
the realms of cut-up sound and image (film) tapes. But even as others were adopting
the technique (as in, for example, Norse’s Beat Hotel), as the decade that was the
1960s, the eponymous Age of Aquarius, was drawing to a close, Burroughs was
beginning to abandon his cut-up technique. He declared that he had reached the
“point of diminishing returns” (Harris, 1991, p. 253) and that this stage in his life’s
work had been a failure.
Despite this, the cut-up technique can be seen in many modern incarnations.
Robinson (2007) identifies cut-ups to have influenced or to be present in the work
of Irvine Welsh, Graham Rawle, Kathy Ackers and Will Self, amongst many others.
In addition to this, the cut-up technique is beginning to have a presence, albeit
somewhat minimal, in the field of contemporary health care research.
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WAKING UP FOLLOWING BREAST SURGERY
Since the mid 1990s (Biley, 1998a, 1998b, 1999, 2000), I have been
experimenting with applying the cut-up technique to a variety of texts that, in
some way or another, describe health care conditions. The particular approach
and theoretical perspective that I use has been described in detail elsewhere
(Biley, 2004), and does not need to be reproduced here. On encountering my
interpretation of the method, Frank (2006a) stated that it “describes how to cut
up transcripts and then rearrange the fragments into a new text. The ordering of
fragments is random, with random repetitions. Biley’s own example endows an
interview transcription with a quality I found haunting… Using the technique,
we paid attention differently in ways that were not entirely rational, but again,
the point was to stretch our boundaries of rationality. Stretching boundaries of
what we can hear, and what we are willing to hear, has always been a core task of
qualitative methods…”. He went on to say that “My class had a wonderful time
with the method you describe, and for me it was quite liberating. For several years
(late 70s, early 80s) I did a lot of work with conversation analysis, in which the
exact order of utterances is sacred – that’s the main thing to be explained. The idea
of cutting up that order at first struck me as absurd until I read your compelling
example and then actually tried it myself. I never felt I got the repetitions quite
right; you really do need a computer program or random number table. But it
was fascinating how the reordering brought out previously latent aspects of the
material” (A. Frank, personal communication, 2006b). Similarly, Muncey (2010)
found that applying the technique to her writing had the effect of transforming it
into something that revealed hitherto hidden meanings.
I present the following text, a computer generated cut-up of core material that
I first presented at a conference in 2000 (Biley, 2000), as an example of the kind
of material that the cut-up process produces. The original text, that has remained
unpublished up until now, was a short piece describing the immediate very few
seconds and the thoughts of a woman waking up from a general anaesthesia
following breast surgery. Immediately upon waking, she was unsure if she had a
lump or a breast removed. I used a computer-based ‘cut-up’ machine to reproduce
the original text in its new form, and beyond some very minor ‘tidying up’, present
the text here as it was reproduced.
Are there Still Two of Them?
I woke,
I related,
face,
mistaken,
drifted
breast inconspicuous.
Paranoia started to eat its way through the fog.Then, as quick as that thought
left my mind, another one entered.
207
F. BILEY
Are there still two of them?

Is there a big scar?
I drifted in and out of a non-restful sleep, wondering if I was dreaming the
infusion next to the bed.
Perhaps the consultant had been mistaken, what if he had performed surgery...
On the outside there would be many internal scars,
but I had hoped, but I had hoped...
Paranoia started to eat its way through the anaesthetic and I was vaguely
aware of the acute pain in my right breast.
I was dreaming the infusion. I screeched for the nurse.
I wondered if you could get phantom breast pain, surely I must still have a
breast if it...
Perhaps the consultant had been mistaken, what if he had performed surgery
on the wrong breast, the wrong patient.
Paranoia started to eat its way through the fog.
Then, as quick as that thought left my mind, another one entered.
Are there still two of them.
Is there a big scar.
I knew that there would be many internal scars, but I had hoped…
Paranoia started to eat its way through the anaesthetic and I was dreaming the
on the wrong patient.
The drunken sleepiness got the better of me. I drifted in and out of a non-
restful sleep, wondering if I was dreaming.
I screeched for the nurse.
I wondered if you could get phantom breast pain
The Paranoia scar.
the wrong breast,
the wrong breast,
the wrong breast,
the wrong patient.
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WAKING UP FOLLOWING BREAST SURGERY

Perhaps the consultant had been mistaken,
what if he had performed surgery on the wrong patient.
Are there still two of them.
I knew that there would be many internal scars
Would I be able to tell from her face, was it the big C or not?
The pain got worse as the drunken sleepiness got the better of me.
I drifted in and out of a non-restful sleep, wondering if I was dreaming the
I drifted in and out of a non-restful sleep,
I was vaguely aware of the acute pain in my right breast.
I was vaguely aware of my wish not to call for a nurse in case
in case I would learn of my fate,
would I be able to tell from her face, was it the big C or not?
The pain got worse as the thoughts escalated,
on the wrong breast, the wrong patient.
Perhaps the consultant had been mistaken.
It can’t be done already, I remember thinking to myself through the fog.
209
F. BILEY
I was suddenly aware of the acute pain in my right breast.

My fate, would I be able to tell from her face?
The pain got worse as the thoughts escalated,
REFERENCES
Biley, F. C. (1998a). An experiment in accessing pandimensionality: The literary poetics and
deconstruction techniques of William S. Burroughs applied to the science of unitary human beings.
Paper presented at Seventh Rogerian Conference, Nursing and the Changing Person Environment,
New York University, New York, NY.
Biley, F. C. (1998b). A pandimensional journey with William S. Burroughs: Developing a new method of
aesthetic inquiry. Paper presented at Expanding Nursing’s Consciousness through Reflective Practice,
the Fourth Reflective Practice Conference, Robinson College, Cambridge, England.
Biley, F. C. (1999). The literary poetics of experience. Paper presented at Sigma Theta Tau International
Conference: Varying Perspectives on Post-Modernism, City University, London, England.
Biley, F. C. (2000). Are there still two of them? One woman’s story of waking up from breast surgery
anaesthesia. Paper presented as a concurrent session at Martha Rogers’ Science of Unitary Human
Beings: Emerging Concepts and Issues in Health, the Eighth Rogerian Nursing Science Conference,
New York University, New York, NY.
Biley, F. C. (2004). Postmodern literary poetics of experience: A new form of aesthetic enquiry. In
F. Rapport (Ed.), New qualitative methodologies in health and social care (pp. 139–149). London,
England: Routledge.
Frank, A. (2006a). At the margins of health: Qualitative methods. Qualitative Sociology, 29(2), 241–251.
doi:10.1007/s11133-006-9015-z
Harris, O. C. G. (1991). Cut-up closure: The return to the narrative. In J. Skerl & R. Lydenberg (Eds.),
William S. Burroughs at the front: Critical reception 1959–1989 (pp. 251–263). Carbondale, IL:
Southern Illinois University Press.
Land, C. (2005). Apomorphine silence: Cutting-up Burroughs’ theory of language and control. Ephemera:
Theory and Politics in Organisation, 5(3), 450–471.
Lodge, D. (1966). Objections to William Burroughs. Critical Quarterly, 8(3), 203–214.
doi:10.1111/j.1467-8705.1966.tb01298.x
Lydenberg, R. (1987). Word cultures: Radical theory and practice in William S. Burroughs’ fiction.
Chicago, IL: University of Illinois. doi:10.2307/2926980
Miles, B. (2000). The Beat hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs and Corso in Paris, 1957–1963. New York, NY:
Grove. doi:10.5860/choice.38-1424
Muncey, T. (2010). Creating autoethnographies. London, England: Sage. doi:10.4135/9781446268339
Norse, H. (1983). The Beat hotel. Madison, NJ: Atticus. doi:10.5860/choice.38-1424
Robinson, E. (2006). The rise and fall and rise of William Burroughs. Working with English: Medieval
and Modern Language, Literature and Drama, 2(1), 72–81.
Robinson, E. (2007, March). Taking the power back: William S. Burroughs’ use of the cut-up as a means of
challenging social orders and power structures. Paper presented to the Quest Postgraduate conference
‘Perspectives on Power’, Queens University, Belfast, England. Retrieved from http://www.qub.ac.uk/
sites/QUEST/ FileStore/Issue4PerspectiviesonPowerPapers/Filetoupload,71743,en.pdf
Fran Biley†
Professor in Nursing
Bournemouth University, UK
210
FRANCES RAPPORT and GRAHAM HARTILL
16. MAKING THE CASE FOR POETIC INQUIRY IN

HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH
So terrible a lack of the imagination, in the end it is its own tragic handicap, and
those who go to the grave unilluminated by the light of ideas are the sufferers.
(Stephen Fry, 2004)
INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents part of an ongoing dialogue between a qualitative health

researcher working in Health Services Research (FR) and a poet and facilitator of
creative writing working in the fields of health and social care (GH). It highlights
the rich diversity of perspectives that can be disclosed when two people from
differing backgrounds come together to consider the legitimacy of poetic inquiry as
an academic paradigm.
The chapter examines the application of the arts-based method ‘ethnographic
poetic representation’ to Health Services Research studies and its relative underuse
in this field. A piece of poetics is provided as an exemplar of the method’s use,
derived from a study of Holocaust survivor testimonial that examined the relationship
between the extraordinary event, personal trauma and the pathway to good health
and wellbeing.
The piece underpins the ensuing dialogical examination of the method between the
two authors, whilst at the same time defends the ability of literary experimentation
techniques to grapple with complex social data. Working with both theoretical
perspectives and the poetic exemplar, the authors argue on behalf of the method as
well as indicating wider opportunities for re-presenting difficult, emotive narrative
through powerful, creative tools.
GENESIS OF THE HOLOCAUST STUDY
How does one attempt to study personal testimonial gathered from an extraordinary
event such as the Holocaust? Is it possible to examine the event’s impact on an
individual’s perception of the trauma they suffered and their health and wellbeing
needs? Can ethnographic poetic representation, delivered from research conversations
with a survivor, be presented back to that survivor in a way that is meaningful to
them, and acceptable and accessible to wider audiences? These were some of the
F. RAPPORT & G. HARTILL
questions that FR asked herself when she undertook a study of the relationship
between the trauma of Holocaust survivor experience and perceptions of health
and wellbeing following that trauma. Whilst the study culminated in a number of
academic publications and other outputs, it began unexpectedly, with a conversation
between FR and her mother in a restaurant on the outskirts of town, one Saturday
afternoon in early 2006. The conversation, represented below in the first-person,
focussed on the life and health story of one Holocaust survivor, Anka, who had been
interned in Terezin, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Mauthausen concentration camps for
three and a half years during the war. Towards the end of her ordeal, Anka had given
birth to a baby girl, Eva, on an open, typhoid-infested, coal wagon descending the
hill to Mauthausen, a concentration camp in Austria:
The story and the way it was told with great affection and sincerity, about
the woman who had not so long ago become my mother’s friend was
captivating, and as more details were offered up I became oblivious to both my
surroundings and fellow diners. My reverie was suddenly broken, however,
when one of the diners, clearly having listened in on our conversation, strode
across the restaurant and in a state of extreme agitation remonstrated against us
for conversing about the Holocaust.
Arms swinging, red-faced and angry he exploded:
“What do you know about the Holocaust? You are putting me off my meal.”
He continued:
“You have no right to talk like that in public” and with one hand holding
tightly on to a long blue cross wound around his neck and the other pointing
accusingly at us he continued to harangue us with a diatribe of abuse.
“What do you know about the Holocaust? You know nothing of the Holocaust.”
“How could you?”
With these words and still holding tightly on to the cross, he marched out
of the door and proceeded to goose-step up and down outside the restaurant
window, throwing a Nazi salute and muttering: “Heil Hitler, Heil Hitler” under
his breath.
The few other dinners looked on in amazement and the Portuguese waitress’s
fumbled apology tailed off into an embarrassed silence.
We left the restaurant. We’d had enough. A meal unfinished, a story half told
and abuse ringing loudly in our ears.
Later that day I reflected on the spoiled meal and on the persona of the man
who had conducted this assault. I also considered my own responsibility as I
thought about his words:
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MAKING THE CASE FOR POETIC INQUIRY
“What do you know about the Holocaust?” “You have no right to talk like that
in public”.
As I did so I recognised the enormity of a proposal that was forming in my
mind; to take forward this taunt and through my own research, lay down this
woman’s testimony and perhaps others like her – to set these voices in stone.
Indeed, to give these words the continuity and permanency they deserved,
to tell Anka’s story, in order to reach the end of a fleeting, interrupted and
upended story.
Since that day FR has met with Anka and all the other remaining Holocaust
survivors who took up residency in south-east Wales immediately following the war.
FR spent extensive periods of time listening to their stories – stories of lives long-
lived. They gave up harrowing details of the experience of internment, being moved
between camps in Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia (they all spent time
in Auschwitz), and the effects of this on their health and well being.
The women’s testimonies were of survival and demise, and taping and transcribing
them was a difficult and emotive task. Sense-making developed iteratively, beginning
with the rudimentary stages of a Summative Analysis (see F. Rapport, 2010), whilst
ethnographic poetic representations (see next section), provided important context
and prepared the materials for a wider readership (F. Rapport, 2008; F. Rapport &
Sparkes, 2009). The ethnographic poetic representations derived from a painstaking
process of reading and re-reading transcripts, understanding, distilling, explicating
and eventually re-presenting their content according to research scenarios inherent
within them (F. Rapport, 2008). These were sections of text, the essential elements
of Anka’s story, that were carefully revealed and retained, for without them the text
would have lost its substance, structure and, ultimately, its full meaning. These
sections of text depend on the authenticity of the spoken word. The process of their
preparation was followed according to FRs pre-defined criteria for this kind of
material whereby words are not altered nor sentence sequence change, which must
follow on from one another according to the direction of the raw material, with no
changes to grammatical irregularity or word-sense (F. Rapport & Hartill, 2010). An
exemplar (or pattern), for a piece of ethnographic poetic representation is presented
next.
LIKE A VICTORY I FOOLED THEM
So vivid in my mind,
As you sitting in front of me.
I will start talking.
It’s very easy.
We arrived through that famous gate.
Birkenau.
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Auschwitz.
But Birkenau was the thing.
We arrived through that gate,
And before we got there,
We already saw the chimneys –
The fires.
We saw the spouting chimneys,
And the smoke and the fire.
“Raus, Raus!”
And soldiers up and down.
“Leave all your luggage.”
“Come out, come out.”
And the smell, which you had never smelled before,
And which you couldn’t place.
And the chimneys.
And the smoke.
And the ashes.
And the prisoners in striped pyjamas.
Somebody must have told us:
“Young ones on this side.”
Millions milling around,
At least a thousand people.
They separated men and women.
And when we saw this bedlam,
You felt something eerie,
But you didn’t know.
Dr Mengele with those gloves.
Gauntlets –
In my memory they’re gauntlets.
Stood there, boots shining.
“Here” and “there” – he pointed.
Doing ‘this’ with the gloves.
The mother had a five year-old child,
She went the other side.
Nobody was afraid because –
Because you didn’t know.
Five in a row.
Proceed to the man with the gloves.
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So we passed and I passed,

I was with a group of girls.
We went this way.
Never gave it a thought.
I had still my wedding rings,
Amethyst set in silver.
I still had those with me,
The most precious things I possessed.
When I saw what’s going on,
That we had to leave our clothes,
And the mud,
And the shouting,
And the starting to run naked,
And our hair being cut off.
I took my two rings,
And threw them in the mud.
No Germans will have them.
In the mud –
In Auschwitz.
The most precious things I had.
Outside or under cover,
I don’t remember.
We were shaven – afraid of something,
But we didn’t know what.
We went through those showers,
And were given some horrible rags.
And then some shoes; old shoes,
I happened to get clogs.
If they were too small,
We were wise enough not to ask.
In fifths, they led us to the barracks,
Big but flimsy, with a door at one end.
The bunks were three-tiered,
Lie down like sardines.
And, “when will I see my parents?”
“You fool, they are in the chimney by now.”
They thought we were mad.
We thought they were mad.
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But we soon found out,

That they weren’t mad.
You saw all the horror and it all fell into place.
And the smell and the fire and the smoke and the shouting,
And the dogs and the mud.
Our first day in Auschwitz.
We were never sent to work.
Top bunk.
Awful windows.
Without glass.
Much colder at the top because the wind was blowing through.
I was there ten days,
So very lucky,
It lasted only ten days.
Roll calls twice a day,
And they counted one, two, three,
And if somebody died,
They had to keep the body.
Ten days later and we were sent walking.
We didn’t have luggage and they shaved our heads.
We were given a piece of bread and sent into cattle wagons.
We were leaving Auschwitz and we didn’t stop.
All elated.
The train headed west.
October in Poland.
Like a victory I fooled them.
Source: FR based on transcripts from research conversations with Anka
THE AGE OF POETICS IN HEALTH RESEARCH
Ethnographic poetic representation, also known as ‘poetics’, ‘poetic rendition’,

‘ethnographic poetry’ and ‘ethnographic transcription’, has yet to come of age in
Health Services Research (Tedlock, 1999; Sparkes & Douglas, 2007; Rosenbaum,
Ferguson, & Herwaldt, 2009; Maynard & Cahnmann-Taylor, 2010). This, despite its
recognition in other disciplines as a tool for understanding and expressing the human
condition (F. Rapport & Hartill, 2010); co-constructing the world by the storyteller
and listener (Richardson, 2000) and co-participating in the act of knowing by the
reader (Gunn, 1982; Richardson, 2002).
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Whilst a few ethnographic poetic representations have been produced and

published based on health materials (Sparkes, Nilges, Swan, & Dowling, 2003),
pieces are more redolent within Education and Anthropology (Glesne, 1997;
Richardson, 2002; Prendergast, Leggo, & Sameshima, 2009; Maynard & Cahnmann-
Taylor, 2010). Indeed, Maynard and Cahnmann-Taylor have recently referred to
a ground-swell of interest in “ethnographic poetry” in anthropology (2010, p. 3)
where the method that found favour in the mid-1980s seems to have reached its
zenith. Placing this research method in anthropology is particularly apposite, in
view of anthropology’s concentration on ethnography in all its forms, including
data presentation, and presentational style. Maynard and Cahnmann-Taylor (2010)
comment that this poetic ‘turn’ has never been, “more open to both literary theory
and literary forms” (p. 3):
Much of this more experimental writing remains prose, or largely prose,
but seeks explicitly to write poetically with an ear cocked toward language,
the medium as an aspect of truth telling... within the context of this we see
ethnographic poetry emerging… drawing attention to cultural borderlands
between poetry and prose, as well as between scholarship and art. (p. 4)
Within Health Services Research, we would suggest, an arts-based methodological
hinterland continues to flourish. Discussed in detail in 2004 and 2005 by FR and
colleagues (F. Rapport, 2004; F. Rapport, Wainwright, & Elwyn, 2005), this is a
place where alternative methodologies continue to sit outside the mainstream of
traditional bio-scientific and medical epistemologies. Never fully embraced nor
taken seriously, researchers can only dabble with unconventional methodological
approaches, as a result of an ongoing wariness that impedes a fully cohesive,
interdisciplinary dialogue between novel activity and traditional methods. New
methodologies sit uncomfortably alongside their ‘conservative’ partners and are
still seen as the enfant terrible of the academic landscape. Indeed, it has proved
more difficult than might have been envisaged in 2004 to break down the carefully
constructed disciplinary differences in approach. Despite attempts to, “introduce
interdisciplinary collaboration across paradigms” (F. Rapport et al., 2005, p. 38),
arts-based research causes discomfort for those who continue to consider positivistic
paradigms as the gold-standard for best practice.
Nevertheless, there are stalwarts working at the Edgelands (F. Rapport et al.,
2005) who refuse to meet the scientific expectations of objectivity derived from
the generalisability, validity and reliability of data. Instead they search for the
most appropriate response to research questions. They aim to achieve a sense of
data’s trustworthiness (Jones, 2006, 2007) and are keen that we move away from
“positivity” and ideas that link affirmation with number crunching, “I detest every
one. No one in particular: just one in general. I prefer not to count on one. For me,
number is a horror story” (Doel, 2001, p. 555). They concern themselves with the
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disclosure of the individual (N. Rapport, 2008), journey towards, “possible, multiple
truths”, rather than “a moment of truth” (F. Rapport et al., 2005, p. 38), and they
retain a non-conformist pride in preparing for the unexpected to happen (N. Rapport,
2008).
Broadening the scope of qualitative methodology and through its wider
acceptance, creating the space necessary for new theoretical paradigms to
burgeon, will lead to a greater appreciation of the possibilities of ethnographic
poetic representation. Remaining at the Edgelands offers only a glimpse of such
possibilities, whilst encouraging greater uptake of new ideas, through the credibility
afforded from academic publication, will help to ensure that outputs are accepted
in all their forms – in all their biographical, contextual, social, mantic (emotive)
and semantic (linguistic) complexity (see for example: F. Rapport & Sparkes, 2009;
Sparkes, 2012).
MANAGING A RESEARCH CONVERSATION –

THE RISE OF POETICS IN HEALTH
‘Like a Victory I Fooled Them’ is an exemplar of the method’s iterative process,

beginning with the transcription of a taped research conversation and ending with
a greatly honed down piece of poetics. Research conversations do not adhere to
semi-structured interview schedules and are free of the pre-ordained prescription of
the researcher (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). Research conversations are open-ended,
often lengthy, and consequently non-directive approaches to data capture that
enable storytellers to present their life stories, including autobiographical detail,
and health and illness tales, in highly personalised, individual ways. The sum total
of several research conversations, in the case of the Holocaust study, led to pages
of transcription leaching across FR’s desk. This was accompanied by personal
artefacts: letters, official documents, photographs and postcards voluntarily offered
up by Anka. Considered in their totality, they produced as FR has previously
described:
a sense of lethargy and heaviness, their emotive content and graphic imagery
weighed heavy and seemed to discredit any of the more traditional analytic
approaches that might normally be appropriated. (F. Rapport & Hartill, 2010,
pp. 24–25)
How best to analyse their content when the usual complement of analytic
techniques – thematic analysis (Ezzy, 2002), content analysis (Neuendorf, 2002),
framework analysis (Robson, 2002) seemed strangely inappropriate? To apply
thematic analysis, for example, and by so doing to reduce the ebb and flow of
words to clipped lists of thematised events, behaviours, actions and interactions
seemed disrespectful. Thematic analysis with its systematic simplification was
out of kilter with the flowing resonance of the raw material. Similarly, applying
a computerised analysis programme to the material, such as ‘Ethnograph’
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(http://www.qualisresearch.com), to count the frequency of words and reveal

‘nested categories’ would alter the sense of the conversations and detract from the
storyteller’s voice.
Eisner (1997) has advised us to, “think within the medium we choose to use”
(p. 8), and FR recognised the value of letting the stories speak for themselves,
sensitively working with the detail to allow texts to reveal their own transformations.
At this point in the process the authors began to discuss the task in terms of their
individual disciplinary perspectives. They traced the roots, histories and practices
of different literary applications, with particular reference to ethnographic poetic
representation. Aspects of the thought process that were mediated by these
conversations are presented below in an attempt to shed light on the possibilities
inherent in the method for two very different people according to their own unique
and shared views.
FR BEGINS – FULLY ENGAGING THROUGH DIALOGUE WITH THE STORIES

PEOPLE TELL OF THEIR PAST
I’m a poet. I had a discourse, an encounter with these people but I never had a
list of questions. (Herzog, 2012)
Ethnographic writing has moved on from the strongly authorial position outlined by
Roth in 1989, and now casts doubt on the authored narrative in favour of new frames
of working (Dicks, Soyinka, & Coffey, 2006). It has been noted that by moving away
from a position where we ‘take charge’ of the ethnographic subject, we can more
fully engage or ‘totally translate’ the other (Rothenberg, 1999).
Ethnographic writing that takes account of this new mood of contingency has
a number of benefits. Firstly, it has the potential to evoke open-ended connections
between things, thus emphasising the power of possibility (Kendall & Murray,
2005). Secondly, it can touch us, “where we live in our bodies”, as both cognitive
and sensual beings (Sparkes, 2012). Thirdly, it allows the reader to arrive at
their own understanding of a piece or receive multiple interpretations of a piece,
without excessive researcher influence (F. Rapport & Sparkes, 2009). Fourthly,
and as a result of the points above, it allows us to reach more complex, nuanced
and thoughtful conclusions than might otherwise be the case (Poindexter, 2002;
Richardson, 2002).
Unlike the approach to developing a poem, however, ethnographic poetic
representation is always looking for the poetry implicit in speech. Consequently,
poetics from testimony demand constant awareness of the raw materials and the
speaker’s voice, in order to uphold the integrity of the dialogue, searching the
speaker’s voice for true timbre and rhythm. Ethnographic poetic representation
can be, as with this chapter’s exemplar, produced according to strict boundaries of
researcher engagement (as already mentioned, it was important that no words would
be added or grammar changed) to echo the way that Anka told her story.
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The process began with a dialogue, and ended with a quite different dialogue, in
this case, dialogue between the two authors about what had been created and what
effect that had had on the raw materials, the storyteller and the creator. In between
there were other dialogues. In this case there were ongoing dialogues between FR
and Anka that reflected on the impact of the poetic expression. These were of a
very different nature to those between FR and GH. They were more hesitant and
cautious and continued long after the study had reached fruition. Dialogue was
contained by Anka’s reaction to the created pieces, and Anka’s response, in turn,
influenced the direction taken by the pieces. FR recognised that imposed boundaries
had immense value in the context of the extended dialogue as they allowed Anka to
see herself through the lens of each piece, and affirmed their content through that
lens. She described this as reassuring, “putting the past in a different light”; bringing
it, “out into the open.” Nutkiewitcz (2003) has remarked that this kind of reflection
is therapeutic for both researcher and storyteller, highlighting the possibilities for
staying close to the original text whilst remaining constant to the method.
Frank (2005) noted that, “we don’t have memories, we have stories that we tell
ourselves about the past.” It is these stories that we turn into ethnographic poetic
representations, carefully and lovingly crafted to enable the reader to reflect on what
the storyteller has herself reflected upon, by means of, “highly reductive, textually
dense and often deeply emotive forms” (Denzin, 2003). Brady (2005) alluded to the
possibilities that are inherent in this activity, when the writer discloses the universal
through the particular, to move the discourse forward towards, “what defines us all
– what we share as humans” (Brady, 2005, p. 998). Jackson (2003) suggested that
poetic expression in research is a reference to the particular, “without any thought
of, or reference to, the general”, though (quoting Goethe), “whoever grasps the
particular in all its vitality also grasps the general, without being aware of it, or only
becoming aware of it at a late stage” (N. Rapport, 2003, p. xi). Brady urged us to
render as exact a statement of lived experience as we can, “as clearly and accurately
as possible through our sense of ‘Being-in-Place’ guided by histories that appear to
contextualise the material best” (2005, p. 998).
Ethnographic poetic representation strongly supports our sense of ‘Being-in-
Place’ and embodied understanding (Sparkes, 2012). It allows the writer to clear an,
“imaginative-narrative space which is their own” (Bloom, 1975, p. 5) that provides
different ways of knowing, leading to powerful outcomes, interpretive freedom and
an economic communication of findings, whilst allowing for various aspects in a
single distillate.
Properties of ethnographic poetic representation also include the facility to move
away from the stilted, scientific and clinical towards an experiential truth that cannot
be accessed in other ways, and the capacity to, “construct our life-worlds, [...] from
other worlds, from the worlds of others” (N. Rapport, 2003, p. 14). Nigel Rapport has
remarked that, “it is of individual interpretations that the life-worlds of individuals
significantly comprise” (N. Rapport, 2003, pp. 14–15). Speech derives an implicit
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poetry, called forth from within the researcher, but of equal resonance for speaker
and listener alike.
Ethnographic poetic representation is dramatic, quite different from other
methods, non-conformist and containing qualities that enable us to crack open
academic restrictions. This multiplicity of properties works in defence of literary
experimentation. In summary, ethnographic poetic representation is powerful in re-
presenting social data and in its management of language, it is strongly mediated
through dialogue. It renders, through expert representation, a statement about the
authenticity of life and biography. Clearly it has had its critics; those who espouse
plain reportage and the realist tale for being capable of laying out a storyline
factually, and without emotion. Critics are wary of poetics, seeing it as too romantic,
too interfering, and too confusing. However whilst realist tales have their place, they
cannot easily reveal the storyteller’s character or the characteristics of the people,
places or events being described, whilst the possibilities of poetics are manifold.
There is also a power in the finished product which can tell a story in all its contextual
glory. As Arthur Frank alleges, by “letting stories breathe” (2010), we are shaped,
and at times brought to a greater empathic understanding.
GH RESPONDS – A WRITER’S INVOLVEMENT IN HEALTH RESEARCH:

TAKING OUR WORK FORWARD TOGETHER
I want to respond to this meeting of minds to which FR alludes above. It stems

from a chance meeting at Swansea University, where two people from disparate
backgrounds met during a Master Class on ‘Advances in Qualitative Methodology
in Health and Social Care Research,’ which FR had put on as part of her annual
master class programme at the College of Medicine. This was excited further by
the appearance of Arthur Frank, the invited speaker, who presented his work on
sociology and health and the ‘dialogics of experience’. Listening to Professor Frank
speak was a major moment in my career as a poet and creative writing facilitator in
the field of health and social care; confirming feelings I had long held that gifted
people had been working for some time in overlapping and complementary fields,
without even being really aware of, let alone collaborating with, one another.
Social scientists, educationalists, and therapists were deeply engaged with
narrative enquiry and auto-ethnography, as were many writers, but they weren’t
necessarily talking to one another. Writers were used to doing their idiosyncratic
thing; Lapidus, the UK organisation for writers who work with others, had been born
out of a recognition that this kind of work would benefit from practitioners working
together to develop theories and techniques for good practice, but those practitioners
were predominantly from literary backgrounds and somewhat marginalized by the
mainstream.
The meeting of minds at Swansea University, and my extensive involvement
with Lapidus over the years, led me to realise that we are all engaged with the
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articulation of the human condition – what can happen when we talk or write about
our experience and quality of life; whether that be about truth and memory, or about
any number of other subjects. These may include: health and illness, relationships,
incarceration, prejudice, suffering, joy – indeed a number of these are evident in the
exemplar from Anka’s Holocaust experiences.
Writers involved in health and social care may recognise that writing can help
people, and that its practice is conditioned, defined even, by the nature of the people
who are writing and the context in which it is conducted. Working in a school, say,
with learning disabled children, involves without doubt different skills than working
on an adult psychiatric ward or in a hospice. The goals of the work may differ,
as may the means used to evaluate that work. Lapidus, being a broad church, has
recognised and worked consistently with this multiplicity. Survivors’ Poetry as in
the exemplar herein, is testament to the increasing fascination with the practice,
theory and philosophy of our common use of language, whatever the condition of
our lives, and of the liberation of stories through poetics, whatever our walk of life.
The verbal and literary arts in health and social care and therapy strive to take their
place alongside the traditions of art, drama and music therapy and the disability arts
movement.
It has always been a struggle to bridge the cultural gaps between what we might
call ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ writing. One reason for this may be, as Snow famously
brought to our attention 50 years ago (1961), that there is a split in our culture
between the sciences and the arts which is more than just unfortunate; matters of
our individual and collective well-being can be seen paradoxically to embody this
schism very pointedly. Auto-ethnography and narrative enquiry are at the forefront
of debate in the social sciences and psychotherapy, yet are greatly undervalued
in health services and medical research despite the attention they give to diverse
areas such as asthma, oncology, dementia and spinal injury, not to mention mental
health.
Can this division be attributed to a simple paradigm, the infamous mind-body
split, itself an echo of Snow’s two cultures? At a time of straitened finances it is
understandable that fund-holders want to be seen (possibly as much for political
reasons as financial ones), to be spending the money to best effect, but what about
proportionality?
So, if we are serious about the work we do as writers in health and social care, then
we need to get serious about how we present ourselves. We are not doing ourselves
any favours by appearing to be dilettantes and in order to change this appearance
we need to get more involved in the development of theory and the sharing of good
practice. Although we are using poetic enquiry, and transcription (or rendition) as
our own particular focus, we hope that anyone working with writing as a focus of
their work might wish to engage with the following issues:
Firstly – philosophy matters! By which I mean that we should always be
asking the big questions about the work we do. We should be asking ourselves
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how are we engaged in working with, and continuously researching, the ancient
relationship between words and physical and mental health and social well-being?
Are we constantly alert to the following relationships as they apply to our work:
personality and identity; truth and falsehood; fantasy, delusion and creativity? Are
we considering ethical issues in our practice? Is there an aesthetic way of knowing?
Secondly – poetics matters! A good many writers write, it seems to me, without
reading enough, or reading critically; and a good many writers working in health
and social care think literature as such doesn’t have much to do with their practice.
But, as we argued in a previous paper (F. Rapport & Hartill, 2010), experimentation
can be seen as being at the fore of what we do, as many encounters with clients take
place in relatively unchartered territory and the paradigms of more conventional
poetics may not pertain to the situation in which we find ourselves. Put simply, we
always have to be open minded as to the shape our work might take, both off and
on the page. We have to be open-minded, and our minds are opened by exploring
different approaches both from within our own and through other literary traditions
and from working with people from a range of disciplines, such as in the case of our
work, who bring to the writing their own unique traditions and viewpoints.
In the light of this, there are also aesthetic issues to consider, any notion of ‘pure’
aesthetics having been challenged by the ‘applied’ nature of our work; what makes
for good or bad poetry when seeking therapeutic outcomes? Or more intriguingly,
what kind of aesthetic adventures are we encountering when we undertake to do the
work? A simple example of this might be that biggest challenge to the modernist
individual writer – collaboration. We are all in the business of making a case about
the work we believe in. So many times I have heard people say that this work can
be useful, healing, even miraculous – but unless you’ve done it, you’d probably be
indifferent or sceptical. We need to communicate not only our enthusiasm but our
belief, we need to reaffirm good practice, we have to get the theory out there for all
to see, and we need to continue to try to take our work forward together.
FR AND GH – A SHARED DIALOGUE: THE SPACE AND PLACE OF POETICS
Looking back over the introductory anecdote about the scene outside the restaurant,
it’s striking how the events under discussion still affect people in the most unexpected
circumstances, and how we are likely to find the concerns we are engaged with in
our work suddenly reflected back to us through the oddly-curved mirrors of time and
place. Synchronicities abound, and new contexts reconfigure, redefining what we
thought about ourselves and others. Sometimes the encounters we’ve had can then
appear as episodes in a much bigger script: the whole play being written before our
very eyes.
When one engages with another, however seemingly commonplace their life,
however superficially unadventurous their stories, one is bringing oneself to act
within their history. There is always drama there, there is human life, and it is that
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engagement that energises their tales, that brings meanings to birth, that can reveal
and engender the poetry of our lives. When we do good work, we produce good
writing that can ‘speak to’ wider audiences. The genesis to this work, laid out at the
beginning of this chapter, and the encounters that engendered, between FR’s mother
and Anka, between FR and her mother, between FR and Anka, and between the
authors of this chapter and the readership of this book, constitute and construct the
poetry – the meaning that is poetry – and help validate our way of working.
The processes of analysis based on research scenarios, Summative Analysis and
the raw materials is much more than a business of accuracy or efficiency; it involves
attention, empathy, care, reflexivity and response. But the process also alerts us to
language, what it is and how it works; what it carries, how it says things. And the end
product, the exemplar, is language making itself felt.
We talked earlier about how ethnographic poetic representation and the analysis
process has little purchase in the field of Health Services Research, compared, say,
to Anthropology. We are interested in how the two fields relate, and how poetics can
operate as an overlapping, and therefore to some extent unifying, engagement. If
we ask the question: “What is health?” we might be asking: “What is wholeness?”
And, “What threatens wholeness?” “How can art address these inevitabilities of life,
the human condition?” Hardly original thoughts, perhaps, but they seem strangely
foreign to the field of scientific examination. The etymology of the words ‘poetry’
and ‘healing’ show their commonality at origin: poetry from the Greek meaning “to
make whole”; healing the same, though from a Germanic root.
What can art (including writing) do? As we’ve already alluded, it opens to the
whole experience of life, with all its weaknesses and fractures. It allows complexity,
ambiguity and multiple stories, to happen. It provides a theoretical and conceptual
space for dialogical moments to occur (Black, 2008). Because writing is often person-
centred, in thrust and implication, it elicits the stories protagonists like Anka wish to
tell, and gives respect to their experiences and their modes of expression. Because
it entails dialogics, it draws on the strength of relationship, of trust and brings forth
truths that may remain hidden in solipsism or the fog of power relationships – be
they punitive, as in the criminal justice system, or diagnostic, as in conventional
healthcare. It is reflexive, and thus pays attention to what one might call ‘deeper’
or ‘wider’ truths, and it relates the experience of the individual self to the selves
of the ‘wider audience’ – society at large. By so doing it can dignify experience
for the participant and the participant’s loved ones – of even the most degrading or
traumatic nature. And finally, it pays attention to the act of listening – listening to the
voice of the storyteller and their language, listening for narrative style and metaphor,
listening for the reactions of those around us, listening to others’ views to take us
forward, to co-collaborate. It uses these in the context of an exchange of gifts, a re-
presentation of memory, a life-moment to be cherished, an autobiography. It offers
a new way of knowing.
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iris e. dumenden
17. ‘if you believe, if you keep busy, you can

develop yourself’
On Being a Refugee Student in a Mainstream School
Introduction
In this chapter, I present vignettes from the lived experience of a young Burmese
Chin refugee in Melbourne, Australia. The vignettes explore issues of exclusion and
racism, of hope and hopelessness, and of the structure of opportunities available to
a determined young man in the pursuit of his dream of going to university in his
adopted homeland. For this book, the editors called for papers that reflect the themes
of seeing, understanding and caring as key characteristics and conditions for poetic
forms of inquiry. In answering this call, I present excerpts of transcripts – rewritten
as poetry – taken from tutoring and mentoring sessions between myself (as tutor/
mentor and researcher), and this young refugee when he was a 19-year-old student
enrolled in a mainstream secondary school. Presenting vignettes of this young man’s
experiences in poetic form provides a way by which readers are invited to see,
understand and care for this young man and his day-to-day struggles to ‘make it’ in
Australia.
Crafting Poetry from Transcripts
The poems presented in this chapter have been crafted from conversations between
myself and my student (originally from Burma, who arrived in Australia as a 15-year-
old refugee) during homework-tutoring and mentoring sessions. These sessions were
audio-recorded and formed part of the data I collected for my doctoral research study
in which I tracked the educational trajectory of this young refugee from secondary
school to university in Melbourne, Australia. Most of these audio-recorded sessions
were conducted in 2008, the year my student was in his final year in a mainstream
secondary school. In the excerpts that follow, I use a pseudonym that my student
made up for himself: Van Dawt Lian. In his first language, Chin Haka, the name
translates to Big Love for God.
In constructing the poems presented here, I followed the process that Laurel
Richardson (2003) used in transforming a 36-page transcript of a five-hour interview
I. E. DUMENDEN
with a participant into the long narrative poem she called, Louisa May’s Story of Her
Life. Here is her description of this process:
Following social research protocol, I used only Louisa May’s words, tone,
diction, but relied on poetic devices such as repetition, off-rhyme, sounds,
meter, and pauses to convey her narrative. The speech style is Louisa May’s,
the words are hers, but the poetic representation, including the ordering of the
material, are my own. (p. 193)
My first attempt at the poetic rewriting of my transcript material resulted in the
poem, I had a quarrel with my teacher, presented below. The conversation from
which this transcript was taken was part of a tutoring session in which Van Dawt Lian
(shortened to Lian from hereon) told me the story of his ‘quarrel’ with his teacher
in dribs and drabs, while we worked on his homework. He went about the retelling
in a circular manner, repeating crucial elements over and over (as one does when
one is upset), so I had to reorder the material in order to reconstruct what happened
and give the episode some degree of coherence. From a two-hour tutoring session, I
transcribed only the parts where he talked about the ‘quarrel’: this effort resulted in
six pages of text. Listening to the audio-recording over and over while transcribing,
I could hear the poetry in Lian’s words, the poetry in his pauses and repetitions,
even the poetry in his silences. As Richardson (2003: 188), citing Tedlock, observed,
‘when people talk, whether as conversants, storytellers, informants, or interviewees,
their speech is closer to poetry than it is to prose.’ Thus, rewriting the transcript as
poetry, instead of as prose, allowed writing in ‘the pauses through the conventions of
line breaks, spaces between lines and between stanzas and sections, and for sounds
of silence’ (p. 189). The following excerpt of the transcript, in which Lian attempts
to justify his conduct during the incident, was what initially convinced me that the
transcript had to be rewritten as a poem:
Yeah, anger is a sin, but…yeah…sometimes…you know that Solomon themes
from the Bible…it mentions that David say that sometimes people can be
happy, sometimes they can be sad, sometimes they can be, uh, enjoy their life,
sometimes they can be…feel, sometimes they can be anxious, sometimes they
can be the devil…everything!
The full poem is presented below, as are four other poems/vignettes I crafted from
our conversations over the course of our yearlong intensive tutoring and mentoring.
They are presented here in chronological order – I use the dates of the sessions from
which each excerpt was taken as sub-headings – to show Lian’s evolving relationship
with his teachers, his tutor, and his adopted homeland, as well as his struggle to fulfil
his community’s expectations that he would do well in school and be a role model to
his Burmese Chin brothers and sisters.
228
‘if you believe, if you keep busy, you can develop yourself’
i had a quarrel with my teacher
14 May 2008
We were in the middle of tutoring when Lian suddenly blurted,
We had a fight
I had quarrel with my teacher
Which one? I asked.
I was asking for help and she didn’t hear me
Or she was just ignoring me,
I don’t know
I assumed she was just ignoring me
I raised my hand three times
and she was ignoring me
Finally, she came
I said, Huh! Finally, you came!
She said, I…BEG…YOUR…PARDON!
How dare you say something like that!
Why don’t you just wait
Why don’t you just wait
I’ll come if I knew it
if I knew you called me
Because I wouldn’t ignore you
if I hear you.
Then she walked away and didn’t help me
Maybe she didn’t hear you
Even if she was ignoring you
You’re not supposed to say it like that
She’s your teacher and you must say it
Softer
more respectful
we all have to do this.
I do…sometimes…always…
But she was ignoring ME!
And I can’t keep it anymore!
She’s my teacher and she has to help, yeah?
You hurt her feelings
She’s your teacher but she’s human, too, you know
229
I. E. DUMENDEN
But she hurt my feelings, too

I am human, too!
In the Bible, David said
Sometimes people can be happy
Sometimes they can be sad
Sometimes they can be
Enjoy their life
Feel
The Devil
Everything!
After he had exhausted himself recounting and reliving his ‘quarrel’ with his teacher,
I advised him to talk to her and explain his side of things. When we met again the
next day, I asked if he had spoken to his teacher. He said, yes, and that his teacher
had replied, “Okay, this is in the past – let’s forget about it.” She advised him that the
next time he needed her help, he should wave his arm and she would notice. I teased
him, “Ah, you’re friends again!” He replied, “She’s really nice. She’s nice teacher.”
if you do esl, it doesn’t mean you’re dumb
3 June 2008
Lian and I had just spent most of the Queen’s Birthday public holiday at the library,
studying for his mid-year Psychology exam. We were having a late, late lunch, when
he remarked,
In Burma, I was always at the top of my class.
I sensed that he was telling me this by way of complaint. “I know,” I reply. He had
said something in a similar vein just a few days earlier:
If I was born here, I’d be good.
Lian is obsessed with getting high marks in his exams but when he does, and then
gets complimented by his teachers, his reaction is a mixture of pride and resentment.
For example, he told me that he had received 34 out of a possible 40 marks in his
most recent Legal Studies exam. It was the second highest mark in class, after his
genius classmate, who got a 36. His teacher had complimented him on how well he
had answered the examination questions. But when his teacher learnt that he was an
English as a Second Language (ESL) student, she became even more complimentary
of his efforts. Yet, as he recounted all this to me, his final comment was,
If you do ESL, it doesn’t mean you’re dumb.
230
When Lian’s teachers praise him for how well he has done in an exam, he hears their
praise appended by the unspoken qualifier: for an ESL student. Maybe his teachers
also thought this way, maybe not. But Lian’s interpretation of their praise is filtered
by his life experiences. Even as Lian struggles to become the ‘Other’ (Said, 1978) as
in ‘the exemplary student’, he does not want to be the ‘Other’ as in ‘the exemplary
ESL student’. And therein lies the resentment at being praised for how well one has
done: especially since one is an ESL student.
the story of the blackbird
7 July 2008
Lian and I had just finished working on his English essay on ‘conflict’ when he told
me that he had a conflict of his own. He said he was worried about how the younger
members of his Chin community – whom he referred to as his “Chin brothers” –
were forgetting their language and culture, and “pretending to be Aussie.”
Have you heard the story about the blackbird?
This is a really good story to tell about people who forget their culture.
There’s a bird and he’s black – all black.
One day, he went to another nest and tried to become another bird.
He covered his wings with different colours.
He covered himself with fake colours and then he said,
Now I look like a peacock.
Then, he went to the peacock place.
He said, Look at me! I am just like you.
I’ve got these wings and you’ve got the same as me.
And do you know what the peacocks did?
They looked at that bird.
And because the blackbird can’t cover everything
His eyes – everything – looked totally different.
So, what they did was bite him.
Then his wings fell because they were fake.
Finally, they killed him.
They killed that bird.
Look at my face.
Can you call me an Aussie?
No, just like that, their colour skin will show them who they are.
As I said, we will be happy who we are,
not just pretend that we are Aussie.
231
I. E. DUMENDEN
Because they will say,

Oh, you’re not…
You can’t do that
You can’t do that.
They will say things to us, just like this story.
Lian’s unease with being the visible ‘Other’ is signified in the above story by the
blackbird – with its dark feathers and differently-shaped eyes. Race-based inequality
is deeply embodied: one that Lian lives with on a daily basis because of the colour
of his skin and his differently-shaped eyes. This story, then, provides a window
through which it is possible to interpret Lian’s ‘quarrel’ with his teacher and his
resentment at being praised for being an exemplary ESL student. That is, he simply
wants to be treated like any other student in his mainstream school: to be able to
attract his teacher’s attention when he needs assistance, and to be praised for doing
well without reference to his ESL or refugee status.
Sometimes, i feel, like, hopeless
8 August 2008
Lian and I had embarked on these intensive tutoring sessions in order to fulfil his
dream of going to university, and hopefully getting into the Bachelor of Laws course,
which required a very high Equivalent National Tertiary Entrance Rank (ENTER)1 –
somewhere in the high 90s. Occasionally, Lian found the pressure of pursuing a high
ENTER relentless, and, at times, even depressing. During these times, I not only
tutor, I also soothe, encourage, cajole.
Sometimes, I feel, like, hopeless.
I don’t know, when I think about my career
Yeah, I don’t want to think about that.
You don’t want to be a lawyer anymore?
No, no, it’s not that.
Nothing special.
Is it about going to uni?
Or the whole “life ahead of you” kind of thing?
No, about getting ENTER score.
What’s making you hopeless?
I work hard but sometimes I can’t get at what I hope.
Can’t get an A even if you work very hard?
232
Yeah, like that.

Even if I work hard, I can’t get an A.
I think, why is this?
How come?
Your grade depends on a lot of things – it’s not just you.
There are millions of people in the world
Everyday is a struggle not to be at the bottom
Everyday is a struggle to go up and it’s a long way up.
And because you come from another country – it’s even more difficult.
The problem is,
the one I’m most concerned about,
is from my community.
We’re the first generation,
and if we’re the first generation,
everything is like,
has to be perfect.
But young people,
they don’t want to go to school,
they want to do silly things.
But we’re beginning of the generation,
you kind of like,
want to do your best.
You feel tired sometimes?
Yes, I feel tired.
Sometimes, I just don’t want to go to school anymore.
Sometimes, I just want to get a job.
What about getting a job?
How do I find a job?
I’ve been talking to my friend who’s currently an interpreter.
Okay, let’s see.
Where do you get to apply for that job?
Make sure you’re going to get money for that.
You need to be making some money so that you can buy stuff.
You’ll need a lot of stuff for uni.
Or maybe go on holidays.
Or buy a car.
The main thing is to enjoy your life.
Sometimes, talking to you makes me feel better.
233
I. E. DUMENDEN
leap of faith
16 January 2009
Christmas and New Year celebrations were over, but there were still four days to
go before the first round of offers for university places were to be published. We
were done with our tutoring sessions and were anxiously waiting for offers – any
offer – of a place at university. Before the Christmas break, Lian had received his
Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE)2 and learnt his ENTER – a disappointing
53, despite all our efforts. It was not high enough to get a place in a Bachelor of
Laws course in any of the universities in metropolitan Melbourne, so we had to reset
our sights on a general Bachelor of Arts course. Lian’s ENTER of 53 meant that he
finished secondary school solidly in the middle amongst all the students in the state
who took their final exams, but it was not enough to guarantee him entry into an
undergraduate course in the most sought-after courses and universities. Over the
Christmas break, I often wondered how Lian was dealing with the prospect of not
being able to go to university. So it was I who wanted a meeting with him, to discuss
the past year’s experiences. He had a lot of errands to do that day, so I decided to
chauffer him around to his many destinations: to the post office (to buy some stamps
and post a letter to a new employer), to the police station (to apply for a police check
for another employer), to an office in the city (to drop off a letter for his father),
and finally, to an office in St Kilda (for an interview with a potential employer). In
between these stops, we chatted:
You know, after coming from the Bible camp, I changed a lot.
How? How did you change?
For the better.
Now, I feel like everything’s reasonable.
Everything seems to be good.
Your life is going good?
Not just my life.
I can forgive someone easily.
I don’t yell to my brothers and sisters anymore.
A lot of pressure, when you’re doing VCE.
Maybe you’re not angry anymore?
Maybe you’re just growing up?
You’ll be twenty next month.
The preacher was really good.
I talked to the preacher.
I asked him to pray for me in front of 800 people.
234
Pray for what?

I express my feeling – how I was feeling about my VCE result.
How I was feeling when I heard about my VCE, my ENTER score.
I told him I was born-again, baptised last year.
That I met God, prayed to God at night, every night.
Every night, I read the bible.
Every night, I pray.
I ask God to give me – to be able to study Law,
to be able to go to a good uni.
Why didn’t God answer me?
Why it doesn’t work?
I don’t know why.
Does it mean I need to pray more?
What should I do?
The preacher said,
Just wait.
God has a plan for you.
So now, I’m kind of –
relax,
accept everything,
be happy,
don’t worry anymore,
don’t think about the ENTER score anymore.
Because being human,
sometimes we need to face hard times,
sometimes we need to face good times,
sometimes we can be happy,
sometimes we can be sad.
If you believe,
if you keep busy,
that mean you can develop yourself.
That word you used to teach me –
leap of faith.
I remember that one.
Thus, Lian saw his low ENTER as a test of his faith in God’s plans for him. It is both
a rational and irrational way for Lian, a deeply religious young man, to deal with the
prospect of not being able to go to university: to believe that God has a plan for him
and that he just has to keep faith that things will work out eventually.
235
I. E. DUMENDEN
epilogue
Things did eventually work out for Lian. He was accepted into a general Bachelor of
Arts course with a three-year scholarship. He did very well in his first semester and
was allowed to transfer to the School of Law, doing a Bachelor of Arts in Criminal
Justice Studies, by the second semester. During his second year, he won a prestigious
scholarship that awarded $10,000 a year for two years to a refugee student enrolled
in a law course. By his third year, while still undertaking his Bachelor’s, he
started another course, a Diploma in Interpreting, which he completed in 2011. He
completed his Bachelor’s degree in 2012. However, he decided not to continue with
his law studies, but instead enrolled in, and completed, a Master’s in Translating and
Interpreting Studies in 2013. He now teaches at both secondary and tertiary levels.
acknowledgements
I would like to thank Van Dawt Lian for his participation in my doctoral research
project. The words expressed here are his and mine; however, I claim the ordering
of material and poetic representation as my own (Richardson, 2003: 193). I am also
grateful for the excellent support and guidance by my thesis supervisor, Dr Keith
Simkin of La Trobe University, throughout my PhD candidacy.
notes
1
In 2008, most universities in Victoria, Australia, used the ENTER to determine their student intake
into undergraduate courses by having a cut-off ENTER for each undergraduate course offered by each
university campus. From June 2009, the ENTER was replaced by the Australian Tertiary Admission
Rank (ATAR). Because I had conducted the data collection for this study in 2008, before the ATAR
was introduced, throughout this chapter I use ENTER to refer to the ranking system current in the state
of Victoria at the time.
2
The Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) is the certificate that most students in Victoria receive
on satisfactory completion of their secondary education.
References
Richardson, L. (2003). Poetic representation of interviews. In J. F. Gubrium & J. A. Holstein (Eds.),
Postmodern interviewing (pp. 187–201). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism: Western conceptions of the Orient. London, England: Penguin Books.
Iris E. Dumenden
College of Education
Victoria University Melbourne
Australia
236
JOHANNA SPIERS and JONATHAN A. SMITH
18. USING AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POETRY AS DATA

TO INVESTIGATE THE EXPERIENCE OF LIVING
WITH END-STAGE RENAL DISEASE
An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis
INTRODUCTION
The experience of living with End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) and being on
dialysis is a complex and life-changing one that has received some investigation
within the qualitative psychological realm (see e.g., Gill & Lowes, 2008; Martin-
McDonald, 2003; Polaschek, 2003). This is a period of time which can lead to
difficulties with autonomy and empowerment (Burnette & Kickett, 2009; Hagren,
Petterson, Severinson, Lützén, & Clyne, 2001).
Before dialysis, the diagnosis of ESRD was a death sentence (Bevan, 2000).
Bevan suggested that the dominant medical model sees dialysis as a cure for ESRD,
whereas the reality is not so simple. In fact, dialysis could be seen as an ongoing
experiment, which leaves the patient unsure of which role he or she must fulfil
within society – that of a patient, or a healthy person.
Meanwhile, Martin-McDonald (2003) found that dialysis patients’ sense of control
tended to see-saw according to how their treatment was going at that point in time.
Each loss of control was met with an attempt to regain it. One review of qualitative
articles about dialysis (Morton, Tong, Howard, Snelling, & Webster, 2010) highlights
the importance of involving patients in the decisions about treatment, hence adding
to that sense of control.
Authors of these previous studies have tended to use interview or focus group
data. Here, we use Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to analyse the
autobiographical poetry of Jon E. Seaman. The poems in question are located in
the appendix; it could be that the reader would prefer to read these poems before
continuing with the text of the paper, so as to experience the poetry for themselves
before the authors’ interpretation is presented.
It is our belief that analysing poetry in this way is an innovative method which
can explore the experiences and challenges faced by an ESRD patient in a fresh
manner. We believe that this idea has the potential to be useful in many other areas
of health research, and that this article can stand as an example for other researchers
interested in using non-traditional methods.
J. SPIERS & J. A. SMITH
One might question whether it is appropriate or relevant to use poetry as data

in scientific qualitative research. Poetry can be used not to replace interview data,
but instead to supplement it. Of all the qualitative approaches, it could be argued
that phenomenological approaches such as IPA, which have depth and focus on
language, are the most suited to an involvement with poetry.
Phenomenology is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with going back to
“the things themselves” (Husserl, cited in Smith, Flowers & Larkin, 2009, p. 12) –
that is, trying to understand phenomena as they really are, stripped of external
noise and biases. Phenomenological psychology uses this philosophy to step inside
the lives of others. Van Manen said, “In thoughtful phenomenological texts, the
distinction between poetic and narrative is hard to draw” (1997). Willis (2002)
says that good poetry “names and distils human experience” (p. 6), which good
phenomenological writing also does. Thus we can see a link between poetry and
phenomenology.
Influenced by Heidegger’s view of hermeneutic phenomenology as helping the
phenomenon to make its appearance, Smith (2010) has introduced the concept of the
gem within qualitative research. A gem is an extract from data which is laden with
meaning, which appears to sum up several, or perhaps all, aspects of the participant’s
experience. Smith talked of three kinds of gem: a suggestive gem, which hints at the
experience, but needs filling out; a shining gem, which is totally present; and secret
gems, which require the most detective work on behalf of the researcher.
It could be posited that when viewed as texts ripe for interpretation by researchers,
poems are packed full of polished gems. Within Jon’s poems, the gems are there,
waiting to be picked up and inspected. The polished gems seen within Jon’s poetry
are perhaps an amalgamation of Smith’s (2010) shining and secret gems. They are
totally present and yet also benefit hugely from detective work by the researcher.
The acceptance of an artistic element within social sciences is not a new concept.
In 1981, Eisner drew attention to how artistic approaches within qualitative work
could complement the emphasis on understanding rather than measuring:
To know a rose by its Latin name and yet to miss its fragrance is to miss much
of the rose’s meaning. Artistic approaches to research are very much interested
in helping people experience the fragrance. (Eisner, 1981, p. 9)
Using poetry in this way to explore the experiences of patients in a scientific
setting seems to be a new and exciting opportunity for experiencing that fragrance.
Eisner (1997) says, “Poetry was invented to say what words can never say. Poetry
transcends the limits of language and evokes what cannot be articulated” (Eisner,
1997, p. 5). There is a contradiction here, as poetry is made up of words, yet Eisner
is saying that it is more than words. How can this be? Perhaps it is that there is
something about the way words are put together in poetry, using rhythm, rhyme,
assonance, alliteration, pitch and tone that combines to create a resonance that is
more than the sum of its parts. All poetry lovers have experienced that feeling of
238
USING AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POETRY
reading a rhyme that goes deeper than prose, that uses words to paint a picture
everyday conversation cannot.
There is an established tradition of qualitative researchers who transform interview
data into poetry. Sociologists Richardson (1995) and Poindexter (2002) have used
the words of their participants to create poem-like pieces, sometimes referred to as
poetic representation. These poems are mostly left to stand alone, without further
interpretation from the researcher. Öhlen (2003) suggests two possible approaches:
letting the poetry speak for itself, or including a more standard phenomenological
interpretation. While both options are valid, we felt that the latter approach had the
potential to provide more richness, depth and resonance for the reader, and so was
the aim in the current article.
While there is a wealth of researchers creating poetic representations, there seems
to be a dearth of researchers analysing pre-written autobiographical poetry, in the
way that this article does. One researcher (Furman, 2004, 2006, 2007) explores
his own poetry. However, while the poetry itself (see e.g., Furman, 2006) can be
thought-provoking, Furman provides little analysis alongside it.
The current article sets out to use IPA to deeply interrogate and interpret the
poetry in question. We believe that using original, autobiographical poetry in this
way is a highly innovative method which does not appear to have been done before.
It is not our intention to suggest that poetry should replace interview data, but instead
to show how poetry can add to the pool of data collection methods by opening a new
door into the experience. It is our belief that the beauty, precision and depth of Jon
E. Seaman’s poems (see Appendices) provides an extremely resonant picture of his
experiences, and so offers a fresh insight into the life of an ESRD patient undergoing
haemodialysis.
METHOD
Jon E. Seaman is a poet, advocate for health care reform and ESRD patient living
in Portland, Oregon, United States. He received a kidney from an anonymous
living donor and is now healthy, but was on haemodialysis and the waiting list for a
transplant at the time of writing these poems.
Jon’s poems were analysed by the first author using IPA. This is an inductive
qualitative method that is built on the epistemological groundwork laid by the
phenomenologists Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre (Smith et al.,
2009). Increasingly, IPA uses single case studies (see e.g., Bramley & Eatough, 2005)
as a way to dig deeply into one person’s experience and find the connections within
that experience (Smith et al., 2009). Qualitative work emphasises understanding,
rather than measuring, and individual experiences, rather than generalisability.
The poems were approached in the way that traditional IPA data would be. The
first author read the poems again and again to familiarise herself with them. She then
made initial notes relating to the descriptive, linguistic and conceptual elements of
239
the texts, before grouping these observations into sub-themes. The sub-themes were
then grouped into super-ordinate themes. The analysis process continued throughout
the writing, and was checked and refined by the second author.
Throughout the process of analysis, the first author was in touch with the poet.
She found his poetry online and was struck by its depth and eloquence. A dialogue
was struck up between them, with Jon giving his full blessing for the analysis to
go ahead. Jon read the complete analysis and gave some comments, which were
incorporated into following drafts. For example, in an initial reading of the poem
On Disaster (see Appendix four), the first author interpreted the left hand verses to
be a prayer to potential donors. However, the second author felt that the poem was
more general than this, a reading that was confirmed via discussion with the poet,
who said:
The waiting list is definitely a part of the dependence, but the theme is the
overall dependence on society. Americans pride themselves on personal
independence (really the illusion of independence). Some of the inspiration
for the poem is me wondering about the dialysis patients who were in New
Orleans during the Katrina catastrophe. I am certain that many of them died.
(Seaman, 2011, personal correspondence)
Of course, poetry is open to interpretation, and anything a reader genuinely finds
within a poem can be valid. However, in the interests of this project, which aimed
to find out what the experience of haemodialysis was like for Jon, it was felt that
the dialogue between Jon and the first author adds validity. Ethical approval was
gained from Birkbeck University of London. This article presents the fullest and
most important theme from the analysis – the battle for agency.
FINDINGS
There is a battle for agency going on for Jon that arises very strongly from the
poems. Mostly, it seems as though his agency – his sense of control over life – has
been taken away from him. At times, Jon attempts to claw it back. However, when
he doesn’t have this sense of agency, the battle rages on as to who or what does: the
doctors, the disease, a higher power, or perhaps the haemodialysis machine itself.
This vehicle I own,
but I’m not the driver
just a sideways tracking passenger (Resonance, lines 21–23, see Appendix one)
The vehicle Jon is talking about here could be his body. We usually consider
ourselves to be the ‘drivers’ of our own bodies, the ones who are in charge of where
we are going. However, for Jon, something else has taken control of his body and
he is left as a ‘sideways tracking passenger,’ which sounds awkward and precarious.
The word ‘tracking’ here could have several different meanings. It could be that
he is tracking himself, in the way that a hunter might track an animal; his mind is
240
trying to catch his recalcitrant body and pin it down, to get back in control. When
used in conjunction with the word sideways (and the following line, ‘an anonymous
blur’), ‘tracking’ also conjures up the memory of the tracking function that would
often go wrong when watching VHS tapes, making the screen fuzzy and blurry. Is
Jon’s agency fuzzed out slightly? Can the tracking be fixed? If so, by who?
This sense that Jon lacks agency over his body is reflected in many places
throughout the poetry. Jon is passive – someone to whom things are done, rather
than someone who does things. He is:
spun in circuits,
squirted through
a cheesecloth stretched
around the lip
of a mason jar.
(Waiting for a Transplant: Dialysis Day 466, lines 6–10, see Appendix two)
Words like spun, squirted and stretched all convey a sense of being manipulated
and used, in a painful, uncomfortable way. Indeed, there seems to be a contrast here
between the way Jon sees himself, as an object to be spun and squirted, and the way
he sees the dialysis machine, which has a lip – a human body part – and is perhaps
more human, more full of agency, than he is. A mason jar is used to preserve food;
does Jon feel as though he is currently in a state of preservation – that his life has
been disrupted and put on hold? This image brings to mind the notion of cryogenics,
of a person suspended in time, perhaps to be released back to life one day, perhaps
not. This lack of agency appears to lead to a loss of self for Jon.
My drowning defiance
a distant voice
carried off in wind. (On Disaster, lines 22–24, see Appendix four)
Our voices are how we make our selves known. The term voice is often used as a
metonymy for a person’s opinions, as in the phrase ‘let your voice be heard.’ Without
a voice to make ourselves heard, we are nothing. Jon’s voice is fading away, defeated
by the wind. He is separate from his voice, his self. What, then, is left? Elsewhere,
we have these lines:
Until my feet
Stop fizzing,
The whorls
Of my fingerprints
Stop whirling. (Waiting for a Transplant: Dialysis Day 466, lines 24–28)
Just as our voices can be a metaphor for our selves, our fingerprints are a metaphor
for our identity. It seems here as though Jon is predicting that he will fizz and whirl
away. What will be left of Jon if his fingerprints, the stamp of who he is, finish
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whirling? Note the ambiguity of the word ‘stop’ when used here. What is Jon hoping
will stop – the treatments? Or his life?
So if Jon has lost his sense of agency, who are the other forces at play in the battle
for control over him?
The route defined, but destination indefinite.
Someone else judges this map.
Waiting, waiting, waiting
Where is my stop? (Resonance, lines 37–40)
It could be interpreted that the ‘someone else’ who is judging the map of Jon’s life
is the as yet unknown donor who he is hoping will save him. This faceless ‘someone
else’ knows where Jon’s ‘stop’ is – he himself does not. Once again, the word ‘stop’
could be read in several different ways. It relates metaphorically to the idea of Jon
being on a journey which has a route and a map, and together with ‘waiting, waiting,
waiting’ conjures up the image of a bus stop. However, ‘stop’ could mean the point
where he will stop being on the list, receive a new organ and step back into his life;
or when his life will stop and he will die.
As well as referring to a potential donor here, the ‘someone else’ on whom Jon
is dependent could also mean a higher power, or his doctors. The use of the word
‘judges’ in line 38 as opposed to ‘reads’ or ‘follows,’ as one would usually do with
a map, hints that perhaps Jon believes that this person who has the agency, the one
who is in control, is judging his life. Perhaps, then, he is talking of God, or of a God-
like being? It could be read that, in his situation, both donors and doctors might take
on a God-like significance, as his life is in their hands. He is forced to depend on this
someone else, meaning his sense of autonomy is diminished.
My life arrested
Subject to the kindness
Of supply chains. (On Disaster, lines 7–9)
Jon’s life is on hold, disrupted – ‘arrested.’ He is imprisoned. While prisoners
have had their agency removed by the state, Jon’s has been removed by ESRD.
It might be returned to him, but this is ‘subject to the kindness of supply chains,’
a play on the phrase ‘the kindness of strangers.’ Unlike strangers, ‘supply chains’
aren’t human. They are faceless and corporate, not kind. The word chain, when used
within a poem in which one of the major themes is imprisonment, could be taken to
be a piece of prison imagery. Jon is chained up – trapped and restrained – within this
‘supply chain’ on which he must be dependent.
Does Jon believe he is part of a supply chain that includes the machine, the
chemicals it is topped up with, and the healthy blood that it then ‘supplies’ to him?
Here, the humanity that blood is usually infused with is stripped away, and blood
itself becomes a cog in a chain, mirroring the loss of self and humanity that Jon
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appears to feel. Jon is dependent on having all the elements of that supply chain
ready to hand. Should disaster, as in the title, strike, and he not be able to find those
tools, then this would have a very bad outcome for him.
We can see, then, that potential donors, doctors, a higher power and the hospital
equipment are all vying for the control that Jon feels ESRD has taken away from
him. The haemodialysis machine itself is another strong contender in this battle, and
Jon’s relationship with it is especially complex and changeable. At times, it seems
that Jon wishes to take a more empowered stance – he plans to assert himself over
the machine and take hold of his own agency:
Today I will ride
this robot kidney
like a mongoose
attack this vacuum cleaner,
double-stitch my claws
into the dialyzer. (Waiting for a Transplant: Day 466, lines 14–19)
Unlike the passive Jon we have seen elsewhere, this is an active Jon who is taking
control: ‘I will,’ ‘ride,’ ‘attack,’ ‘double-stitch.’ This Jon has claws. It is noteworthy
that Jon is dealing with the here and now in this poem, talking of ‘today,’ which seems
to make it easier for him to maintain his sense of self, as opposed to looking into the
unknown future. This could also be read in a bittersweet way. Jon is determined that
today will be different, but how can it be?
Jon is riding the dialysis machine, literally taking control of it. He is a mongoose,
attacking the snake that is the haemodialysis machine, as the mongoose attacked the
snake in Rudyard Kipling’s Rikki Tikki Tavi (1984), and as mongooses do in reality,
often as the unlikely looking victor of the battle. Calling the dialysis machine ‘this
robot kidney’ reframes it; here, it sounds futuristic, even ‘cool,’ where previously in
the poem it has been visualised as a vicious snake sucking him dry.
In contrast, Jon at other times seems to have a painful but necessary reliance on
the machine, which has the agency:
Stabbed again,
again and again my blood torrents out
in cold quivers, but then returns revived. (My Empire, lines 34–36,
see Appendix five)
Use of the word stabbed highlights the intrusive nature of haemodialysis. The
repetition of ‘again’ refers to the fact that Jon’s fistula is penetrated so frequently by
the needles of the machine. The image of blood ‘torrenting’ out is alarming, and also
juxtaposes with the ‘cold quivers,’ which sound quite pathetic in comparison. As the
blood leaves Jon, it is cold and quivering – however, because of the necessary evil of
the machine, it comes back revived, and hence Jon is revived.
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There is a sense throughout many of the poems that Jon and the machine are
fusing, or even have fused together to become one. This is illustrated in Waiting for
a Transplant: Dialysis Day 466, where Jon says that he will:
into the dialyzer. (Waiting for a Transplant: Day 466, lines 18–19)
suggesting a literal fusing between himself and the machine.
Treatments contains several references to Jon becoming one with the haemodialysis
machine, such as:
I’d dig into the drip, disappear (Treatments, line 4)
This line seems back to front. Generally, one would say that drips dig into people,
not the other way around. Perhaps this inter-changeability of roles hints that the two
are one: Jon can dig into the drip just as the drip digs into him. He then ‘disappears’
– subsumed by the machine, there is nothing left of him.
As we have seen, there are points in the poetry when Jon strives to become
empowered and active, and attempts to take hold of his agency. Indeed, the very fact
of writing poetry in the first place is a clear bid to retain agency. In the poem My
Empire, Jon talks of trying to reclaim his body and therefore his agency from the
disease, the doctors and the dialysis. It is all written in the present tense, suggesting
again that perhaps it is easier for Jon to be positive and to maintain his sense of self
when he focuses on the here and now, rather than looking to the future. The empire
of the title could be read as being Jon’s body, over which he is the ruler.
Today I graduate to fifteen gauge
silver straws. I refuse the lidocaine.
I want to feel the big bore bite
of the needles. I want to stand
and face the armies of artery and venus
these invaders the vein. (My Empire, lines 13–18)
Jon is moving up to a bigger needle size in dialysis today. This stanza is filled
with agency, as demonstrated by Jon’s refusal of the painkiller lidocaine. Unlike
in the opening stanzas of Waiting for a Transplant: Dialysis Day 466, where Jon is
stretched and spun and so on, here he is taking control. Refusing painkillers could
be seen to be an attempt to gain a certain image, that of the ‘hard man.’ This is in
contrast to the Jon we have seen so far, who can be blown away by the wind. Note
the repetition of directives from Jon here: I refuse, I want, I want. He is calling the
shots.
It is clear, then, that although the battle for Jon’s agency is one that rages on, it
is not one that is lost just yet – Jon is still a contender in the battle for control of his
body and his life.
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DISCUSSION
There is a strong sense throughout the poetry that Jon is experiencing a lack of
agency. The term lack of agency suggests a dearth of control and choice about one’s
own destiny, a sense of disempowerment. Jon isn’t in charge of his body, but rather
the doctors, the machines, the possible donors, maybe even God are. Jon, while in
dialysis, is passive. There are times where he attempts to regain agency and take
the control back, but this only seems to occur when he focuses on the here and now
rather than looking into the future at all.
The sense of a loss of agency for dialysis patients is one that has been noted
in the literature. One article (Burnette & Kickett, 2009) looks at the feeling of
disempowerment that Australian Aboriginal ESRD patients experience as they
undergo treatment for their condition. These participants found that they experienced
a wide-spread disempowerment. A disempowerment caused by a dependence on the
machines, which Jon also seems to experience, has been noted elsewhere (see e.g.,
Hagren et al., 2001), so isn’t restricted to this cultural group.
Burnette and Kickett (2009) talk of a struggle between the negative impact
of a dependence on dialysis versus its upsides, such as the simple fact that those
on dialysis often start to feel stronger. This struggle can lead to confusion and
vulnerability. We would suggest, based on the existing literature, that dependence on
haemodialysis implies a removal of agency from the patient and toward the machine
and the hospital staff. However, the analysis of the poems suggests that a sense of
independence and positive change comes from a taking back of the agency by the
patient and a focus on the here and now.
This sense of a swing and struggle between the positives and the negatives is
mirrored in Jon’s relationship with agency; he surrenders agency in some poems
and moves to claim it back in others. There is an ever-shifting complexity to the
experience of being on dialysis which means it is hard to sum up neatly. Martin-
MacDonald (2003) talks of a sense dialysis patients have of their feeling of control
see-sawing; the disease might take some control away, so the patient must make
an adjustment to get it back. Martin-McDonald’s participants talk about using
assertiveness as a way to regain control, a finding that is mirrored in the current
article when, for example, Jon talks about refusing painkillers and graduating to a
higher needle gauge.
However, some of Martin-McDonald’s (2003) participants also go on to talk
about pushing the boundaries of their treatments, such as eating out-of-bounds food,
as being the ultimate way to remain in control of their condition. This is not a finding
of the current analysis. While other dialysis patients might push external boundaries
like this, Jon seems to push internal ones more, focusing more on his state of mind
and at times seeming to inhabit a fantasy world whereby he can take control of what
controls him to find some agency. He fights for his sense of control through writing
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poetry. Of course, there will be as many different ways to deal with ESRD as there
are ESRD patients, and this contrast explicates some of those differences.
It seems from the poetry that it is easier for Jon to aim for regaining a sense of
agency and control, and hence a sense of self, when he focuses on the here and now.
When one takes into consideration the unpredictable and unstable nature of life as
an ESRD patient on dialysis, it becomes clear why looking into the future might
increase uncertainty, loss of control and rates of depression. Therefore, it seems that
an intervention to help dialysis patients focus on the here and now, such as person-
centred therapy, may be beneficial.
Charmaz (1983) talks about the importance of freedom and choice in maintaining
a sense of self, using the example of driving. Her participants felt they were more
able to maintain a sense of self if they knew they could access the freedom offered
to them by driving, a metaphor for agency that links back to the quote used earlier –
‘This vehicle I own, but I’m not the driver’ (Resonance, line 21).
The relationship that we have with machines is a lens through which we can
look at our sense of agency. Charmaz’s (1983) work shows us that if we are able
to have agency over a machine, such as a car, we feel that we have a sense of self.
However Jon’s poetry shows us that if a machine has agency over us, as in the
case of a haemodialysis machine, this is somewhat dehumanising and our sense
of self is eroded. When we lack agency, our sense of self suffers. If we take the
narrative construction approach to the view of the self for a moment, then we can
see that a lack of agency might mean we no longer feel in control of the stories being
told about us which make our selves up. Instead, these stories are, for Jon, being
authored by his doctors or even by the dialysis machine itself. Again, this insight
could be valuable in terms of the therapy being offered to haemodialysis patients,
if the relationship with the machine is seen to be key and worthy of exploration. Of
course, again, it must be noted that this will not be the case for all dialysis patients,
but it is an area worthy of exploration.
Jon’s relationship with the dialysis machine is the central relationship portrayed
in the poems. At times, he seeks to find agency over it, but mostly, it looms large and
appears to have agency over him – he lives in the shadow of the machine. There are
times when it is suggested that Jon has fused with the machine, such as when he says
he will ‘double stitch my claws/into the dialyzer’ (Waiting for a Transplant: Dialysis
Day 466, lines 18–19). This fusion erodes Jon’s sense of self, as he starts to see
himself as being joined with the dialysis machine, perhaps becoming part-machine
rather than fully human.
This fusion of dialysis patients with their machines, and the subsequent
psychological obstacles this leads to is a finding which has been hinted at in another
case study (Smith, 1996; see also Smith et al., 2009 for a more detailed analysis).
Smith’s participant, Carole, a woman on haemodialysis, describes a loss of control,
which Smith (1996) links to Rotter’s (1966) locus of control construct, making the
point that many haemodialysis patients perceive a high external locus of control
(Poll & Kaplan de Nour, 1980), meaning that other forces, rather than the self,
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are in control. Hence, one could argue, self becomes diminished. For Poll et. al’s
participants (1980), those with a higher internal locus of control were more able to
adjust and adapt to treatment, showing the importance of maintaining that sense of
self and the potentially disastrous results for mental wellbeing if the sense of self is
lost.
It could be then that feeling part of the machine, as both Carole, Smith’s participant,
and Jon appear to, might contribute to a lower internal locus of control and therefore
to a lessened sense of self. This again emphasises the importance of addressing the
relationship between haemodialysis patients and their machines, as Poll’s (1980)
results suggest that this can have an impact on the success of the treatment.
Meanwhile, another set of haemodialysis patients spoke of the machine as being
both a literal and a metaphorical lifeline (Hagren et al., 2001). This concept can be
seen in two ways: a positive sense of gratitude at the sense of life given back by the
machine, or a negative sense of reliance and dependence; ‘Holding on to this lifeline,
metaphorically speaking, meant that they avoided death, but at the cost of restricted
freedom’ (Hagren et al., 2001, p. 199).
The concept of dependence as a noose around one’s neck is a theme that runs
throughout Jon’s poetry. Jon is dependent on the machine, but also dependent on
the doctors, the hospital, the state, even on a God-like being. Hagren’s findings
focus very much on the role of the machine in this sense of dependence and loss of
freedom. However, the current analysis shows that the issue of dependence can be
connected to more than just the machine.
For Hagren’s participants, just as for Jon, although this sense of dependence was
hard, it did not destroy the will to live and to keep fighting to be as ‘normal’ as
possible. Thus we can see that dependence on these multiple factors is not enough to
destroy the self – however, when it is combined with the other difficulties faced by
haemodialysis patients, a total loss of self becomes more of a risk.
LIMITATIONS, IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
This article presents a single case study and, as such, raises issues about
generalisability. However, single case studies add to our knowledge in a detailed,
considered manner, and can be used to challenge commonly held beliefs. While larger
scale, quantitative studies look at the ways in which variables influence each other,
case studies focus on the confluence of variables, and look at how a set of factors
can vary (Sandelowski, 1996). It is also the case that idiographic studies such as this
case study locates generalisations in the particular (Smith et al., 2009). Idiographic
and nomothetic generalisability can work together to correct and complement one
another (Sandelowski, 1996).
This article has used an innovative approach to qualitative research by using the
high-quality, autobiographical poems of an ESRD patient to examine and interpret
his experiences in-depth, and suggests that loss of self is a potential problem for
dialysis patients. This loss of self can have very serious implications, damaging
247
mental health, which is linked to mortality rates for ESRD (Martin & Thompson,
2000). Therefore, it seems that addressing this problem within ESRD and dialysis
patients should be a crucial part of the service offered by teams. For Jon, it seemed
more possible to hold on to a sense of agency and self when he focused on the here
and now. Perhaps, then, other patients facing this struggle might find it useful to
focus on the here and now.
APPENDICES1
Appendix One: Resonance
This roller coast coffin

injected into the wintering city
like a pyroclastic flow
a full-veined contrast solution.
My body ratchets along methodically
CAT scan slow,
clicking smoothly forward, merciless.
I plan, calculate, and queue
every breath a chambered bullet.
Who sees my future?
This journey tastes of aluminium,
smells like mentholatum and ice.
Anonymous, cold, ergonomic,
I stand on this sterile Portland Streetcar.
It’s pale aesthetic green gunmetal thorax
sectioned like sheets knotted together,
twisting–elastic. Time stretches
in a pull of white taffy.
Freeze. Don’t move or shatter.
When will numbness cease?
This vehicle I own,
but I’m not the driver
just a sideways tracking passenger,
an anonymous blur.
A process for red and green lights,
invisible breaks and pauses.
I want to see this X-Ray of my mind,
close my eyes and with magnetic resonance
locate shallow silver tracks.
Have I been a good man?
248
This answer comes without vowels

in a language I cannot decipher.
Electric letters, many transparent
shapes and shades
bone florescent white and gray displaying
whispers, faint fricatives, and epileptic consonants.
The route defined, but destination indefinite.
Someone else judges this map.
Waiting, waiting, waiting
Where is my stop?
Appendix Two: Waiting for a Transplant: Dialysis Day 466
Today I will be more

than blood.
More than venom
sucked out and snaking
through plastic,
spun in circuits
squirted through
a cheesecloth stretched
around the lip
of a mason jar.
I won’t just twitch there
like a cooling coil
while I’m milked.
Today I will ride
this robot kidney
like a mongoose
attack this vacuum cleaner,
into the dialyzer. I will fang
the power cord cobra
until this suction stops
and my electrolytes
cease to effervesce.
Until my feet
stop fizzing,
the whorls
249
of my fingerprints
stop whirling, until
my blood is clean.
Appendix Three: Treatments
During treatments, she chattered in a non-stop rising rattle.

Suddenly she’d sing “Puff the Magic Dragon” with a voice
like brittle breaking sticks. She’d orate from on high, “You know
that song is about marijuana.” I’d dig into the drip, disappear,
cancel her noise with my head phones, but she bled through.
Today I sit in that dead woman’s chair. This throne
for bones, this slow recliner, this polyvinyl splendor.
So practical; It does not stain, or stink, or leave any trace.
Just wipe blank with common bleach. My spine cleaves
to the plastic back with a thin sediment of skin and sweat.
Her fingers turned black from the tips on up and melted
like icicles, down to nubs. Every few days another digit
dissolved. I could not fathom her absences or why she smiled
at me and sang. I’d try not to watch her dribble-drink, plastic
bottle pinned between her palms as she regressed back to infancy.
Today stuck fast in the dead woman’s chair, I stare
at my fingers while the other patients lie limp, hibernate
in blanket shrouds. She had more life in her than me and all
these stiffs, our souls adrift. My throat spasms, scrapes hot
and from my mouth – a dragon, shaped from smoke.
Appendix Four: On Disaster
Catastrophic
interconnectedness,
my new penitentiary.
I pray thee pass
oh hurricane
of sleep.
My life arrested,
subject to the kindness
of supply chains.
I cannot swim
the storm surge currents
of the waking well.
250
Those sprawling webs

of red, white and blue
construction paper strips.
This is the best me now.
With every flowing moment
I erode.
Scissor thin
and circle linked
absently attached
My drowning defiance
a distant voice
carried off in wind.
with opaque smears
of grey glue
and double sided-tape.
I beg thee strangers
take me from these torrents
with compassionate hands.
I am manacled to you,
all of you,
a prisoner for life.
Appendix Five: My Empire
Engineered in the crook of my left arm,

that blank crease opposite the elbow,
just beneath a precise purple scar,
an aqueduct juts with blood.
You can see it vibrate beneath skin
like a slapped bass string. You can feel
the tingle of the thrill with a finger,
feel it surge in time with my heart.
You can hear the woosh-woosh rush
of the bruit, listen to my blood swarm
like barbarians singing of my downfall
in the key of B.
Today I graduate to fifteen gauge
silver straws. I refuse the lidocaine.
I want to feel the big bore bite
251
of the needles. I want to stand

and face the armies of artery and venus
these invaders the vein. Today
they infiltrate. Under the transparent
sheen of skin a bruise sets
like a sultry Roman sun;
flesh of green followed by purple,
heat soaked reds. A stain, trapped,
swelling, around my bicep.
This is my empire;
this body, this bruise, this blood.
My true corruption invisible and inside.
I am a Caesar who understands
his Ides. I proudly show this pulsing
fistula. It is my spigot, my lifeline.
It throbs, and bleeds, and clots.
It scars under assaults from giant
sucking spears. But it never betrays,
and is brave when I am not. Stabbed again,
again and again my blood torrents out
in cold quivers, but then returns revived.
note
1
The poet Jon Seaman has given permission for these poems to be published here. “Resonance” was
first published in 2003 in Willamette Week and was the winner of the “Smokin’ Word” Poetry Prize.
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Johanna Spiers
Birkbeck College
University of London and
Jonathan A. Smith
Birkbeck College
University of London, UK
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Lesley A. Porter
19. Unnamed Moments, Transformation

and The Doing and Making of Trauma
Therapy Practices
Language in the making celebrates reality in the making.

(Ricoeur in Valdes, 1991, p. 462)
Introduction
This chapter describes aspects of my PhD research examining the ways trauma
therapists shape ethical practice through the doing and making of their therapy. The
research engaged a poetic conceptual frame for the investigation and interpretation
of therapist’s experiences of unnamed moments in therapy and found that these
moments are central to their experience of creativity, poiésis (making) and
generative discoveries produced through the expression of their therapy practices
within therapeutic relationships. The study’s ontological and epistemological
framework was informed by poetics and the concept of poiésis following Ricoeur
(1991), and the foundations of poetics attributed to Aristotle (trans. 1996). In this
chapter I invite the reader to consider that poetic acts involving poiésis (making)
are moments of transformation that potentially lead to discovery when therapists are
seeing, understanding and caring in relation to, that which is, authentically of their
own making. In these moments when new meaning urges forth in relationship to our
own creative acts in therapy, what we may see, know and understand are unnamed
moments expressed as therapy practices. Therapy practices form in the making and
doing of therapy in the present moment and intersect with our experience of self-
discovery, practice-making and identity. These significant unnamed moments and
their expression as therapy practices, are central to all that is happening in therapy.
This introduction outlines for the reader some of the territory covered by the
research and includes: the research aims, the three configured plots from the analysis
and the three emerging practice components from the study. From here the chapter
gives an account of: poiésis and creative products of therapy (therapy practices), my
engagement with poetic narrative configuration, a dialogical and relational context
to seeing, understanding and caring, and implication for practice. I close the chapter
with two vignettes and two poems as examples of my poetic and artistic expression
borne out of the research experience.
L. A. PORTER
When I first approached this research study, it was with an interest to discover how
therapists working with violence, sexual abuse and trauma understand what could
be termed unnamed, poetic, sacred and spiritual moments in therapy and what these
moments meant to them as therapists and, in turn, to their therapeutic relationships.
The words poetic, sacred and spiritual moments were terms appointed by me to
describe unnamed moments1 I had encountered in sexual abuse prevention work and
trauma therapy when the therapeutic relationship was producing exchanges that
appeared intimate, transformative and indefinably greater than the sum total of the
client and the therapist in the room. I was intrigued by these exchanges, and attended
to them in therapy as being of significance, although I could not easily articulate the
substance or meaning evoked by such experiences.
In the research I inquired about the following:
• What is the relationship between therapeutic practice in violence and abuse
contexts and these unnamed moments in therapy?
• Do therapeutic relationships act as sites for an engagement with therapists’
experience of self-discovery, creativity and the practice of crafting therapy?
• How do therapists engage with and interpret their experience of vicarious
traumatisation in violence and abuse therapy contexts?
As a narrativist I drew on a poetic and relational ontology informed by
poststructuralist hermeneutic phenomenology and insights from feminist thinking.
Layered within these understandings I applied a poetic analysis, utilising theory from
Ricoeur (Valdes, 1991), to understand the significance of unnamed poetic, sacred
and spiritual moments occurring in trauma therapy and their meaning in therapeutic
relationships. I encountered Ricoeur’s thoughts on poetry, poetics, poiésis, language,
and the human task of living and interpreting narrativity as central to my thinking
about a poetic ontology for the research study. This orientation and definition of
poetics, poiésis and the value of poetry, allowed me to apply Ricoeur’s theories on
poetics to the analysis of unnamed moments in therapy. As the study was intimately
concerned with the making and doing of therapy practice, I drew on therapeutic
practices designed by Bird (2000, 2004 & 2006). Bird’s therapeutic practices are
unique in that the use of language and the generative possibilities of language are
privileged as an essential orientation for transformative and ethical practice in
trauma therapy.
Building on a poetic and interpretative stance, the research engaged a dialogical
and relational inquiry in the literature review, the methodology, the analysis, and
discussion of the research data. I turned to narrative inquiry following Polkinghorne
(1995), for the analysis and interpretation of the therapist’s accounts. Poetics was
integrated into the analysis and narrative configuration process using insights from
Freeman (1999, 2002), Ricoeur (Valdes, 1991; Ihde, 2004), and Taylor (1991). The
narrative inquiry and configurative analysis were thickened by this poetic analysis.2
256
Making of Trauma Therapy Practices
The analysis produced three configured plots related to:

1. Resonance and transformation in the therapeutic relationship;
2. Therapy as threshold experience: narratives of self-discovery, practice and
identity;
3. A relational and dialogical engagement with vicarious traumatisation: an
exploration of therapists and their practices.
I identified three practice components applicable to trauma therapy from the
findings of the research, they are:
1. In the making and doing of authentic therapy practices transformation occurs for
both therapist and client and this leads to the emergence of unnamed moments in
therapeutic relationships;
2. Unnamed moments offer therapist’s threshold experiences of self-discovery
related to their sense of self, identity and their therapy practices;
3. Trauma therapists’ engagement with their ethical commitments and therapy
practices are an integral part of the way they account for and live out their
relationship to vicarious traumatisation.
Poiésis as an act of making, and the creative

products of therapy
Poiésis, following Ricoeur’s (Valdes, 1991, p. 456) argument, embraces the concept
of ‘re-creation’, taken from the Aristotelian (trans. 1996) understanding of poiésis,
described in Greek as mimesis. Ricoeur’s contention provides a useful entry point
into the consideration of imaginative and transformative moments in therapy, as he
situates poiésis as more than poetry, stating:
And this is why I say poiésis is broader than poetry in the sense of verse
and why I also include fictional narratives to the extent that here we see our
imagination, our productive imagination, at work. An imagination according
to rules, a ruled imagination, but a creative imagination also, creating the rules
but also breaking them. So there is something in common to all forms of the
poetics from the fictional narratives to lyric poetry. (Ricoeur in Valdes, 1991,
p. 456)
Of particular note here is the possibility of a theoretical or potential framework
for making sense of such moments in therapy. By applying a Ricoeurean (Valdes,
1991) analysis to the consideration of the poetic in therapy, we move beyond a linear
way of relating to poetry as a tool in therapy, which is the most common application
used in the literature. This approach does not discount the possibilities of poetry
and what it has to offer the context of therapy, but instead offers an analysis of the
therapeutic domain. It holds the potential for greater, rather than less, choice and
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L. A. PORTER
this is encouraging. As such, this theoretical application indicates that all forms of
creative therapeutic products are located in the realm of poiésis in therapy because
they all engage the therapist in a form of making or creating.
Creative products could include; questions in therapy, poetry and creative writing,
teachings on the therapeutic relationship, reflective practices, narrative and poetic
forms of therapeutic documents, supervisory sessions, or the experience of unnamed
moments of resonance within therapy. All of these acts are located in the realm of
poiésis in therapy. I am using the word ‘products’ to indicate a creative practice
that has sprung from the therapy or from the therapeutic relationship, as a direct
result of the engagement with the poetic potential found within the territory of
poiésis, and the act of making and creating in therapy. Indeed many of the items
I have mentioned above, and described as creative products, could be described as
therapeutic practices. Not all therapeutic practices, however, are creative practices
and not all therapeutic practices result in an engagement with creativity, or the
generation of creative therapeutic products.
By following Ricoeur’s (Valdes, 1991) lead, it becomes possible to see that
creative products of therapy have the ability to both make the rules, and break the
rules. Located here is a significant implication for practice. If unnamed moments
are considered as creative practices of therapy, then potentially it may be so that,
in turn, they hold the capacity to break through dominant cultural expectations of
what is expected within therapy. Consequently, unnamed moments could indicate a
therapeutic need to soften, or challenge a rule-based or structured approach, and could
indicate the need for an alternative within a session, or within particular therapeutic
focuses. For example, when an unnamed moment occurs it may be important that the
therapist interrupts a particular session’s intention (whether it is of a structured form,
such as cognitive behavioural therapy or of a dialogical form such as relational or
narrative informed therapies) to focus on the importance of what is held within the
poetic, sacred, spiritual or unnamed moment. By interrupting the particular session’s
intention, as in the planned approach to the session, the therapist heeds the idea that
the unnamed moment, as a creative product, has the ability to break away from the
rules; to interrupt the expected flow, to create a point of departure, or to signal to the
therapist that this is a moment of relevance that goes beyond the imposed structure
or expected format of the particular session.
It is possible to view unnamed moments in therapeutic relationships as creative
products of therapy. This contributes to seeing, understanding and caring about
unnamed moments in therapy, and thereby provides therapists and researchers of
therapy with a rich descriptive and theoretical lens for investigation.
Coming to see, know and care through the process of poetic

narrative configuration Introduction
Narrative inquiry (Polkinghorne, 1995) offered me the flexibility to integrate poetics

through the narrative configuration and analysis. I turned to insights from Freeman
258
(1999, 2002), Ricoeur (Valdes, 1991; Ihde, 2004), Taylor (1991) and Mishler
(1999) to thicken the narrative configuration process with a poetic analysis. This
decision was important for two reasons. The first being I wanted the research to
have a poetic form, one where poetics and the act of poiésis appeared to be living
in and through the narrativity and plot lines of the research. Secondly, I wanted to
stretch the capabilities of the analysis process informed by narrative configuration
to include a more expansive quality informed by poiésis and the crafting practices
gleaned from therapeutic insights. Embracing this methodological decision was
critical in affirming my dialogical and relational voice as a researcher and in the
way it provided anchorage to my knowing about the research endeavour. By this I
mean there are times in research when a particular knowing is present. I found that at
different junctions I could not easily see or understand the next step clearly. At these
points connecting to my tentative knowing gave me space to then move more fully
into seeing and understanding what was coming into being through the act of poiésis
(making) in the research. I was filled with ideas about poetics and reflected on how
poetics had been the quiet voice whispering from the early beginnings of the study. I
thought about a conversation with one of my supervisors when she said ‘I think what
you really want to research is poetics’. I knew that beyond a perfunctory purpose to
her statement, there lay a deeper purpose to her talk, and that was the talk leading to
co-construction of meaning and understanding. These words mulled around, with all
the other parts of our shared supervisory conversations, as anchor points.
In research projects there are finds, in this case literature finds, that seem to search
you out and then become available to your research; just the right thing at just the right
time. Some provide support, some offer validation, others companionship, and some
seem to have always been part of your knowing. I had this experience with Freeman
(1999, 2002), Ricoeur (Valdes, 1991), Taylor (1991), and Mishler (1999). In the
poetic narrative analysis of the gathered data material I used: Freeman’s (1999, 2002)
understandings of poiésis and narrative, Taylor’s thinking on the authentic self, and
Mishler’s (1999) focus on the nature of crafting and making, as essential narratives
in the construction of identity. As these authors have strong interests in narrative,
selfhood and poetry, they contribute to a Ricoeurian (Valdes, 1991) informed poetic
narrative configuration approach. I have called these experiences the unexpected
location of kindred concepts in an attempt to ritualise and give name to a poetic act,
found within the narrative of a novice researcher. Perhaps other researchers have
similar experiences, and indeed this is another aspect of what makes the endeavour
so thrilling, while at the same time so very challenging.
I experienced a familiarity with Freeman’s (1999) interest in narrativity, and
‘configurational acts’ (p. 99) and was drawn to his accounts on the work of Seamus
Heaney, the great Irish poet. His discussion on ‘poetic creation’ (p. 105), and ‘poetic
construction of selfhood’ (p. 109) resonates strongly with me. Freeman (1999, 2002),
offered early starting points on poetics His ideas supported my poetic stance and
knowing in relation to my research on unnamed moments in therapy. I developed
a poetic sensibility as I reflexively engaged with seeing, understanding and caring
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L. A. PORTER
for the narratives of the participant therapists and the data of my narrative inquiry.
I was filled with ideas about poetics and reflected on how poetics had been the
quiet voice whispering from the early beginnings of the study. I found it useful to
think in poetic terms and to pursue the understandings that poiésis offers, in regard
to creative practices in therapy and the construction of identity or selfhood within
poetic, sacred, spiritual and unnamed therapeutic moments.
As Freeman indicates:
Hence my recourse to the idea of poiésis. As a general rule, the poet is
neither in the business of finding meanings already there in the world nor of
making them, in the sense of fashioning them wholly anew. Rather, the poet
is engaged in a process in which meaning is at once found and made – or, to
be more explicit still, in which meaning is found through being made. When
referring to poiésis as meaning -making, therefore, the intent is to highlight
the constructive, imaginative dimension of the process of articulating and
understanding the world, both inner and outer. (Freeman, 2002, p. 24)
Therefore, we can interpret creative acts and practices in therapy to be producing
new meaning, as previously held meanings are contested; and it is the process of
making, of doing therapy in unnamed moments and indeed in all moments, that
is the site of poiésis in therapy. Instrumental to the process of poiésis in therapy is
language, interpretation and the construction of new understandings, new meanings
and new senses of self in relation to the issues experienced by the person in therapy.
I was particularly enthralled by Taylor’s concept of self-discovery and his notion
of identity formation through the creative acts of making and doing, where as people
we develop into ‘what I have it in me to be’ (1991, p. 62). I applied these concepts
to therapists and their process of shaping and making therapy, an engagement with
crafting therapy practices and the production of ethical practices. These ethical
practices in therapy are manifest examples of the ways therapists live out their
experience of seeing, caring and understanding through the transformative potential
of therapeutic relationships. I can see now that it was the transformative potential
of poetics that caught my early attention. I wanted to coax it into language so that
therapists might consider the art of doing and making therapy, and to engage with
this in a way that leads to a place of self-discovery and the ethical production of
what is uniquely my practice, and what is uniquely others’ practice, and the places
of production that are shared.
In the poetic narrative configuration I considered two specific areas of inquiry
with the therapists participating in the research. The first area was self-discovery,
by the doing of therapy and the making of their craft/their art in therapy, embracing
the idea that therapy is an art/craft where the therapist is involved in the process of
making and doing (Mishler, 1999). The second area was poetics, in whatever form
the therapist understood it, related to Taylor’s concept of ‘becoming what I have it in
me to be’ (Taylor, 1991, p. 62).
260
For the poetic narrative analysis, I explored the following questions in relation to
each of the therapist participants’ transcribed interviews. These questions provided
an important reference back to the overall theoretical base, informed by Ricoeur
(Valdes, 1991) for the research, being an understanding and interest in poetry,
narrativity, language and interpretative acts.
1. What are the plot lines running through this person’s account?
2. What are the subplots?
3. How does the person make sense of the concept of poetic, sacred and or spiritual
moments in their therapy?
4. What are the missing narratives in their accounts in relation to poetic, sacred and
or spiritual moments in therapy?
5. What is the therapist’s experience of, and interpretation of, vicarious traumatisation
in their practice?
6. What is the therapist’s positioning in relation to self-discovery, ethics, creativity
and the practice of crafting one’s therapy (Mishler, 1999)?
7. What is the therapist’s positioning to the notion of ‘being what I have it in me to
be’ (Taylor, 1991, p. 62)?
A Dialogical and Relational Way of Seeing,

Understanding and Caring
The context I aimed for was a relational and dialogical one. I think my background
as a therapist, and the participants’ background as therapists, thickened the
relational and dialogical context. Within this dynamic, my voice is present beyond
the usual scope of the research interviewer. My voice is part of the conversational
activity in the form of a dialogical, relational and embodied engagement between
the interviewee (participant) and myself (Shotter, 1997). Shotter, refers to this as
‘spontaneous, responsive, dialogical activity’, as being ‘a distinct third sphere’ of
human interaction (p. 9) This context invites ‘conversational activities’ (p. 10) where
the voice of the researcher is not bound to ‘monologically represented’ constructs
of how a research interviewer should speak, or for that matter, to limit their speech
within the research interview (Shotter, 1992, p. 9). In this temporal interview space,
the therapists and I could see each other, hear each other and indeed experience each
other’s bodily presence as people, and as therapists, in a way that is also constitutive
of the relational and dialogical material produced during the interview process.
I set up interviews as interviews, and yet clearly what ensued was a conversational
engagement, enabling the participants to not only retell their storied accounts, but
to also generate new accounts. I argue that this was possible due to the generative
potential of working within a dialogical and relational approach. If the therapeutic
relationship is a site for dialogical and relational activities, where sacred and poetic
matters can be witnessed, shared or spoken of, then a similar dynamic is possible
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L. A. PORTER
within the site of a dialogical and relational conversational engagement in poetic

narrative inquiry research interviews.
The therapist’s accounts produced within the interviews were developed from
the dialogical and relational conversational activity shared between the research
participants and myself. To follow Shotter, these conversational accounts ‘have our
lives in them’ and are foundationally connected to ‘everything we do’ (2007, p. 10).
The participant contributors described these fresh accounts as a new way of seeing
things, an area that has not been spoken of before, and use concepts or words not
previously used. For example, one of the participants said: ‘For the first time I have
an image of when I’m going into a [therapeutic] session…I’m going into a different
dimension’.
Positioning the interviews in this way is consistent with a Ricoeurian (Valdes,
1991) approach to engaging with language and interpretive acts poetically. For we
could contend that such an approach, allowing for spontaneity and responsiveness, is
best positioned to evoke and capture all and any poetic forms of expression.
As Shotter says:
I want to explore the possibility of there being for us, as living beings, a
much more immediate and unreflective, bodily way of being related to our
surroundings than the ways that become conspicuous to us in our more
cognitive reflections, a way of relating and orienting towards our surroundings
that becomes known to us only from within the unfolding dynamics of our
engaged bodily movements within them. Such ways of relating become known
to us in terms of the embodied anticipations and expectations with which we
approach things, people, and events occurring in the world around us. Indeed
as I see it is the role of this (what I will call) orientational understanding that
is basic to the further development of both our everyday and our professional
practices. (Shotter, 2011, pp. 439–440)
Poetic Engagements with Unnamed Moments in Therapy:

Implications for Practice
What matters here is how the therapists relate dialogically and relationally to
themselves, to their clients and to others. The way therapists speak, what they choose
to say or not say, what they attend to and listen for, their approach to therapeutic
inquiry and their use of language, the way they respond to nuances of feeling,
emotion and intellect, and their bodily being in the room (and out of the room) are
all part of what makes unnamed moments appear in therapy. The unnamed moments
emerge as a direct result of how the therapist relates in the moments of therapy in the
therapeutic relationship with their client. It is the therapists being in relationship and
being in dialogue in therapy that makes a difference and then these insights inform
therapist’s practices and the making of their therapy practices.
262
How therapists engage in their therapy relationships, what they say and do, the
way they enact their practice ethics and their responses to people in therapy is what
makes the emergence of unnamed moments possible and available for therapeutic
inquiry. Once unnamed moments emerge the therapist’s practices become a resource
that makes (poiésis) an available and possible expression of these moments in therapy.
The creative process invites the therapist to engage with their own experience of
making (poiésis) and enables an inquiry of discovery related to these moments; their
possible meanings and interconnections in therapy. The therapist’s practices enable
words to flow, descriptions, metaphors or images to arise so that the therapeutic
inquiry creates languaged accounts, holds moments of stillness and quiet and makes
expression of these unnamed moments.
I turn now to describe one of the practice components outlined in the research
to illustrate the ways therapists engage, to be in dialogue and relationship with
unnamed moments and the making and doing of their therapy. The following section
describes some of the ways therapists might connect relationally and dialogically
with unnamed moments in therapy.
Making and doing of authentic therapy is transformative

and leads to unnamed moments in therapy
This practice component focuses on how therapists engage with transformative

creative processes that culminate in poiésis (making) in their authentic therapy
practices and explores the significance of crafting practice in therapy through the
making and doing of therapy. A starting point for therapist’s engagement with this
practice component is to realise that unnamed moments are essential elements of
therapy that hold the capacity to produce change and transformation. These moments
are indicative of generative therapy when people (both client and therapist) are
changed in their relation to themselves, in their relation to others and in relation to
their life. When effective therapy is happening unnamed moments, poetic, sacred,
and spiritual moments will usually be occurring. Lomax, Kripal, and Pargament
(2011) found, in reference to sacred moments, that these moments signal a strong
and effective therapeutic relationship. Clients are able to connect with and speak
about what matters most to them, when therapists notice these moments and inquire
about them in therapy (Katz & Shotter, 1996). In trauma therapy this is a critical
matter for the therapist’s practice ethics because clients often feel disconnected or
unsure about their thoughts and feelings following trauma. Therapists might commit
to noticing these unnamed moments in therapy and engage with dialogues of
therapeutic inquiry about these moments as they occur. Further, they could be raised
in clinical supervision where therapists review the quality and effectiveness of their
therapeutic relationships with a supervisor who has dedicated time to noticing these
transformative relational moments in therapy and who has experience in the making
and doing of their own therapy practices. This may sound straight forward yet what
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L. A. PORTER
I am indicating is that supervisors need to have their own experience of crafting

therapy practices, of daring to enter a poetic world with themselves, their clients and
their therapy practices.
In these unnamed moments people change. As the literature shows clients change,
and as this study shows so do therapists. It is within unnamed moments that client and
therapist experience vibrancy and charge in relation to change and transformation.
Sometimes it is an intense charge of sorrow, shame or self-loathing that is noticed. It
may be intensity related to silence, where there are few words. Degrees of resonance
are felt or sensed by the therapist and the client. The emotional connection may hint
at fear, anxiety, distress, pain, disconnection or a range of variances. It is the noticing
of these unnamed moments that matters. In this research therapists experienced
these moments as transporting. One therapist spoke of being moved to a new place
and new knowing, and another described the breath flowing…flowing between the
therapist and the client. Yet for others these moments extend to feelings and senses
that were more so cognisant with the complexities of trauma or the institutionalised
circumstances and difficulties related to the internalised experiences of trauma and
the interplay in therapy in unnamed moments.
Trauma therapists may find a focussed engagement with unnamed moments in
therapy provides an opportunity to explore relational and dialogical territories that
have not previously gained attention in their practice. They may find an orientation
towards unnamed moments an additional component of their critical cultural
practice, with new reflections on practice ethics and the use of poetic language,
while coming to appreciate the centrality of poetic unnamed moments in therapy.
Similarly experienced therapists may welcome a renewed lens informed by the
seeing, understanding and knowledge that unnamed moments are at the centre of all
that is happening in therapy, as they explore:
1. their experience of transformation and resonance in therapeutic relationships
2. their knowledge of therapy as a threshold experience and narratives of discovery
and self-identity
3. the development and expression of their own therapy practices and
4. the ways they make sense of and interpret their experience of vicarious
traumatisation.
Conclusion and Closing
Relational and dialogical locations shared by the client and the therapist hold the
potential for discovery. This study found that therapist’s relational and dialogical
acts, expressed as therapy practices, enable a process of review and renewal related
to practice ethics. It is in the expression of our therapy practices that we live out our
practice ethics. In these temporal spaces we embody, ritualise and act on the way
we see, understand and care about client’s experience of trauma, distress and hurt.
Such engagements might mean that practice ethics become daily lived enactments as
264
therapists invest in their therapeutic relationships and with their therapeutic practices
as authentic creative expressions. Trauma therapists living out their practice ethics
through their therapy practices is critical for the way they see, understand and express
care related to the experiences of those who have suffered violence, abuse and trauma.
This is particularly vital given the pathologising experience of marginalisation
connected to trauma. Therapist’s experience a new way of seeing, understanding and
caring through an engagement with creativity, poiésis and generative discoveries
produced within their therapy practices and therapeutic relationships. Within these
unnamed moments in therapy both client and therapist find transformative languaged
possibilities that move seeing, understanding and caring beyond the pathology of
trauma and into the narrated poetic realm of discovery.
Two Vignettes and Two Poems
In closing I present two vignettes. They offer an ontological explanation relating

to poetics in therapy and hold potential for understanding the experience of poetic,
sacred, spiritual and unnamed moments in therapy. From my interpretative and
narrative standpoint they are creative expressions, creative written forms as an
illustration of my ontology and epistemological engagement with the Riceourian
(1984, 1991, 1992; Valdes, 1991; Ihde, 2004) ideas on poetry and poetic inquiry
presented in this chapter.
Earlier I made reference to creative products that arise from therapy or from the
therapeutic relationship, as a direct result of the engagement with the poetic potential
found within the territory of poiésis, and the act of making and creating in therapy.
The vignettes are creative products of the research endeavour, being formed due to
my engagement with the act of poiésis and a poetic sensibility. I hope the reader
experiences them for their poetic purpose. In this way I have aimed to include a
poetic illustration of the theoretical ontology I am presenting, being a ‘philosophy
of language’ and poetry. Hopefully, the vignettes provide another layer of meaning
to the theory and practice ideas presented in this chapter (Ricoeur, 1991, p. 448).
The first is a vignette on Gaston Bachelard’s (1994) seminal text Poetics of Space
and an exploration of the way it provokes me to wonder about the intimate spaces
in therapy where unnamed poetic, sacred and spiritual moments occur. The second
is a vignette on Giorgio Morandi’s (2010) exhibition of still life paintings entitled
Giorgio Morandi Silenzi, meaning ‘silence’ in Italian. In this I wonder about the
way unnamed poetic, sacred and spiritual moments in therapy parallel metaphorical
modes of still life.
Vignette One: Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space
When I first began researching poetic, sacred, spiritual and unnamed moments in
therapy an artist friend of mine steered me towards Gaston Bachelard’s (1994) work
on the poetics of space. His poetic notions have stayed with me throughout this
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research project and I now pay homage to his aesthetic vision on the poetics of space
evidenced in this vignette. Let me first outline my intention for doing so. Without
Bachelard there would be no historical reference point for the current research
project. His humble yet expansive and illuminating narrative on the poetics of
space proffers an ontology and phenomenology for the poetics of the everyday. He
intellectualises, and at the same time makes mundane, the smallest and the greatest
of all things. He situates and describes his undertaking as though to say, ‘as I am
small and human so are we all’, yet there is wonder and beauty, greatness, the chance
of something big within the grasp of each hand.
There is a subtle invitation in the reading of the text to join with him in his
worldview, to engage with not only an appreciation of how we experience intimate
spaces in life but to also open ourselves to live life intimately with conscious
knowledge of the phenomenology of being.
The other intention in paying homage to Bachelard’s Poetics of Space relates
to the concept of ethics in practice, or what I have described as a practice ‘ethic’
(Bird, 2000, p. xx). In my thinking, his work goes beyond a philosophical or
metaphysical discussion. His thesis presents a poetic ethic for daily life – where here
we see another example of ethics. Bachelard’s poetic ethic is not dissimilar to the
interests of Ricoeur (1991), relating to language and the importance of using poetic,
ordinary and scientific language to maintain a balanced use of language. Ricoeur’s
interest, where poetics and expressive forms of poetry are reclaimed and used to add
to scientific (or medicalised/psychologised) language, and where ordinary forms of
day to day language could also be described as a poetic ethic. By poetic ethic I am
speaking about the intention to act on, and incorporate into a narrative configuration,
values and beliefs that promote a poetic ontology and a poetic sensibility. As
narrativity requires an enactment through the process of narrative configuration, I
am particularly thinking of a poetic ethic which might be enacted by an artist, a
writer like Bachelard or a therapist, who brings a poetic ethic into their practice
through plotted events, dependent on various prerequisite acts before it can occur.
By ontology, I am using the word here to mean the nature of being. I am greatly
interested in practices and ethics for the daily life of therapy. As such, this contention
is of significance and worthy of consideration.
Bachelard (1994) pondered the poetics of spaces, applying a poetic sensibility and
ethic to the physical world including houses, the universe, cellars and garrets, shells
and nests and the realm of intimacy. He links the poetic with linguistic understandings
saying, ‘the poetic image sets in motion the entire linguistic mechanism. The poetic
image places us at the origin of the speaking being’ (1994, p. xxiii). Embracing the
concept of the soul he speaks of ‘a study of the phenomenon of a poetic image when
it emerges into the consciousness as a direct product of the heart, soul and being
of man, apprehended in his actuality.’ (p. xviii). Bachelard’s contribution presents
a metaphoric encounter with words and images in space, and it examines how the
physical world and people are in relation to each other.
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Bachelard’s survey of poetics renders a decisive proposal for the ontology of art,
poetry, human relations, intimacy and the interrelatedness of human life and the
natural world. He speculates on the views of Jungian psychology and psychoanalysis
as he delves deeply into his imaginative world of philosophy, language, place
and things. He helps in our understanding of unnamed moments in the way that
he describes poetic images and in his portrayal of space as an entity. It is through
his descriptions of a poetic space at the margins that we find an account of what
unnamed, poetic moments in therapy may be about. Bachelard says that with poetry,
the imagination takes its place on the margin, exactly where the function of unreality
comes to charm or to disturb – always to awaken (1994, p. xxxv).
Therefore, it could be interpreted that unnamed moments occur in the marginal
spaces of therapy where the potential to be perturbed, disturbed and charmed are
likely possibilities. In this marginal zone new interpretations become available.
When therapists are able to harness the dynamics potential within the marginal zone,
they have begun a process of engagement with a creative force that is formed by the
reciprocal nature of the therapeutic relationship. Negotiating the intimate space of
the marginal zone requires the therapist to use all of their skill and knowledge, while
also surrendering to a place of not knowing, so that the creative charge or current of
the therapy has a chance to transform, perturb and charm in that moment.
Margins are often difficult places. In terms of therapeutic space, if unnamed
moments are located in the therapeutic marginal space, then it is assumed that they
are in a challenged location where they may go unnoticed, or possibly noticed but
discounted for further inquiry, being deemed by the therapist to be too marginal or
too risky for investigation. I am reminded of a time when an unnamed, intimate
moment occurred in therapy when a young man I had worked with for quite some
time, offered his heartfelt thanks. He was constructing a life free of his previous
abusive actions. He felt the early stirrings of regard for himself for the first time in
many years, as he had started the process of acknowledging the hurt he had caused
and was working towards some way of understanding the consequences of his
actions towards the people he had subjected to trauma. He offered his thanks rather
awkwardly in the form of expressing his affection for me, in terms of how much his
life had been changed through the therapy. This moment, like so many unnamed
moments occurring in the midst of the therapy, was presented and could enter into
the therapeutic space or stay outside of the therapeutic space. I chose at the time to
bring it inside, to take it from the margins of therapy into the centre and legitimise
it as a product of the therapeutic relationship. In retrospect I can now see that I was
exercising my poetic sense making, although at the time I would not have been able
to name it as such.
Bachelard (1994, p. xviii) describes the poetic image as a ‘direct product of the
heart, soul and being’. Perhaps a useful extension would be to expand the notion
of poetic image to consider descriptions such as poetic know how, poetic senses,
poetic exchanges, poetic products and poetic play. Indeed all of these descriptions
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L. A. PORTER
could give language to the sacred, spiritual or poetic moment in therapy, when a
certain poetic sense making or poetic know how is at play. Then we could describe
poetic senses, poetic know how and all other poetic and creative products of therapy
as direct products of the heart, soul and being of the therapy and the therapeutic
relationship.
For Bachelard, poetics lives in the realm of what is considered sacred and he
aligns his contentions with an active state of commitment and dedication, saying
poetics ‘rather than being a phenomenology of the mind, is a phenomenology of
the soul and a commitment of the soul’ (p. xx). What is curious is that, although
Bachelard considers memories, daydreams and reveries in regard to intimate space,
it is all in relation to physical spaces, and objects of nature such as the shell, nest and
drawer and not about relations between people. Perhaps he best sums up his vision
and intent when he reflects on the quality of intimate space.
I shall therefore put my trust in the power of attraction of all the domains of
intimacy. There does not exist a real intimacy that is repellent. All the spaces of
intimacy are designated by an attraction. Their being is well-being. (Bachelard,
1994, p. 12)
I can only guess what he would say about the intimate space of the unnamed
moment, the potentially poetic, sacred, spiritual or transformative moment in
therapy. Is it likely that he would conclude such moments do exist? Perhaps he
would say unnamed moments in therapy are interconnected moments related to his
notion of intimate immensity and that when they do occur they draw us in deeply to
an experience of greater well-being (p. 183).
Vignette Two: Morandi’s Silent Still Lifes
Giorgio Morandi was known as the “painter of bottles” (Poli cited in Morandi,
2010a). His subjects were everyday items including bottles, boxes and vases and
jars; they remained constant throughout his life (Abramowicz, 2004). In addition
to bottles he also painted many landscapes. However the bottles as everyday items
of still life were his major focus, as he portrayed collections of items that appeared
to convey an overall sense of stillness and momentary silence. Captured too is the
dimension of a spatial void due to Morandi’s intentional use of empty objects. There
were rarely flowers in Morandi’s vases, and all his bottles and jars were empty. His
paintings were often overlooked as being rather boring and lifeless.
Having witnessed the Morandi’s Silenzi (2010a) at Fortuny Museum’s exhibition
in Venice, I noticed the interconnectedness between these paintings and the held
moment conveyed within them, I was struck by the ontology (nature of being)
presented by them, being the metaphorical mode of still life. Morandi’s paintings,
his reputation as a serial painter, someone who painted the same subjects over and
over again, appear to offer an ontological parallel frame for sacred, spiritual or
268
poetic moments in therapy. I began to wonder about the notion of therapy as still
life. Following this notion opened up for me poetic possibilities to think of therapy
and the poetic, sacred, spiritual or unnamed moments being contained within the
bounds of the therapeutic relationship. Umberto Eco (2010) described Morandi’s
paintings in this way:
Morandi places us in a paradoxical situation because he is a contemporary artist
who could be described as a ‘serial artist’ […] serial as regards his subjects but
not serial in addressing their substance. The box and the bottle may always be
the same but the way of rendering them is different every time. (Eco quoted in
Silenzi, 2010)
Morandi’s state of being gravitated around painting still life images of bottles
over many years in an attempt to capture the stillness and silence of life held within
the imagery of the bottles over time. To postulate it appears that, for Morandi,
the held moment of stillness and silence caught within the still life was worthy of
considerable attention. So much so that he dedicated his life’s work to the production
of these images. Morandi produced the paintings as if to say, here in this painting, in
this still life, is an image of something worthy of attention and observation.
This view is consolidated by the experience of Umberto Eco, where he describes
returning to view Morandi’s paintings again, to view the same still life, only to discover
the image as different each time (Morandi, 2010a, 2010b). Herein a counterpart
narrative with therapy exists. While therapists’ subjects change, like Morandi’s
use of different bottles and jars and vases, their subjects also remain somewhat the
same, in that they all seek support and assistance with life’s concerns and problems.
Therapists, like the serial painter, are serial therapists. They do therapy over and over
again, with many subjects. The problems encountered in therapy and each person’s
account is always unique and yet the experience is often shared between people.
The experience of loss and grief, the shame of perpetrating abuse and violence, the
humiliation and hurt of betrayal, the obliterating effects of trauma, the desolation of
loneliness; repeated and shared themes of therapy, each account rendered in a way
different from any other account. Here, then, is another seeming parallel in that, all
of Morandi’s paintings offered repeated and shared themes – the ubiquitous bottles,
boxes and jars – all rendered in a way as different, each capturing a moment in time
and yet the same as the previous chromatic still life composition.
Therapy produces something defined by the client and therapist. Oftentimes this
production may appear to be the same as all previous moments of therapy. So it was
for Morandi’s images of bottles and jars and boxes, produced over and over again
to capture the still essence of a moment in time and yet, without close attention
and observation, his images were considered of little importance, mundane and
domestic. Not all therapy produces poetic, sacred, spiritual or unnamed moments.
It appears that, without concentration and without fascination, these moments may
go by unnoticed. Just as Morandi’s bottles and boxes may appear to be empty voids,
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L. A. PORTER
unnamed moments in therapy are also at risk of appearing to be empty moments of

silence and inconsequence. Morandi’s still life images, as a motif, are representative
of the quiet unnamed moment in therapy when therapy edges up to a place of sacred
contemplation, a place where a poetic sensibility and interpretive stance signal
potential transformation in a held, present moment.
Therapy as Still Life
Morandi’s bottles, boxes and jars, one after the other
Everyday items of mundane life, painterly presented
Capturing the stillness and silence of each breath
The rendered poetic moment
Performing his meditation,
the artist’s eye guiding the placement of bottles in intimate space
bottles subtlety placed for his eye
Washed in an Italian hue, the early morning, the heat of the day
the late afternoon, the dark of night.
A dried patina of quiet
The still life of the unnamed moment
The Moment in Transformation: Musing with Gaston and Morandi
Morandi follows me from Venice as the water taxi’s fury along
He is here by my side ready now to leave the cosseted and cloistered arms
of Fortuny and take his Italian luck on an adventure
A new paramour, he takes turns with Gaston duelling for my attention
They banter on and on
‘the beauty of space, arrh it’s quintessential aesthetic…it’s poetic…’
‘it is in the bottle, the box and the jar…here, only here, it is all here’
‘in the bottle, the box, the jar’
‘but hush, hush there is more in the silenzi, in the moment of natura morta’
I listen as I do, attending, always attending and as I do I plead, musing
‘enamoured as I am tell me more’
Tell me about your theory of nests and shells, going in and going out,
the silent moment in space,
the intimate moment in time, the light layered brush stroke,
the pale chalky paint, the luminous hue
The moment in transformation,
the moment when you knew,
when the whisper became a sensory clue
when from in the depths of Silenzi there was the new.
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NOTES
1
A term used to describe the occurrence of significant moments in therapy that were yet to be named.
2
For more information see Porter, L. A. (2013) Crafting Practice in Trauma Therapy. A dialogical and
relational engagement with ethics and poetic, sacred, spiritual and unnamed moments in therapeutic
relationships, Unpublished PhD thesis, Faculty of Counselling, University of New England, Armidale
NSW. Further detail on the research findings are available at www.relationalnarrativetherapy.com.au
and www.adelaidetraumacentre.com.au
References
Abramowicz, J. (2004). Giorgio Morandi: The art of silence. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Aristotle. (1996). Poetics (M. Heath, Trans.). London, England: Penguin Books.
Bachelard, G. (1994). The poetics of space (M. Jolas, Trans.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Bird, J. (2000). The heart’s narrative. Auckland, New Zealand: Edge Press.
Bird, J. (2004). Talk that sings. Auckland, New Zealand: Edge Press.
Bird, J. (2006). Constructing the narrative in super-vision. Auckland, New Zealand: Edge Press.
Freeman, M. (1999). Culture, narrative, and the poetic construction of selfhood. Journal of Constructivist
Psychology, 12, 99–116.
Freeman, M. (2002). The burden of truth: Psychoanalytic poiésis and narrative understanding. In
W. Patterson (Ed.), Strategic narrative: New perspectives on the power of personal and cultural
stories (pp. 9–27). Oxford, England: Lexington Books.
Ihde, D. (Ed.). (2004). The conflict of interpretations: Essays in hermeneutics (Trans. Northwestern
University Press [1974]). London, England: Continuum.
Katz, A., & Shotter, J. (1996). Hearing the patient’s ‘voice’: Towards a social poetics in diagnostic
interviews. Journal of Social Sciences and Medicine, 43(6), 919–931.
Lomax, J., Kripal, J., & Pargament, K. (2011). Perspectives on “sacred moments”. Psychotherapy,
American Journal of Psychiatry, 168(1), 12–18.
Mishler, E. G. (1999). Storylines: Craft artists’ narratives of identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Morandi, G. (2010a). Silenzi (Text by Francesca Poli). Milano, Italy: Skira Editore.
Morandi, G. (2010b). Exhibition Silenzi [Still life paintings], September 2010–January 2011. Venice,
Italy: Museo Fortuny.
Polkinghorne, D. E. (1995). Narrative configuration in qualitative analysis. Qualitative Studies in
Education, 8(1), 5–23.
Ricoeur, P. (1984). Time and narrative: Vol. 1. (K. McLaughlin & D. Pellauer, Trans.). Chicago, IL: The
University of Chicago Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1992). Oneself as another (K. Blamey, Trans.). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Shotter, J. (1992). Bakhtin and Billig: Monological versus dialogical practices. The American Behavioral
Scientists, 36(1), 8–21.
Shotter, J. (1997). The social construction of our inner selves. Journal of Constructivist Psychology,
10(1), 7–24.
Shotter, J. (2007). Wittgenstein and our talk of feelings in inquiries into the dynamics of language use.
Critical Psychology, 21, 119–144.
Shotter, J. (2011). Embodiment, abduction, and expressive movement: A new realm of inquiry? Theory
& Psychology, 21(4), 439–456.
Sim, S. (Ed.). (2005). The Routledge companion to postmodernism (2nd ed.). London, England:
Routledge.
Taylor, C. (1991). The ethics of authenticity. Cambridge, England: Harvard University Press.
Valdes, M. J. (Ed.). (1991). A Ricoeur reader: Reflection and imagination. Hertfordshire, England:
Harvester Wheatsheaf.
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Lesley Porter
Relational Narrative Therapy
Australia
272
MARY E. WEEMS
20. POETIC INQUIRY, REFRIGERATOR MAGNETS

AND KEDRICK?
Poetic methods are qualitative and call for self-conscious participation. Instead
of being inverted like a telescope for distancing effect, poetics turns it back
around for magnified encounters with life as lived, up close and personal.
Ivan Brady (2009, p. xi)
I’ve been writing and practicing the craft of poetry since I was thirteen years-old and
have spent most of my life as an African American having the “magnified encounters
with life as lived up close and personal” Brady references in the above quote. My
experiences often inspire a desire to empathize with individuals, groups of people,
and objects. When something happens in my life, community and/or the world-
at-large, my first way of interpreting or making meaning out of the experience is
to write a poem. In this way I critically investigate for example, birth, death, war,
racism, poverty, sexual orientation, events, new people I encounter, my classroom
praxis, even magnets on a friend’s refrigerator.
As critical pedagogue Valerie J. Janesick (2011) notes, following in the footsteps
of Paulo Freire, Joe Kincheloe, Shirley Steinberg and others, artist-scholars and
imagination-intellect theorists like me can “develop…the habit of writing poetry
[to] interpret the world in a new way” and that within “the context of doing poetry,
we may also advance poetry as a social-justice project” (p. 64).
I was very much in a social justice frame of mind recently when I spent the night
with my friend and colleague Rochelle. I was visiting her to facilitate my “Sankofa
Poetry Workshop” with a group of local high school students and their classroom
teacher. Sankofa is Kiswahili for “Go Back and Get it,” and refers to the importance
of Africans and African Americans knowing their history. Unfortunate-ly, too many
of the young people I work with have no real sense of their history beyond the
limited and flawed content that’s taught in school and this workshop is designed, in
part, to introduce the importance of knowing where they come from before they can
successfully move forward in their life’s journey. I use poetic inquiry as part of this
workshop to facilitate their investigation of African American history and their lives
and I was looking forward to the poems we’d create as a collective.
When I woke up Saturday morning to get dressed for the workshop, I again
revisited the time I spent at the 3rd International Poetic Inquiry Symposium.
M. E. WEEMS
I re-membered several of the presentations, the good conversations and the bits and
pieces of experiences we shared inspired by our individual research agendas and
how they helped affirm our humanity as well as our commitment to other methods
of doing research. It was a spiritually and intellectually rich environment, the kind
of community I’ve rarely encountered in the academy.
Like my refrigerator, Rochelle’s is covered with various kinds of magnets, and
I’m reminded that all objects selected by or given to individuals to live in the place
they call home have stories to tell. These magnets invited me to make meaning out
of the subjects of the quotes on the three magnets, which caught my attention. Here,
I share them in the order written. Each title is the text of the magnet and as with all
poetry, my life connects and disconnects with the content as I move into the organic,
empathetic, spiritual place I write from, a space that moves between my conscious
and subconscious mind:
Sorry I missed church, I was busy practicing witchcraft
and becoming a lesbian
My daddy was a Baptist, a preacher, the kind of husband
that would beat my mother then force her to her knees
with the business end of his gun to pray.
He liked to do this in front of my bedroom,
the locked door never unlocked till morning
when prayers at the table over bruises and black
eyes, preceded any attempt to eat what mother
got up at 5 a.m. to make from scratch.
Long before I had a chance to figure any of this out,
I found love in the streets, a young woman who took
one look in my sixteen year-old eyes and knew she had to wait
until I turned seventeen to touch me, our friendship the lifeline
I followed when she forced me back home to my parent’s house
saying “Your daddy is the most powerful man in town,
where can you hide?
So like two people caught up in a chess game, we waited
for the day I turned eighteen. My checkmate the burned bible
I left in ashes on the front step as I skipped
out of the house for the last time.
Is a Brownie packed with Emotional stability too much
to Fucking ask?
Late nights at home
I sit in a corner in a crouch,
the floor a firm foundation for madness
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POETIC INQUIRY, REFRIGERATOR MAGNETS AND KEDRICK?
the kind that comes from years of hard,

of untouched, of Valentine Days I claim to hate
like loneliness—a frozen snowball rattling in my chest
like a cold.
I may never know what the lives of married friends
say on mantels lit with the faces of children, grandchildren,
moments adding up to years, my fear the left over wrapping paper,
discarded ribbons from holidays I spend with people who still love
me like I used to be.
I’m beginning to collect lines from love letters I research
in old libraries. Hundreds of years become two hands holding
each other through everything that makes life the last
thing you want to let go of.
…Is our children learning?
George W. Bush
Where does W hide now that his time as our president is over?
His leave no child’s behind sitting on the ass of America
like a huge boil bursting to the brim with poison pens,
numbers no one really counts, kids’ faces blurring, changing
size and shape like an I’m an American commercial.
When I think W I think decisions made by dollar signs
tossed on highly polished wood tables in the used-to-be White
House, read like tea leaves by politicians who really believe Black
kids have no future here in the land their ancestors scraped
the bottom for producing crops, babies, the magic
of survival through 300 hundreds years of non-stop storms
bending them back like willow trees, weeping, weeping, weeping;
their smiles reserved for times spent together practicing learning
to read and write the bastard English W never learned to speak.
What follows is the poem I wrote while Kedrick James was presenting during the
symposium. His presentation felt like this complex series of dance steps and my words
are a way of participating in the moment. When he said, “You are what you delete,” I
was reminded of all the young years I spent trying to prove I was just like everyone else:
On Not Wearing Reading Glasses
You are what you delete
Kedrick
Man no longer a stranger
occupies room
like opposite of death
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M. E. WEEMS
All black dress

could be any color
his star-spirit takes over
and what comes out
has got to be what God meant
when He made us
no wonder he had to rest
I’m listening entertained
even when he pauses
to breathe
Energy is forever
he’s the E in the word
his world a place I could—
head the stuff of magic
Shoes long as Ichabod Crane’s
and only his reading glasses
rectangular black frames
white striped temples
are a prop for eyes
that don’t need anything
extra to see.
10-22-11
The students who participated in the Sankofa Poetry Workshop remind me of
what Kedrick said during his presentation: You are what you delete, each of them
representing the antithesis of that statement based upon my interpretation of delete
meaning to disconnect from everything that makes an individual unique. Their
work was original, political and culturally specific in terms of language, including a
poem about the police as a gang, based upon the experiences of the young, African
American male who wrote and performed it from memory, and a poem by another
African American male about the importance of holding on to his dreadlocked
identity as a proud, talented, radical wordsmith.
Their interest in learning more about their history and poetically investigating the
world around them inspires me to continue to use poetry as my way of interrupting
and challenging social injustice, of sharing what it means to be in this world—to live
in the moment.
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POETIC INQUIRY, REFRIGERATOR MAGNETS AND KEDRICK?
REFERENCES
Brady, I. (2009). Foreword. In M. Prendergast, C. Leggo, & P. Sameshima (Eds.), Poetic inquiry: Vibrant
voices in the social sciences (pp. xi–xvi). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Janesick, V. J. (2011). Teaching critical pedagogy through poetry and the pedagogical letter. In R. Brock,
C. S. Malott, & L. E. Villaverde (Eds.), Teaching Joe Kincheloe (pp. 63–76). New York, NY: Peter
Lang.
Mary E. Weems
Independent Scholar, USA
277
Patricia Maarhuis AND Pauline Sameshima
21. Materializing the Punctum

A Poetic Study of the Washington State University Clothesline Project
WAITING THROUGH SUNDAYS

(Poetry by Pauline Sameshima)
i stayed through high school and college
he said he loved me, always sorry
please he pleaded
god, please forgive me
he prayed
i forgave him, merciful me
the sunday school teacher
because i had it all
love beyond compare
family, friends, sports, grades
even clothes, to hide the perfect couple
the blood slowly pooling in my hands
cupped tight under my chin, full control
no drips on his cherished cloth car seats
not a spot on his sunday shirt
nose numb, cheeks throbbing
quiet liquid, wet iron stench
filling the passenger side
sleet screeches at the wipers so i stay in the car
i’m suddenly in front of my glass house
he leans over and roughly pulls open the door latch
i stumble out to the grass
the ground is close as i open my hands
and the stickiness runs down with the rain
like i’m gently putting a broken bird onto the ground
then i wipe my palms on the sweet softness
like a defecating dog
rude in this manicured neighborhood
P. MAARHUIS & P. SAMESHIMA
somewhere far off, he is saying something

i look up and hear the whizzing sound
turn away as the car keys hit my right shoulder
a strangely satisfying sound
no pain, i fall to a knee, head still low
unafraid and wait
a thick sole in the ribs and now
I feel the rain on my face
transparent body feels nothing
a balcony door opens with a loud sucking slide
the neighbor shouts—he’s calling the police
if Trey doesn’t leave right now
i feel the rush of his foot fall
still unafraid and wait
but he’s just reaching for the keys
muffler booms from his souped up car
as he tears away
giving me another profanity by
chirping into 2nd down the street
sliding door closes, no words
alone, i look up glad for the dark windows
steel grinds as the metal key turns
the stairs behave in their quiet outer edges
up toward my room and sleeping family
in a warm house that smells like vegetable soup and love
that was the end of the 1st year
six more years and still
i could not leave by myself
Mary Weems (2012) says putting ourselves in others’ shoes develops empathy
and understanding for diverse perspectives. Empathetic poetic inquiry invites
audiences into an author’s creative fictive renderings of the research data. Sharing
these interpretations offers new means for building connections and support among
individuals, particularly in understanding communal spaces about trauma.
Introduction
This chapter examines the Clothesline Project at Washington State University

(WSU) to better understand the experience of empowerment and resilience through
280
Materializing the Punctum
empathetic poetry, found poetry, and hermeneutic qualitative inquiry. The WSU
Clothesline Project is a collection of T-shirts emblazoned with personal messages
that has grown to approximately 450 shirts over 15 years, from 1995 to 2011
(Robinson-Smith, personal communication, fall, 2008). This worldwide project was
started in 1990 by a small group of women activists from Hyannis, Massachusetts,
with a desire to intentionally develop a program that would educate the public, break
the silence and bear witness to one issue—violence against women. The Clothesline
Project is concurrently a display of local performative voice and activism as
well as a social justice and resistance movement on a global scale. The National
Network for the Clothesline Project (NNCP) approximates there are 500 projects
nationally and internationally with
an estimated 50,000 to 60,000
shirts in 41 states and 5 countries
(NNCP, 2014; Droogsma, 2009).
The shirts, hung side by side on a
clothesline in a public setting, act as
narrative canvasses for participants
to express their experience of
interpersonal violence.
There are a number of journal
articles and papers analyzing the
Clothesline Project via diverse
theoretical models: postmodern
and Foucauldian (Ruffino,
2007); feminist standpoint theory
(Droogsma, 2009; Ostrowski, Figure 1. WSU clothesline project, 2011
1996); feminist, postcolonial, and
semiotic analysis (Hipple, 2000); positivist and epistemological (Payne & Fogerty,
2007); public space and affective power (Gregory, Lewton, Schmidt, & Mattern,
2002); and sociological and pedagogical (Lempert, 2003). This study differs by
using a hermeneutic phenomenological perspective incorporating arts-informed
inquiry methods with a focus on poetic inquiry. Alternate methodological lenses
give voice to experiences and themes beyond those found in earlier studies and the
founding intent of the Clothesline Project—violence against women.
Other researchers using hermeneutic phenomenology and arts-informed methods
have addressed the experience of violence, particularly the personal experience of
sexual assault (Brown, 2000; Crowe, 2004; Harvey, Mishler, Koenan, & Harney,
2000; Kirkland & Leggo, 2008). This work differs from these past projects in that
it is not autobiographical in voice and method; rather, it is a multilayered study
utilizing a combination of hermeneutic phenomenological methods in combination
with empathetic and found poetry.
281
Purpose
Our purpose is to share the findings and select data-inspired author-created poetry
resulting from the study of the WSU Clothesline artefacts. The chapter follows
two objectives: 1) the sharing of narrative themes present in the design, symbols,
visual representation, and narratives of a purposeful sampling of the shirts; and
2) the sharing of poetry created from dwelling in the data or through found-poetry
techniques in order to share the experiences portrayed in this analysis.
Sharing these research findings
is needed given the large number
of those directly and indirectly
affected by interpersonal violence
(Abbey, 2002; Fisher, Cullen,
& Turner, 2000; Herman, 1997;
White House Council on Women
and Girls & the Office of the Vice
President, 2014). In a national
survey, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (Black
et al., 2011) found that sexual
violence, stalking, and intimate
partner violence are widespread
in the United States. Specifically,
more than one in three women
(35.6%) and more than one in four
men (28.5%) in the United States
Figure 2. Green shirt with black and red letters,
have experienced rape, physical
WSU collection violence, and/or stalking by an
intimate partner in their lifetime.
One in four women has been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate
partner, while one in seven men has experienced severe physical violence by an
intimate partner. Approximately 80% of female victims experienced their first rape
before the age of 25, and almost half experienced the first rape before age 18 (30%
between 11 and 17 years old and 12% at or before the age of 10). In addition, 28%
of male victims of rape were first raped when they were 10 years old or younger. As
a consequence of these acts, 81% of women and 35% of men who experienced rape,
stalking, or physical violence by an intimate partner reported significant short- or
long-term negative impacts related to the violence experienced in this relationship
such as depression, chronic pain, diabetes, anxiety, eating disorders, and post-
traumatic stress disorder.
Additionally, women of all races are targeted, but some are more vulnerable than
others: 33.5% of multiracial women have been raped, as have 27% of American
Indian and Alaska Native women, compared to 15% of Hispanic, 22% of Black,
282
and 19% of White women (Black et al., 2011). Other populations are also at higher
risk of being raped or sexually assaulted, including people with disabilities (Casteel,
Martin, Smith, Gurka, & Kupper, 2008), the LGBT community (Balsam, Beauchaine,
& Rothblum, 2005), college students (Krebs, Lindquist, Warner, Fisher, & Martine,
2007), prison inmates of both genders (Beck & Johnson, 2012), and the homeless
(Greene & Sanchez, 2002; Wenzel, Leake, & Gelberg, 2000). Undocumented
immigrants face unique challenges, because their abusers often threaten to have them
deported if they try to get help (Orloff & Dave, 1997; Mindlin, Orloff, Pochiraju,
Baran, & Echavarria, 2013).
Clearly, the experience of violence is pervasive and the consequences deeply
harmful. A multilayered examination of voice, context, re-presentation, and personal
experience, creates possibilities for a new or deeper understanding of interpersonal
violence and for interpretive representations of meaning found in the experience of
violence. In turn, deeper understanding increases the potential for cultural change
and for prevention and intervention to reach those at risk for victimization and
perpetration.
I WILL NOT LET YOU

(Found poetry by Patricia Maarhuis)
Take your fist off
me and my son!
The next time you
try to kick my ass
be prepared…
I am educated!
I will FIGHT BACK!
I will stop you!
I will not let
you hurt us again.
Theoretical Perspectives and

framework
This paper is grounded in constructionism as

the theoretical framework with a dynamic and
parallaxic approach, analysis, and interpretation
(Sameshima, Vandermause, Chalmers, &
Gabriel, 2009). Constructionist epistemology
rejects objective truth and takes the position that Figure 3. Pink shirt with
all meaningful reality is socially constructed multi-colored letters – Front.
(Crotty, 1998). Knowledge and meaning-making WSU collection
283
are ongoing, intentional, incomplete, and generated from an interaction between

people, their experiences, ideas, and contexts. The rise or becoming of phenomena,
knowledge, and meaning-making is inherently affected by time, space, movement,
and position. Our work integrates an epistemology or open platform that draws upon
a number of intersectional and parallaxic modes of inquiry.
In an effort to broadly examine complex phenomenon and interpretation of
meaning through text and context, a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, as
described by Heidegger (1933–34/2010) and Gadamer (1975/2004), is utilized as
a philosophical foundation. Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenology focuses
on Dasein, “the situated meaning of a human in the world” (Laverty, 2003, p. 24).
Meaning is made as humans construct the world and, in turn, are constructed by the
world. Specifically, hermeneutics is the study of sociocultural experiences as texts in
a variety of forms, with the engagement in interpretation as a way to find expressed or
cloaked meanings. Gadamer builds upon Heidegger’s concepts through his view of
interpretation as a “fusion of horizons”: “A horizon is a range of vision that includes
everything seen from a particular vantage point. … On the other hand, to ‘have a
horizon’ means not being limited to what is nearby but being able to see beyond it”
(p. 301). Gadamer maintained that the interrelated processes of understanding and
interpretation are ontological and dialogic: “the way understanding occurs … is the
coming-into-language of the thing [text or dialog] itself” (p. 371). In sum, dialog—
the constitutive basis of question and interpretation—is the medium of the emergent
hermeneutic experience.
Never a dispassionate event, the Clothesline Project has been called a ritual in
resistance, the voice of victims, a memorial,
a disguise/mask/costume, the shed skins
of victims, an educational program,
prayer flags, material gravestones, the
dirty laundry, immaterial bodies, a media
event, an exorcist’s tool, agents for
change, the ghosts of survivors, fabric
art installation, a uniform from battle,
the community’s scapegoats, a story,
and more (Droogsma, 2009; Gregory et
al., 2002; Hipple, 2000; Lempert, 2003;
NNCP, 2014; Ostrowski, 1996; Ruffino,
2007). Even the descriptions of the event
are more dialogic and experiential than
definitive. The incisive descriptors of the
Clothesline Project affirm the emotionally
profound and diverse effects of such
an event within a local community and
Figure 4. Pink shirt with multi-colored even within the global community. The
letters – Back. WSU collection descriptors further provide evidence that
284
the single T-shirts not only take on a symbolic dimension, but also act as catalysts
to form a particular community through generating a dialogic interaction in a
public setting. The narratives speak frankly, ask questions, and demand answers.
The Clothesline Project creates an unfolding “fusion of horizons” regarding the
experience of violence.
Additionally, we suggest that The Clothesline Project draws power to itself by
echoing three of the most influential of Bakhtin’s ideas: utterance, heteroglossia,
and carnival (Morris, 1994; Stallybrass & White, 1986; Zappan, 2000). Bakhtin
was concerned with the nature of dialog—or “double-voiced discourse”—through
utterances, a basic unit of speech, as the actualized meaning of words in language
(Zappan, 2000, p. 2). Speech genres are a form of utterance that is identified with
a particular sphere of communication (the Clothesline Project), has developed into
stable thematic content (the experience of violence), and has an identifiable style
and compositional structure (short narrative and symbols publically displayed on
T-shirts).
The idea of heteroglossia is a complex mixture of languages and refers to
the conflict between official/unofficial, centrifugal/centripetal, or dominant/
nondominant discourses (Morris, 1994; Zappan, 2000). More specifically,
heteroglossia focuses on the phenomena of antagonistic sociocultural forces
and the inclusion of conflicting voices as making meaning and having value. It
is in the “struggle with another’s word that a new word is generated,” and this
dialogic relationship within heteroglossia establishes the ever-unfolding process of
utterances (Morris, 1994, p. 74).
For Bakhtin, the notion of carnival
is derived from the practices of popular
or “folk” culture and the way in which
it attenuates official hegemony or
dominant culture (Stallybrass & White,
1986). Carnival offers a rhythmic,
spatial, and temporal vision of life and
human interaction; however, Bakhtin
emphasizes the sensuous, corporeal form
of carnival gesture and ritual. In this, a
physical and performative materiality of
the body takes the form of “grotesque
realism,” which simultaneously parodies
and celebrates, elevates and mocks,
crowns and condemns, laughs and
bleeds (Morris, 1994; Zappan, 2000).
Figure 5. Pink shirt with multi-colored This display of grandeur and spectacle
letters. WSU collection signifies the basic ambivalence and
duality of all carnivalesque meaning-making. This communal expression frees
human consciousness from dominant and hierarchical perceptions of the world and
285
opens up the possibility for new awareness, understanding, and change (Morris,
1994; Zappan, 2000).
In considering the Clothesline Project through a Bakhtian lens, the hanging of
hundreds of shirts has a carnivalesque feel, as it is annually performed within a
contained time and place. The T-shirts, lined up and waving in the wind, make
for a disturbing and yet fascinating encounter. Like carnival, they express both
impotence and power. The T-shirt narratives or utterances are colorful—even
beautiful—“masks,” and yet they reveal horror, victimization, and violence. The
spectacle of hundreds of narrative voices is a form of heteroglossia expressing the
common experience of violence through brutal and poetically rendered stories. The
Clothesline Project is always physically and dialogically moving, generating, and
regenerating as a spectacular chorus.
The obscenely bright shirts hang, row upon row, on rigged-up clotheslines
that crop up in uncommon spots. They line campus sidewalks, sag between trees,
and swing from lamppost to lamppost. Utterances swaying in the wind, a tangle
of pictures and names, words, and drawings adorn the uniform T-shirts. Each year
the place and position of the shirts is a
bit different, creating new visual images
and interaction between the individual
narratives. The Clothesline Project event
includes a table set away from the shirt
display for information and resources. It
is staffed with dutiful student volunteers
sitting amid the jarring tumult of
messages. At times, the clotheslines are set
up in a square to provide a safe enclosed
space in the middle for those who wish to
create a T-shirt: victims, survivors, allies,
family members, and friends. More often
the messages have been created in private
and then brought out en masse; the
anonymity and number of shirts provide
a mask that protects individual creators
from identification, recrimination, and
retribution. Though emblazoned with
text and hue, the clothesline display
Figure 6. White shirt with red and black
creates a quiet, even reverential, space for
letters and fist. WSU collection
passersby to approach, read, reflect, and,
perhaps, even curse or weep. This “rhetoric of walking” (de Certaeu, 1984) includes
those who avert the challenging spectacle by stepping quickly along with downcast
eyes or those who find a different path to travel around the carnival. They avert the
display, yes, but they cannot truly avoid its influence, as even the simple knowledge
of its presence—the spectacle of it—affects their behavior.
286
JAKE
You acted like you cared.
I adored you.
You said your friends were nice.
I believed you.
One night you raped me . . .
then let your friends take over.
They used and abused me.
You took away the innocence
that meant so much.
Your friends took away the rest.
I will never forgive nor forget you.
I see you wherever I go—
you seem to follow me.
I hear your voice. . . . “You little Bitch.”
I wish you’d shut up.
But today I no longer fear you.
I simply hate you
Parallaxic Praxis Design
The guiding structure for this paper is Parallaxic Praxis design, a “researching,
teaching and learning design model … grounded in holistic arts-integrated inquiry”
(Sameshima, Vandermause, Chalmers, & Gabriel, 2009, p. 10). This model fully
embraces hermeneutic phenomenology as demonstrated in the designation of
meaning-making and the dialogic process as a form of unfolding knowledge
production (Sameshima, 2007). The arts are utilized as a means to render
understanding by creating thematic and interpretative artefacts that animate ongoing
learning in others. Mediums such as video production, poetry, collage, interpretive
narratives, spoken word, musical interpretation, and still photography are applied in
the meaning-making process. In addition, representations are dialogic when placed
alongside other interpretations to form “systems of analysis and interactions in
the hybrid nexus spaces” (Sameshima, Vandermause, Chalmers, & Gabriel, 2009,
p. 10). Only through “multi-perspectives … and varied systems of representation”
can fuller understanding and rich meaning-making be gained (p. 8).
Parallaxic Praxis is especially effective when addressing issues such as the
experience of violence, which is contentious and complex, addresses deep suffering,
creates dissonance, and often is hidden or cloaked as a sociocultural phenomenon.
The experience of violence can be distilled and clarified through imaginative and
287
mindful approaches to inquiry and pedagogy. This allows for increased engagement
from multiple perspectives and through multiple avenues of understanding by the
researcher, the participants, and the audience. Indeed, arts-informed interpretive
methods are necessary to explore those elements that cannot be fully addressed by
empirical or positivist methods alone (Cole, Neilsen, Knowles, & Luciani, 2004;
Knowles, Promislow, & Cole, 2008; Sameshima, Vandermause, Chalmers, &
Gabriel, 2009).
pedagogy and curriculum
A pedagogy of parallax is made manifest through engagement with artful

representations, which creates a liminal space for deconstructing texts (Sameshima,
2007; Sameshima & Irwin, 2008; Sameshima & Sinner, 2009). Artful representation
forms a multilayered, rhizomatic interpretation that embraces diversity but also
allows for an unsettled, dynamic “place
of agitation” (Sameshima & Irwin, 2008,
p. 6). Through the multilingual
heteroglossia of artful representations,
a complicated, reverberating, echoing
dialog within and between forms
and mediums is expressed. Artful
representation can arrest single moments
so others are able to behold anew what
was habitual, common, and unquestioned.
The viewer reads a poem by a survivor of
violence embedded in a photograph that
is next to a sculpture. The unseen is seen.
The unheard is heard. The unthinkable
Figure 7. Yellow shirt with red and green is thought. And, through this process,
letters. WSU collection the dialog begins anew. Artful inquiry
is a textual and embodied invitation to
react, with reactions in turn generating the ongoing conversation, critical reflection,
and shift in frame of reference that is needed for transformational learning
(Sameshima & Sinner, 2009).
This chapter engages curricula that frame the “complicated conversation” needed
to understand the experience and sociocultural context of violence (Pinar, 2004,
p. 9). It is vital to apply methods that fully engage meaning-making, alternative
perspectives, and inclusion of conflicting voices directly in the student learning
process. The pedagogy of parallax creates an open and accessible milieu in which
it is safe to explore alternative perspectives and the possibility of changing one’s
frame of reference. Additionally, when one digs deeply into the perpetration and
victimization of violence, the facilitator/teacher/researcher must address the ethical
concerns of exposing students to content that has the potential for high levels of
288
dissonance and even distress. Every group of students consists of those who have
been directly or indirectly impacted by violence, given the high rates of prevalence
(Black et al., 2011; Fisher et al., 2000). While a certain level of dissonance can
aid a student in the process of examining his/her frame of reference and result in
increased understanding, a high level of dissonance can impede learning and result
in avoidance of the teaching or interpretative materials—especially in a secondary
school setting. Experiences of high distress or the resurfacing of past memories of
violence can also result in mental health issues for some individuals. The use of the
pedagogy of parallax allows the facilitator/teacher/researcher to present materials and
information in a liminal space and a supportive manner that can allow for tempered
and mindful exposure to materials as well as the needed reflection and interpersonal
processing. This curricular approach addresses ethical concerns regarding issues of
harm and one’s duty to care for participants, students, and viewers who may be
adversely affected by the often frank and brutal content of the Clothesline Project
narratives.
LISTENING
Is anyone listening?
As a child I was
sexually abused.
At the age of 18
raped.
For the rest of my life I’m
scared.
I am a 20 year old
male.
Still listening?
methods
A digital archive was created through photographing and cataloging each artefact.
The written narrative from each artefact as well as a description of the colors, design,
visual representations, and symbols were entered into an Excel file for coding and
theme analysis (Excel, 2007). Eight areas of analytic foci were identified: narrative
expression, narrative type, narrative symbols, shirt and letter color, relationship
described in narrative, type of violence, social justice themes, and gender
(perpetration/victimization). Each area of focus was coded and emergent themes/
subthemes identified. Researchers then used arts-informed inquiry methods (Cole &
Knowles, 2001), poetic inquiry (Prendergast, 2006, 2009; Galvin & Todres, 2009;
Sullivan, 2009), heuristic research (Djuraskovic & Arthur, 2010), and hermeneutic
289
phenomenological perspectives (Gadamer, 1975/2004; Heidegger, 1933–1934/2010;

Laverty, 2003) to create synthesizing renderings of the data. In addition, researcher
journals, notes, and observations were kept throughout the processes of recording,
archiving, and analyzing the data.
Data Sources
The primary data for this study were approximately 450 shirts collected by the WSU
Women’s Resource Center (WRC) from 1995 to 2011. The WRC maintains and
stores the Clothesline Project collection. Permission for research and full access to
the collection was obtained from the WRC director and assistant director. Purposeful
sampling from the collection was conducted through a random pull of 128 shirts
(30%).
Interpretation and Analysis
The arts-informed interpretation and analysis were conducted through the synthesized
use of photography, poetry, collage, and video. The interpretive works were created
throughout the qualitative data cataloging and analysis and were reviewed for
consistency. The resulting researcher-created poems re-present and translate themes
found through qualitative analysis. The analysis is enhanced by the incorporation
of poetic techniques and the mediums of poetry, collage, photography, and video.
The same criteria used to evaluate the poetic expressions of participants (found
poetry) were also used to craft and sort researcher-voiced poems: concreteness,
voice, emotion, ambiguity, associative logic, and tensions (Prendergast, 2006, 2009;
Sullivan, 2009).
Artful interpretations are meant to be presented alongside each other in ever-
evolving positions of ontological interaction so the hybrid nexus and liminal spaces
created by these works can be experienced and discussed within a “hermeneutic
circle” (Gadamer, 1975/2004). These interrelated analytic processes allowed us to
look at recurring themes emerging from the data, specific linguistic choices, and
the potential meaning suggested therein. The intermingling of poetry, image, music,
and artefact “materializes” the punctum—the rising detail in multiple works—that
calls, pricks, and pierces the audience to further engagement (Barthes, 1980; Ortega,
2008). Whether in the moment or in memory, punctum brings about a rupture in the
self that swings forward and backward; it moves one through the viscera of past and
present but also beyond. Punctum is a cut that allows the viewer to recognize and
even create understanding about the deep wound of another (Ortega, 2008). Barthes
(1980), in his ontological and phenomenological investigation of photography,
addressed the power of attentive feeling: “affect was what I didn’t want to reduce.
… I wanted to explore it not as a question (a theme) but as a wound: I see, I feel,
hence I notice, I observe, and I think” (p. 21).
290
LOVE AND MOURN

He had no right
to hurt you.
You were just a child.
Your body wasn’t
yours to give yet.
I love and mourn
for you so much, boy.
Results
The resultant themes focus on composition of the texts as well as content. For
the purposes of this paper we describe the themes within the narrative collection:
narrative expression, narrative type, use of symbols, and use of color.
Narrative Form
The Clothesline Project is a bricolage of ever-emergent expression—that is, “a

pieced-together set of representations that is fitted to the specifics of complex
situations” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000, p. 4). Various types of narrative language and
forms were employed and made up six thematic areas: personal declarative, general
declarative, memorials, story, poetry, and
questions.
The personal declarative theme made
up a little over a third of the narrative
types and was characterized by statements
and demands by the survivors regarding
how they perceived their experience. In
contrast, general declarative statements
were used to state statistics, raise
awareness, and make statements about
cultural norms.
Memorial statements were generally
written by loved ones of survivors/victims
of violence and were characterized by
subthemes of mourning, sympathy,
support, encouragement, and personal
memorials to loved ones. Often victims/
Figure 8. survivors were named along with brief
291
notations regarding the circumstances of the violence, strength of the victim, the
date, and the effects of the victimization on family and loved ones.
Narratives coded to be story varied highly in length and detail. A narrative
was judged to be a story if it used prose to describe an incident or event with a
beginning, middle, and end. The beginning, middle, and end of the story did not
need to be detailed, chronological, or necessarily come to a tidy resolution. Rather,
the story had to begin with a circumstance, travel or lead the reader through a
happening or event, and finish with a statement of an effect, result, resolution, or
action taken.
Narratives that engaged poetic themes used elements of lyrical, free verse,
metaphoric, archetype, and antithesis form. Like story form, poetic narratives
varied highly in length and detail. But how was a particular participant narrative
considered to be “poetry” or poetic? Two sets of criteria were used in the analysis.
First, in examining “occasions for poetry,” Sullivan (2009, p. 112) outlines six
overlapping and interrelated domains that describe the basic elements found in
the craft of quality poetry: concreteness, voice, emotion, ambiguity, associative
logic, and tensions. And second, some participants wrote in a distilled, rhythmic,
and affected style that captured the
truth but also the tentativeness of their
individual experience. In these poetic
occasions, the participant voice is
“present, individual, idiosyncratic and
alive” in expressing their experience
with violence (p. 116).
A small portion of the participants
used questions singly or embedded in a
longer narrative that were provocative,
evocative, or demanding. The questions
served to engage the perpetrator or
the audience, especially regarding
nondominant discourses.
In sum, participants creatively
and purposefully used specific types Figure 9. Purple shirt with yellow letters
of narration as a means to enhance and rainbow pin. WSU collection
the embodied-sensuous-intellectual
experience of violence in their lives. The form and style of the narratives
captured the context: the emotional and social landscapes of their experiences.
Rather than merely writing about the violent incident, participants wrote within,
through, and in relationship to the experience of violence, for self and others.
In this way, participants shared the meaning of—the being in—their unfolding
experience.
292
Narrative Expression
Closely linked to the type of narrative used by the participant was the expression
within the narrative. Participants conveyed six primary expressive themes in their
narratives: negative emotions, statements to the perpetrator, sympathy and support,
general awareness, statements of shock and outrage, and messages of hope.
Most common were expressions of negative emotions such as anger/hate, fear,
sadness/mourning, emptiness, guilt/fault, shame/embarrassment, enforced silence,
and the inability to move beyond the violent experience. These negative emotions
referred to current states of being as well as to
feelings experienced during or after the violence.
Participants also made statements directly
to the perpetrator. Subthemes pertained to the
steps taken/words stated by the victim at the
time of the assault, to statements of defiance, to
the victim’s inability or unwillingness to forgive
the perpetrator(s), and to statements that guilt
rightfully belongs to the perpetrators rather than
the victims.
Statements of shock and outrage often
accompanied expressions of negative emotions
and statements to the perpetrator. These statements
articulated outrage, shock, antithesis, irony, and
sarcasm.
Figure 10. Orange shirt with
white and black letters.
WSU collection
Expressions of sympathy and support were
coded into the subthemes of love, memorial,
sympathy, support and encouragement.
Generally those narratives were short in
length, often naming the victim or the
relationship to the participant.
Expressions of general awareness asserted
warnings to potential victims and a desire to
increase awareness. These expressions were
short and slogan-like in form.
Interestingly, only a small portion
of participants (6%) conveyed hopeful
messages through statements of reclamation,
forgiveness, and hope for the future.
Altogether, the narratives displayed a wide
Figure 11. Peach shirt with white
letters. WSU collection variety of affect and emotion in response to
293
the acts of violence. The majority of the expressive content revealed explorations
of traumatic memories, re-experiences of trauma by eliciting events and memory,
the integration of memories, and remembrance and mourning. Few participants
expressed well developed integration of the traumatic event and resolution of the
violent events in their lives. This pattern of expression suggests two possibilities:
that victim/survivors who choose to participate in the Clothesline Project may
be in “the middle stages” of the recovery and healing process, as opposed to the
instability and shock of the “initial or immediate stage” post-victimization or the
integration, reconnection, and resolution found in “later stages” of recovery and
healing (Herman, 1997, p. 156); or that “middle stage” constructed memories of
past events offer victims power in voicing through the shirts. Participation in the
Clothesline Project may be beneficial to victims/survivors as safe public expression,
and the active choice of the form and content of that expression may be empowering.
To tell one’s story, especially the most painful parts—free from silencing cultural
and psychological constraints—allows for re-presentation and re-valuation of the
violent experience.
Use of Symbols
Symbols facilitate recognition and are a

pictorial code used for the personal and
cultural meanings expressed (Gadamer,
1975/2004). As the experience of violence
is an embodied one, it is no surprise
that the most common use of symbols,
drawings, and images in the Clothesline
Project centered on the body: heart,
face, hand, fist, eyes, and blood trails.
The body was not depicted in whole,
and most of the images were coupled
with descriptions of the violent event,
emotional responses, and descriptions
of the perpetrator. The second most
common symbol theme, nature (flower,
vine, butterfly, shamrock, and snake),
accompanied narratives focused on
memorials, personal declarations
centered on grieving the loss of self or Figure 12. Red shirt with white and black
of a loved one, or declarations of healing letters. WSU collection
and the acknowledgement of growth
and renewal. The use of these nature symbols may be an extension of cultural
expressions of grief and healing such as bringing flowers to a funeral or to one who
is sick or celebrating. Cultural healing practices also often involve reflections on
294
and communion with nature. Universal signs such as gender symbols, ribbons, and
stop signs are used as a type of eye-catching shorthand for personal and general
declarative statements (e.g., two intertwined female gender symbols coupled with
a narrative about violence perpetrated against those in same sex relationships).
Similarly, abstract and geometric designs such as boxes, rickrack, stars, dots, points,
and slashes were used within the narratives to emphasize particular words or ideas.
The least commonly used symbols were religious, architectural, or map symbols.
Generally, most of the symbols and
narratives were hand painted or drawn
in bright colors and applied with certain
rhythms and striking brush strokes
that served to increase the intensity or
“volume” of the individual and collective
messages. The physicality or dance of
the expressions was found in a broad
continuum of brushstroke and layout.
Some narratives were tight, boxed, and
organized, while others were thrown and
Figure 13. Blue shirt with staccato slashed on to the fabric. The
multi-colored painting and varied
variety of symbols coupled with color,
brushstroke. WSU collection
design, and narrative to form a unique
Bakhtian heteroglossia or mix of languages not found in dominant discourse
(Morris, 1994; Zappan, 2000).
Even though many of the shirts were donated and bore printed messages and
slogans from various agencies, departments, or events (e.g., “Take back the night,”
“Women’s Resource Center,” “YWCA: End oppression and gender inequality
now!”), participants tended to turn them inside out and create their narratives on the
blank side of the shirt. This purposeful action by the participants points to a desire
to speak in their own voice and create their own story. Moreover, it is interesting
to note that this action by the participant—figuratively and literally—presents the
narrative canvas as well as the experience of violence from the “inside out.” The act
of telling one’s story and displaying it publically exhibits the internal, often silenced,
and deeply personal experience of violence.
INFECTED
The truth
is a virus.
I cannot have somebody
make this better.
I cannot depend on someone
to take away the pain.
295
I have taken this route before.

It leads to a wall,
which I am simply not skilled
enough to climb anymore.
It’s got to come from
somewhere within.
I keep coming up empty.
I’ve given it all away.
The bruises you gave
me have faded.
I forgive you.
It is myself
I struggle with.
Color: Shirt and Letter
Despite the dark and clouded topic of

violence often associated with subdued
and somber colors, the Clothesline
Project bursts with color in both shirt and
narrative letters and images. The most
common shirt colors were blue, white,
pink, orange, yellow, red and black/grey.
The lettering was most often multicolored
followed by black/grey, red, white, glitter/
neon, yellow, and blue. Like the use of
symbols, color magnifies the participant
voice and creates a disorienting spectacle
for the audience by mixing high volume
of color, disconcerting messages on
violence, and a carnivalesque array of
shirts swaying in the wind.
How does color and light affect the Figure 14. Bright pink shirt with green
experience of the observer? Heidegger and blue letters, snake and
refers to an originary concept of truth as vine symbols. WSU collection
“unconcealment,” or that which is lit and
revealed (1933–34/2010, p. 101). Further, he links sight, insight, clarity, and tone:
“Light, brightness, darkness are what is seen in advance in all perceiving. Things
must first stand in the light in order to be visible” (p. 121). Public display and the
choice of bright colors by the participants not only unveil the truth of their violent
experience; it also provides a piercing tone and quality to sight and insight. Brightness
296
within form make it possible to see what is displayed and then to see-through the
cultural tropes of violence. These vivid hues visually prioritize and clarify stories of
victimization. Light, brightness, and color “emerge as the sensory image of the idea”
(p. 122): being, common experience, and manifestation of liberated voices.
Discussion
The purpose of this chapter is to discuss findings of a study analyzing artefacts from
the WSU Clotheslines Project. Traditional qualitative analysis of narrative themes,
arts-informed interpretations/analysis, and poetic inquiry were utilized to address
the research goals. An arts-informed analysis revealed the presence of narrative
themes not explored in previous research, specifically the forms of participant
narrative such as poetry and stories as well as use of design, symbol, and color for
enhanced expression. Analysis suggested that participants actively used particular
forms of narrative, types of expression, and color and symbol as a means to actively
transform their experience and participate in public, carnivalesque truth-telling and
non-dominant discourses.
Interpretive arts-informed analysis was employed to explore, discover, and
communicate findings in a multidimensional and more accessible way. Poetic
techniques in a variety of mediums were used to distill, depict, and creatively
articulate “truths” and “universals” found in the data analysis with artful and heartfelt
imagination (Piirto, 2009, p. 87). The arts-informed analysis listens, bears witness,
and respectfully engages the participants’ narratives. In this way we, as researchers,
share artful analyses as well as personal meaning-making of this Clothesline Project.
conclusion
The Clothesline Project is a bricolage or assemblage of expression—figuratively

and literally—as demonstrated in the forms of narrative texts and in its collective
public assemblage. In turn, we engaged the research process as bricoleurs or makers
of assembled and juxtaposed images and narratives into data-based and artful
montages that are evolving, “pragmatic, strategic, and self-reflexive” (Denizen &
Lincoln, 2000, p. 4). Both the Clothesline Project and our research analyses are
constructions—multiple parallaxic perspectives—where researchers, participants,
and audience members can dwell, dialog, and reflect.
Furthering the notion of construction, Heidegger (2001) metaphorically explores
being and construction of perspectives through expressions of building, dwelling
and thinking, in as much as “everything that is belongs” (p. 143)—even experiences
of violence. When applied to phenomenological hermeneutic research and the
Clothesline Project, building, dwelling and thinking are mirrored in the dialogic
bricolage within this chapter. Heidegger notes that beings build only where they
can dwell and that the building draws its nature—its form and essence—from the
experience of dwelling. The Clothesline Project form and essence is built from the
297
voice and aesthetic expression of those who have experienced violence and dwells
in that expression with the audience.
Nevertheless, the difficulty is how to dwell and think together—especially
when confronting the dissonance felt in facing suffering and violence in our own
communities. Heidegger asks: How can mortals learn to dwell? He answers: “This
they accomplish when they build out of dwelling, and think for the sake of dwelling”
(2001, p. 159).
Sontag (2003) deepens this notion of how to reflect on—to dwell with aesthetic
expressions about the experience of violence. It is not by electing for distant
sympathy, but through engaged imagination and empathy when regarding the pain
and suffering of others:
So far as we feel sympathy, we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the
suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence.
To that extent, it can be (for all our good intentions) an impertinent—if not
an inappropriate—response. To set aside the sympathy we extend to others
beset by war and murderous politics for a reflection on how our privileges are
located on the same map as their suffering, and may—in ways we might prefer
not to imagine—be linked to their suffering, as the wealth of some may imply
the destitution of others, is a task for which the painful, stirring images supply
only an initial spark. (p. 102)
An act of building and thinking—such as the Clothesline Project and this research
project—produces an open communal dialog that brings together the participant, the
researcher/artist, and the audience to engaged and compassionate dwelling. It is our
hope and desire that these dialogs about the experience of violence move the reader
to a place that breaks down divisive privilege and invites common reflection and
action. Engagement is an open place of being where imagination not only dwells but
also moves and transforms.
PEARL
I will keep promising myself
that I won’t be gripped by fear
anytime someone gets angry,
that I won’t flinch at every
quick motion near me.
On this … Some success.
I’ve put new glass in the windows,
then moved.
298
I’ve sold the car you dented.

Two time zones and
Nine years separate us.
All those bruises healed.
Most of the diseases you
gave me were curable.
I’ve explained the other one to
fallen-faced potential partners
often enough to know that
the sound of a crowbar
hitting the back of your skull
would be a wet crunch.
It won’t give me back those 2 years.
2 years?!?
The voice, that proverbial
voice-I-wish-I-could-silence,
that cut cords and escaped
and always. …
Always knew I was worth more.
Endlessly … “Why did you stay,”
and I don’t fucking have an answer.
I know I’m strong now:
My strength has been tempered
by your blows …
by fear immeasurable and
by my own anguish.
It is a gift.
I tell myself through gritted teeth.
You and your like have given this
haunting gift to so many of us.
Scar tissue is stronger than flesh.
The anger I have for you still
twists painfully in my heart:
Like an oyster I am shut in with
a grain of sand.
Someday …
I will have turned it over enough,
wrapped it with self-forgiveness
and it will be a pearl.
299
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Patricia L. Maarhuis
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Pauline Sameshima
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RAMA COUSIK
22. RESEARCH IN SPECIAL EDUCATION

Poetic Data Anyone?
When I began my dissertation research, I was reminded of Robert Frost’s famous

lines from his poem (Frost, 1920, p. 247) and I quote the first two verses of the poem
below:
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same…
Unlike Frost, I was about to embark on a journey that had not one road less
travelled in special education, but two. First, I was going to write my research report
as a story using elements of ethnography. Second, I was going to use poetry to collect,
analyse and report some of my data. These two forms of expression have rarely been
used in special education research. One reason for this could be that ethnography
is about studying a phenomenon in an in-depth manner by immersing oneself long
and deep into the culture and the context. It is not about finding quick solutions
to society’s problems, whereas researchers in special education are encouraged,
pressurized and obligated to find solutions to problems that afflict children, their
families and teachers. Secondly, because of the wide variation in the characteristics
and performance of children receiving special education, methodologies such as
single subject design are highly recommended and well suited for conducting special
education research (Odom & Strain, 2002; Horner, Carr, Halle, Mcgee, Odom, &
Wolery, 2005; Odom, Brantlinger, Gersten, Horner, Thompson, & Harris, 2005).
Although qualitative research is a recommended methodology for conducting
research in special education and a few seminal studies exist (Brantlinger, Jimenez,
Klingner, Pugach, & Richardson, 2005) such as the first documented study titled
“The Wild Boy of Aveyron” (1932) to Resch et al. (2010), most studies tend to be
R. COUSIK
short-termed, appearing to providing temporary solutions to the ongoing debate on

issues in special education.
Through my research, I aimed at gaining a deeper, nuanced awareness about
and sensitivity towards what and who I was studying. Additionally, I decided to
incorporate research poetry in my writing because first, “…crafting through poetic
language results in a richly textured, insightful, and complex means by which to
make sense of the world and…the educational community will greatly benefit
from scholarship that brings this to light” (Percer, 2002, Introduction, para.1) and
secondly, poetry can attract and hold readers’ attention (Cahnmann, 2003). The
qualities of musicality, symbolism, rhythm, figurative language and imagery allow
creative expression of thoughts and ideas. There are many definitions of poetry but I
would like to use the one by William Wordsworth (1800, para. 26) who says poetry
is “…” the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings…recollected in tranquillity.”
Through poetry, emotions can be expressed in both subtle and overt ways. According
to Leggo (2008),
Where prose often seems transparent and is taken for granted, poetry invites the
writer and the reader to pay close attention to the semiotics of figurative language,
sound effects, texture, voice, rhythm, shape on the page, line breaks, and stanzaic
structure. In a poem, everything signifies.
My first attempt at using poetry in research began when I did a research project
during my doctoral program. One of my professors demonstrated several creative
ways of conducting and reporting qualitative research. Encouraged by the readings
and the examples that he provided, I presented the results of my study in the form of
a poem. It received great applause from my teacher and peers. Since then, I began to
develop a keen interest in arts based and arts-informed research.
One day during my third year into the program, my son and I overheard an
announcement on the television which said “Autism is a devastating disorder
that affects…” My son and I burst into laughter at the way the announcer made
it sound—like a life-threatening disease. My son said “Run, mommy! Autism is
going to catch you!” My outlook at all the hype about autism and this incident
inspired me to write a poem that described my feelings about it. My professors and
fellow doctoral students read the poem encouraged me to send it for publication.
One journal rejected it but another one accepted it. I titled it “The Autism Mantra”
(Cousik, 2008) and employed popular jargon in the field of autism to construct the
poem. The poem has two voices—professionals and parents represent one voice
and a person with autism the other. The poem begins with the words used in the
official definition of Autism and related conditions under the umbrella term Autism
Spectrum Disorder (ASD) by the DSM (IV) and continues with the words that are
used to describe characteristics of autism, popular theories that attempt to explain
the condition and some well-known, contemporary therapies/treatment methods—
both evidence based and spurious that were in practice around the world. I have re-
presented the poem here with the permission of the original publishers:
304
RESEARCH IN SPECIAL EDUCATION
The Autism Mantra

Autism Asperger’s spectrum of disorders Casein free gluten free
Atypical autism PDD (NOS) Allergy mercury
Savant autistic Music therapy horse therapy
Idiosyncratic eccentric Canine therapy dolphin therapy
More than enough labels Leave those poor animals alone
To give me a nervous tic! If you ask me!
Rocking flapping tip toeing Brushing Holding TEACCH squeeze machine
Spinning stimming persevering PRT REI marijuanamegavitamin
Echolalia puzzle mania Daily Life ABA Floortime Option
OCD insomnia Special education General education
Methinks the world is affected ( I ) understand you mean well
With acute paranoia! But do think about my avocation
Selective reaction Social skills training
Photographic imitation Behavior modification
Hidden emotion Speechmodulation
Musical intonation Auditory integration
Boundless imagination All are nothing but
Not hallucination! Fruits of civilization!
Frontal lobes MMR

Who knows Trigger
Amygdyla Culture
Phobia Disaster
Take a break or you may What were you thinking?

Get dyspepsia! Leo Kanner? Hans Asperger?
Mindblindedness Also see my strengths

Weak central coherence Not only my weaknesses
Executive dysfunction Leave me alone
Auditory processing If you can’t do that
Chaotic theories A curse or a blessing

Think overstimulation? Don’t bemoan!
Sensory integration Autos means self, yeah! Sure

Chelation Oblivious to your world
Facilitative communication (You) think I need a cure
Medication Your line of reasoning’s a tad obscure
Without any of these I prefer to be me

Am I doomed to damnation? Enigmatic, but secure!
Figure 1. The Autism Mantra (Cousik, 2008). Reproduced with permission

from the Review of Disability Studies
For my second research project as a doctoral student, I ventured to find out more
about the roles and responsibilities of paraeducators (Cousik, 2009, unpublished
work). My interest in this topic came from an incident that I witnessed at a preschool.
A child and an adult seemed to be engaging in a screaming duel. I later learned that
the child had been diagnosed with autism and that the adult was his paraeducator.
305
R. COUSIK
Autism is characterized by three key symptoms-communication difficulties,

socialization difficulties and selective interests. Many children with autism do not
use speech to communicate (Stone, Ousley, Yoder, Hogan, & Hepburn, 1997; Colle,
Baron-Cohen, & Hill, 2007) but engage in making vocalizations. Research has
shown that these vocalizations often have a communicative intent (Keen, 2005). I
wondered if the paraeducator was aware of how children with autism made sense
of the world and how they communicated. Children with autism are literal in their
understanding of languages and it is important to communicate with them using
simple, direct speech and avoid abstraction and asking rhetorical questions. When
she repeatedly asked him why he was screaming, the child appeared confused and
anxious, which increased his crying. This situation made me think more deeply
about differing communication styles between the two and resulted in a poem and I
present a part of it below:
MESSAGE, LOUD AND CLEAR
How many times should I tell you not to scream?
Why is she screaming at me?
Go to sleep! It is naptime!
Why isn’t she taking a nap? It is naptime
You need speech therapy!
She should watch her language
Learn how to behave…
The words in this poem are mostly fictitious, except for the first sentence.
However, I have attempted to put myself in the position of the two actors in the
setting and articulate the possible, underlying meanings in their exchange. I have
differentiated each set of sentences with two colours, red and green, with each colour
intending to convey the emotional state of the speaker at the time, as I perceived.
Both sentences in each set have some common words that appear to share the same
meanings at a surface level. I invite the readers to guess the role of each speaker in
this poem. Who is the first speaker and who is the second? What is the nature of their
relationship? Can the roles be reversed? Would that alter the meanings?
Creating More Research Poems
My dissertation was nested within a larger study in which the researchers were
looking at the effect of music on children’s school performance (Brenner, 2010).
My participants were first and second graders with special needs who were learning
to play the violin. In addition, a few among them had social skill problems but
had not been referred for formal evaluation for special education. As I began my
ethnography as a participant observer, I learned to play the violin with the children
and an important component of my data collection included field notes. As the study
progressed, my field notes began to be interspersed with quotes, poetry, rhymes
306
and sketches. It was very interesting to note that the music instruction in the larger
study had a lot of routine commands and I perceived a specific pattern in each set of
commands. In my reflexive journal, I began to create research poems using some of
these routine commands.
Poetry allows one to employ artistic and colourful language and embellish one’s
writing with metaphors and symbols. Additionally, one can create multiple layers of
meanings to words whose meanings may not be immediately apparent. Also, “One
of the most noteworthy characteristics of poetry is that it enables the voice, of both
the researcher and the reader, a voice that is often suppressed or expected to be
couched in detachment in conventional discourse” (Cousik, 2011, p. 70). Poetry
in qualitative research has a distinct identity and stands on its own compared to
scientific research reports that are usually written in prose with generous inclusion
of facts and figures. Research poetry constructed using data that represents both the
voices of the researcher and the researched can be woven into the narrative to break
the monotony and maintain the reader’s attention.
Furthermore, in field research, ethnography, phenomenology and other types of
qualitative research which require thick descriptions, poetry can be used to describe
routines, schedules and frequent and unusual events. For example, the music class
where I was conducting my research began with a routine where the teacher gave a
series of commands to teach various postures needed when playing the violin. This was
a type of warm-up exercise. In this routine, the teachers would ask the children to put
their feet together, take a step to the right and hold their violins up for a few seconds
before beginning to play. Children also did a few other warm-up exercises to strengthen
their bow holds, like pretending to stir soup with their bows for example. Because the
commands were given in the same sequence throughout the year, within a few weeks
the children seemed to know them by heart and followed directions automatically.
As I began to learn and follow the commands myself, I noticed that there seemed
to be a high expectation for perfection in performance. Children were repeatedly told
to stand in their designated spots and attempt to play perfectly by moving only their
hands and holding the rest of their bodies still. The need for perfection in behaviour
and performance seemed very important to the teachers and pervaded almost all their
formal interactions with the children. Some children however, naturally responded
to the innate rhythm in the tunes they were learning by moving their bodies and
thus stepped out of their designated places in the group. The teachers made earnest
attempts to prevent children from engaging in such movements. For example, a large
X shape made of plastic tape was glued on the floor to mark specific places for some
children. “Such visual cues help some children to understand their positions in space
you know…” said one teacher.
A few months later, another teacher introduced ‘place mats’ and each child was
asked to stand on his/her own place mat—a small, square piece of carpet. In the
following poem, I have tried to express their innate need by teachers for seeing
children as perfect products of their teaching—which I perceive as problematic. The
poem was constructed using direct quotes by the teachers who participated in my
307
R. COUSIK
study and interspersed with my own ideas and views. Here’s an extract of the poem,
modified from the original version (Cousik, 2011, p. 186):
STIR THE PERFECT SOUP
All right guys!
Stand in your perfect position!
Hold your violin perfectly under your chin!
Do not wiggle!
Do not giggle!
What kind of soup?
Why don’t we stir the perfect soup!
At the concert, stand perfectly still!
Even when my foot’s itchy? asks Leah.
Even when your foot’s itchy!
No extra movements, whatsoever!
Even if I vomit? asks Peter.
No one answered him
‘Cos no one chose to hear him.
I tend to express my feelings through poetry when I encounter situations that
deeply move me. During my research, poetry has allowed me to examine a myriad
of issues in education in general and social justice in particular. For example,
recently, the increasing prevalence of obesity among children and the correlation
among childhood obesity, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and
processed food has been of particular concern to me. Thus, the concluding poem in
this chapter examines the correlating factors among the issues of childhood obesity,
ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and eating habits. Obesity and
associated health problems in children and adults is a major problem in the US.
According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), Ogden and Carroll (2010) state
that “Approximately 17% (or 12.5 million) of children and adolescents aged 2–19
years are obese. Since 1980, obesity prevalence among children and adolescents has
almost tripled.” More alarming is the rate of obesity amongst low-income, preschool
children. The CDC (2011) also reports data from the Paediatric Nutrition Surveillance
System indicating that “1 of 7 low-income, preschool-aged children is obese.” In
children, obesity is often co morbid with ADHD (Cortese et al., 2008; Davis, 2010).
Most critically, obesity can have a deeply negative impact on the child’s self-esteem
and socialization, which in turn are likely to affect his/her academic performance.
Lastly, children with obesity and/or ADHD increasingly tend to be victims of and
perpetrators of bullying (Panzer, 2010; Taylor, Saylor, Twyman, & Macias, 2010;
Twyman, Saylor, Saia, Macias, Taylor, & Spratt, 2010).
On the other hand, one of the characteristics of ADHD is impulsivity, which tends
to pervade across all aspects of a child’s functioning, including eating. Congruently,
308
children with ADHD develop a tendency to become obese (Agranat-Meged, Deitcher,

Goldzweig, Leibenson, Stein, & Galili-Weisstub, 2005; Nederkoorn, Braet, van
Eijs, Tanghe, & A. Jansen, 2006; Rojo, Ruiz, Domínguez, Calaf, & Livianos, 2006;
Cortese et al., 2008) and children who are obese tend to develop ADHD because
of excessive consumption of easily available, cheap, processed foods that are high
in sugar, salt and additives. When you reverse the causality between the type of
food consumed and its effects on health, it is safe to assume that the risk of chronic
health problems, obesity and ADHD is greatly reduced in populations that consume
natural, healthy, unprocessed food that are free of additives.
Food production and consumption is largely determined by a nation’s economic,
political, agricultural and industrial policies. For example, in the US, ironically,
agriculturalists receive great subsidy to produce crops that make it possible for
highly processed food to be produced cheaply and in excess quantities (Wallinga,
Schoonover, & Muller, 2009). Even though there is ample evidence that points to
the role of organically grown fresh food that is free of harmful, artificial additives in
the reduction of obesity and ADHD (Cortese, Bernardina, & Mouren, 2007; Cortese,
et al., 2008; Cocores & Gold, 2009; Stevenson, 2009; Stevens, Kuczek, Burgess,
Hurt, & Arnold, 2011), such healthy foods are largely a privilege of the elite because
they are expensive and tend to occupy a small, insignificant section of grocery store
chains where the average family buys its food. The fact that there is a high rate of
obesity among children in poverty proves this point—that parents in poverty tend to
buy and feed their children with highly processed food because it is easily accessible,
widely available and affordable.
In the following poem, the protagonist is the common child (as in ‘common
man’), who questions the choices that parents make and urges them to protect them
from the prevailing obesofertile environment. The drawings depict a child born with
a risk for obesity who reaches for the proverbial sugar cookie, a habit that he carries
to his grave.
THE COMMON CHILD’S LAMENT
Cookies lollipop candy bar
How I wonder why they are
Stacked up on the shelves so high
Like a nightmare in my eye
Chocolates full of refined sugar
Chips, crackers, ice cream fruit bar
309
R. COUSIK
Figure 2. The Common child’s lament
Macaroni and cheese TV dinner

Canned fruit jelly gummy bear
Stacked up on the shelves up so high
Crackers cream cheese cupcakes soda
Stacked up on the shelves up so high
Eating these foods gained me weight
There’s no ban on these till date
Airplane seats squeak and wheeze
Coffins Oh Lord what a squeeze
Are you listening dear parent
Help me save me from my ill fate
Let your voice be strong and loud
When you say NO to simply bad food
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comorbidity in obese hospitalized children. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 37, 357–359.
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Brantlinger, E., Jimenez, R., Klingner, J., Pugach, M., & Richardson, V. (2005). Exceptional children.
Qualitative Studies in Special Education, 71(2), 195–207.
Brenner, B. (2010). A unique collaboration: The fairview elementary school string project. In
A. C. Clements (Ed.), Alternative approaches in music education: Case studies from the field
(pp. 201–212). Plymouth, England: Rowman & Littlefield Education.
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Researcher, 32(3), 29–36.
Cocores, J. A., & Gold, M. S. (2009). The salted food addiction hypothesis may explain overeating and
the obesity epidemic. Medical Hypotheses, 73(6), 892–899.
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verbal test of autism vs. specific language impairment. Journal of Autism and Developmental
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Cortese, S., Bernardina, B. D., & Mouren, M.-C. (2007). Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
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Cortese, S., Angriman, M., Maffeis, C., Isnard, P., Konofal, E., Lecendreux, E., … Mouren, M.-C. (2008).
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and obesity: A systematic review of the literature.
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Cousik, R. (2008). The autism mantra. The Review of Disability Studies, 4(3), 64–65.
Cousik, R. (2009). Paraeducators tell it like it is. Poster accepted for presentation, TED Conference at
Charlotte, North Carolina, NC.
Cousik, R. (2011). A case study of four children with multiple risk factors in a music class (Doctoral
dissertation). Retrieved from http://gradworks.umi.com/34/81/3481387.html
Davis, C. (2010). Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: Associations with overeating and obesity.
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Horner, R. H., Carr, E. G., Halle, J., Mcgee, G., Odom, S., & Wolery, M. (2005). The use of single-
subject research to identify evidence-based practice in special education. Exceptional Children, 71(2),
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Itard, J.-M.-G., Humphrey, G. (Trans.)., & Humphrey, M. (Trans.). (1932). The wild boy of Aveyro
(Rapports et mémoires sur le sauvage de l’Aveyron), The Century psychology series. The Century Co.
(xxiv 104 pp.). doi:10.1037/11591-000
Keen, D. (2005). The use of non-verbal repair strategies by children with autism. Research in
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Leggo, C. (2008). Astonishing silence: Knowing in poetry. In J. G. Knowles & A. L. Cole (Eds.),
Handbook of the arts in qualitative social science research (pp. 165–193). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications.
Nederkoorn, C., Braet, C., van Eijs, Y., Tanghe, A., & Jansen, A. (2006). Why obese children cannot resist
food: The role of impulsivity. Eating Behaviors, 7(4), 315–322.
Odom, S. L., & Strain, P. S. (2002). Evidence-based practice in early intervention/early childhood special
education: Single-subject design research. Journal of Early Intervention, 25(2), 151–160.
Odom, S. L., Brantlinger, E., Gersten, R., Horner, R. H., Thompson, B., & Harris, K. R. (2005). Research
in special education: Scientific methods and evidence-based practices. Exceptional Children, 71(2),
137–148.
Ogden, C., & Carroll, M. (2010). Prevalence of obesity among children and adolescents: United States,
trends 1963–1965 through 2007–2008. Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
National Center for Health Statistics.
Panzer, B. M. (2010). Enhancing Childhood Obesity Treatment. ICAN: Infant, Child, & Adolescent
Nutrition, 2(2), 96–99.
Percer, L. H. (2002). Going beyond the demonstrable range in educational scholarship: Exploring the
intersections of poetry and research. The Qualitative Report, 7(2), 3.
Pugach, M. C. (2001). The stories we choose to tell: Fulfilling the promise of qualitative research for
special education. Exceptional Children, 67(4), 439–453.
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parents a voice: A qualitative study of the challenges experienced by parents of children with
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Rojo, R., Ruiz, E., Domínguez, J. A., Calaf, M., & Livianos, L. (2006). Comorbidity between obesity and
attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder: Population study with 13–15 year olds. International Journal
of Eating Disorders, 39(6), 519–522.
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Stevens, L. J., Kuczek, T., Burgess, J. R., Hurt, E., & Arnold, L. E. (2011). Dietary sensitivities and
ADHD symptoms: Thirty-five years of research. Clinical Pediatrics, 50(4), 279–293.
Stevenson, J. (2009). Food additives and children’s behaviour: Evidence-based policy at the margins of
certainty. Journal of Children’s Services, 4(2), 4–13.
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in two-and three-year-old children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders,
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Taylor, L. A., Saylor, C., Twyman, K., & Macias, M. (2010). Adding insult to injury: bullying experiences
of youth with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Children’s Health Care, 39(1), 59–72.
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ostracism experiences in children with special health care needs. Journal of Developmental &
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Retrieved from http://www.bartleby.com/39/36.html
Rama Cousik
College of Education and Public Policy
Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, USA
312
JAZMIN A.WHITE AND LISA WILLIAM-WHITE
23. THE STORIES WE TELL IN AMERICA

State-Sponsored Violence and “Black” Space
PROLOGUE
In the sordid history of the United States of America (US), a nation whose history is
inseparable from, and built upon, human bondage, Black people’s lives held value as
a commodity that could be bought, sold, or traded. As property under the institution
of slavery, the monetary value of Black bodies was dependent on the skills possessed
by that body, and the relative worth that constituted its production.1 Yet, after the
Emancipation Proclamation2 and the subsequent freedom of Black bondsmen, these
people were further subjected to the yoke of racialized oppression through the
emergence of State laws which sought to thwart Black social and economic mobility.
This subordination manifested through unprecedented levels of surveillance,
harassment, and violence, as Blacks’ status as newly manumitted citizens under the
US Constitution posed a threat to many whites’ economic and political interests.
Increased migration of Blacks into cities across the US also brought challenges, as
many whites saw these migrants as a threat to their economic opportunities. Racial
self-determination and Blacks efforts to build communities did not go unchallenged.
Preceding World War I, a “pattern of racial violence began to emerge in which white
mob assaults were directed against entire Black communities. In these race riots,
white mobs invaded Black neighborhoods, beat and killed large numbers of Blacks
and destroyed Black property” (Gibson, 1979). Race-riots are documented in such
cities as Wilmington, N. C. (1898); Atlanta, Ga. (1906); Springfield, Ill. (1908); East
St. Louis) Ill. (1917); Chicago, Ill. (1919); Tulsa, Okla. (1921) and Detroit, Mich.
(1943). Gibson asserts that during Red Summer (1919) twenty-six race riots occurred
in the country. He further cites Joseph Boskin, author of Urban Racial Violence,
who posits that there were social, political and economic factors which spawned
the race riots. Among them were: white-initiated violence precipitated by rumors;
the violence occurred in a Black community; the police force was involved as a
precipitating cause or perpetuating factor in the riots; and, police often sided with the
attackers [emphasis mine].
The surveillance of policing of Black bodies can be seen in varied legal statutes.
Staples (2011) posits that as early as 1693, the Philadelphia court authorized police
to detain Negros without passes from their masters; Southern Black codes allowed
militiamen to arrest and detain blacks who were perceived as suspicious; and that
J. A.WHITE & L. WILLIAM-WHITE
the Fugitive Slave Act allowed citizens to profile both free and enslaved Blacks,
imposing fines and sanctions for those who “failed to assist in the capture of
suspected runaway slaves” (p. 32). Slave Codes outlined the rights of slaves and the
acceptable treatment and rules regarding slaves, which varied from state to state. For
example, slaves could be awarded as prizes in raffles, wagered in gambling, offered
as security for loans, and transferred as gifts from one person to another (Goodell,
2006).
Additionally, the 1857 Dred Scott case encoded the ideology that Blacks were
property and inferior to whites. Black Codes were enacted by Southern state
legislatures limiting the freedom of the former slaves. These laws placed severe
restrictions on both slaves and emancipated blacks, disallowing voting, jury
service, and traveling freely, to name a few. Jim Crow laws were enacted after the
Reconstruction period and persisted well into the 1960s. These laws systematized
the separate by equal doctrine through inferior social, educational, and economic
opportunities. Furthermore, the Ku Klux Klan3 emerged in the late 1860s as an
insurgent, paramilitary group that engaged in subversive terrorist acts of violence
against Black people throughout history (McVeigh, 2009). During the late 1950s
and into the 1960s, Klansmen “across the South launched a prolonged campaign
of intimidation, violence, and murder in opposition to the civil rights movement”4
(Encyclopedia of Alabama), and the enfranchisement of Blacks under the Civil War
Amendments.5 In fact, during the turbulent years after Reconstruction, from 1880
through the 1930s, it is estimated that there were 2805 [documented] victims of
lynch mobs in ten southern states. Of these, 2,462 were black victims, which meant
that, on the average, a “black man, woman, or child was murdered nearly once a
week, every week, between 1882 and 1930 by a hate-driven white mob” (Tornay &
Beck, 1995, p. ix).
The segregation, discrimination, and widespread violence experienced by Blacks
nationwide propelled the Civil Rights Congress (1951) to submit a petition to the
United Nations for Relief from a Crime of The United States Government against
the Negro People (1951). This petition asserted that “consistent, conscious, [and]
unified policies of every branch of government” in the US caused physical or mental
harm to a group which was akin to genocide under the United Nations Convention’s
definition. In this historic document it states,
There was a time when racist violence had its center in the South. But as
[Black] people spread to the north, east and west seeking to escape the southern
hell, the violence, impelled in the first instance by economic motives, followed
them… Now there is not a great American city from New York to Cleveland
or Detroit, from Washington, the nation’s capital, to Chicago, from Memphis
to Atlanta or Birmingham, from New Orleans to Los Angeles, that is not
disgraced by the wanton killing of innocent [Blacks]. It is no longer a sectional
phenomenon…Once the classic method of lynching was the rope. Now it is
the policeman’s bullet. To many an American the police are the government,
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THE STORIES WE TELL IN AMERICA
certainly its most visible representative. We submit that the evidence suggests
that the killing of [Blacks] has become police policy in the United States and
that police policy is the most practical expression of government policy [sic].
(“We Charge Genocide”, 1951)
Today, Blacks are still “caught in the struggle” to be at home in the United States
as Dr. Martin Luther King posited forty-six years ago (King, 1968, p. 177). Police
brutality against people of color, primarily African Americans, remains an ever
present and persistent problem (King, 2011; Chaney & Robertson, 2013; Chaney
& Robertson, 2014; Martinot, 2013; Staples, 2013). “Nearly two times a week in
the United States, a white police officer killed a black person during a seven-year
period” (Johnson, Hoyer, & Heath, 2012). Additionally, in an analysis of police
shootings from 2010–2012, young black boys are “21 times as likely as their white
peers to be killed by police” (Gabrielson, Jones, & Sagara, 2014). And though these
numbers may appear alarming, FBI data reveals incomplete data about the true
number of homicides committed by police due to the self-reporting process of local
police departments across the nation (Gabrielson, Jones, & Sagara, 2014).
As such, due to the historic and persistent violence perpetuated in the United
States by law enforcement against Blacks6 (males particularly), it is paramount to
illuminate the messages propagated through communication infrastructures7 about
police brutality and violence. In fact,
Urban communities need to tell stories about themselves if they are to emerge
as distinct social entities they need to imagine themselves as communities.
The kinds of stories told about an urban/residential area will be incorporated
in the way in which people imagine themselves as a community—that is,
they will become part of their communicative context. Perception of one’s
immediately surrounding residential environment is directly impacted by the
communication infrastructure [sic]. (Matei, 2014, p. 66)
Moreover, agitating for justice through community activism, and the circulation of
accounts of police violence through varied media outlets and academic writing,8 is
critical towards raising awareness of the issues, with the goal of effecting policy
changes in this country.
Most urgently, diverse Black communities across the United States must
collectively keep the issue of state-sponsored violence – police departments’ brutality,
militarization, and the utilization of deadly force – on the minds and conscience of
the country. Without the impassioned pleas for change from these communities and
interested allies, the “repression of [these] stor[ies] can scar the soul (Odell, 2012,
p. 340); and the failure of government to implement the “demands of justice” harms
us all (King, 1968, p. 38).
Poetically Speaking:
29-29-29!
315
This number reverberates through

the annals of our minds
Caught our eyes while reading news and blogs
On-line
with Davey D, Hip-Hop journalist’s name,
on the byline9
29 souls lost, since Trayvonn,
to vicious, heinous
crimes?
With no acceptable reason
or rhyme
The fact remains,
still violent are the stories told in our current time!
The charge of genocide?10
Still resounds in people’s mind!11
Do we see and care about what’s happenin’12 in America,

In Ferguson13
In our present time?
Where police violate the rights of citizens
Where they,
or “security folks,”
have crossed the line.
Did their actions escalate to malignant
from benign?
Based on the typical
Stereotypical scripts
that animate the human mind?
Take the case of Kenneth Chamberlain
A 68-year-old
Disabled, marine Veteran
No prior offenses, or run-ins
With policemen
Yet, cops drew their weapons
Upon meeting him
After a 911 emergency medical call
Was sent from his life-alert system
Triggered accidently “at 5:25 a.m.”
316
On a chilly “November mornin”14

Did officers think they had another potential suspect?
Maybe a convict…?
Was their intrusion into his home necessary?
Or warranted?
All the while taunts and cheers were uttered at Kenneth –
“Hoo-rah!” and “nigger”15 exclaimed
During the alleged conflict
Tasered and mortally shot
Was the result from that incident…
Perhaps there was a little “mistake” or “misapprehension”
He was a 68-year-old Veteran
With heart a problem!?!
Really threatenin’!?!?!
An ambulance responded
But cops didn’t allow them
to treat him….
Ahem…16
……………………………………………………………
Infiltrating mental maps17 is a paralysis, you see
Perception18 becomes askew when viewing “other” bodies19
Those coated in ebony
“Repressive enforcement structures”20
Prey upon these
And, are replete in US society –
FBI
CIA
And Homeland Security
Prisons
Police
Add private companies for “security”
Security for whom, is the question WE ask of thee?
Thought processes shaped by the US racialized hierarchy
And cemented in a concrete,
urban geography
317
Where fear and misrepresentation upsweeps –

Upsweeps-and-keeps
Constructing our brothers
as the enemy
An oddity!
PATHOLOGICALLY!!
Moreover…
Repression, oppression,
and criminalization –
manifests through “Driving-while-Black”21
And “Stop and Frisk” legislation22
Just a few of the forms of current legislation
Used as an excuse
for de jure discrimination
Steady goes the path
of racialization
In this “great” nation
Images fed through cable news stations
And frequent misrepresentations
Yet, informs folks’ media literacy
Typical that Black folks are seen as menaces to society
Justifies surveillance and suspicions
Which should prompt more than simple pity!
Becomes inseparable from Black life
Throughout many inner cities
Should galvanize us all to work
Towards an end
And a remedy!
There have been many, far too many
Struck down and left to bleed
“Their souls, dear God,
Please…,
Bless and keep these!”:
Cary Ball23
Kimani Gray24
And
Roy Middleton25
318
Manuel Loggins26
Remarly Graham27
And
Jack Lamar Roberson28
Justin Sipp29
Dante Price30
Tremaine McMillan31
Add
Jonathan Ferrell32
Jarmaine Darden33
And
Ervin Jefferson34
To name a few of the many
We should be rememberin’
29-29-29!
No acceptable reason
or rhyme
The fact remains,
Still violent are the stories told in our current time
Do we care that the asphalt runs red yet again this time,
And will again,
next time…
Unless we examine the ideologies that animates actions
Ask – why “upholders of law” perpetuate these crimes?
notes
1
See http://www.measuringworth.com/slavery.php
2
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation
approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared that all persons held as
slaves within the rebellious (Southern) states are free. See http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_
documents/emancipation_proclamation/
3
At its peak in the 1920s, Klan membership exceeded 4 million people nationwide; see
http://www.history.com/topics/ku-klux-klan
4
According to Encyclopedia of Alabama, “In Alabama and across the South, the Klan used intimidation,
violence, and murder to deliver its message. Because many of Alabama’s law enforcement agents
either belonged to the Klan or purposely ignored the group’s violence, the Klan acted without fear of
prosecution (see http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-3291).
5
Congressional Reconstruction included the Thirteenth (abolishment of slavery), Fourteenth
(citizenship), and Fifteenth (voting rights) amendments to the Constitution which extended civil and
legal protections to former slaves.
319
6
See article, “Profiling Black Males, Use of Excessive Force: From Rodney King to Trayvon
Martin” at http://americaswire.org/drupal7/?q=content/profiling-black-males-use-excessive-force-
rodney-king-trayvon-martin
7
A communication infrastructure includes two basic components—the communication action context
and the multilevel storytelling system. The first element includes the physical, psychological,
sociocultural, economic, and technological dimensions of everyday social interactions. For example,
physical features include how an area is laid out (e.g., streets and freeways) and the relative presence
of communication incipient places or places that bring people together (e.g., parks, quality grocery
stores, movie theaters, or libraries). Psychological features concern whether people feel free to engage
one another, such as their level of fear or comfort. Sociocultural features include the degree of class,
ethnic, and cultural similarity, and inclinations toward individualism or collectivism. Economic
features of the communication action context include the time and resources available to engage in
everyday conversation. Finally, technological features include access to communication technologies
(e.g., Internet connections).
8
See William-White, L. (2013). The measure of a black life? Qualitative Research in Education, 2(2),
187–200.
9
See http://hiphopandpolitics.com/2012/04/06/29-black-people-have-been-killed-by-policesecurity-
since-jan-2012-16-since-trayvon/
10
See http://www.bet.com/news/national/2012/10/03/spike-lee-wants-black-men-to-flip-the-script-on-
violence.html
11
See http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/22/1225606/-Black-Genocide#
12
Colloquial speech for the word happening.
13
See Federal Civil Rights Investigation in Ferguson, Missouri at http://www.fbi.gov/stlouis/news-and-
outreach/stories/updates-on-federal-civil-rights-investigation-in-ferguson-missouri
14
See New York Times article, “‘Officers, Why Do You Have Your Guns Out?’” at http://www.nytimes.com/
2012/03/06/nyregion/fatal-shooting-of-ex-marine-by-white-plains-police-raises-questions.html?_r=0
15
See Democracynow. At http://www.democracynow.org/2012/7/24/white_plains_police_officer_
who_used
16
Used to represent the noise made when clearing the throat, typically to attract attention or express
disapproval or embarrassment.
17
A mental map is a person’s point-of-view perception of their area of interaction.
18
According to Matei (1991) “perception is encapsulated in mental images and maps that often tell
residents what areas of the social space in which they live should be avoided or frequented—are
friendly or not to neighborly discourse. These maps and perceptions are the product of social
interaction, which develops within the storytelling communicative infrastructure. The quality of the
exchanges and the linkages between storytelling system components directly reflect on the perception
of space” (p. 431).
19
See article by William-White, L. & White, J. (2011). Color Marks the Site/Sight of Social Difference:
Dysconscious Racism in the “Age of Obama’’, Qualitative Inquiry, 17(9), 837–853.
20
See 1 Black Man Is Killed Every 28 Hours by Police or Vigilantes: America Is Perpetually at War with
Its Own People, Retrieved at http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/1-black-man-killed-every-
28-hours-police-or-vigilantes-america-perpetually-war-its
21
See https://www.aclu.org/racial-justice/driving-while-black-racial-profiling-our-nations-highways
22
See http://www.nyclu.org/issues/racial-justice/stop-and-frisk-practices
23
See http://newsone.com/2511226/cary-ball-jr-st-louis/
24
See http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/nyregion/16-year-old-killed-by-new-york-police.html?_r=0
25
See http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/21/us/florida-shot-by-mistake/
26
See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103542/Police-shoot-dead-crazy-violent-Marine-
Manuel-Loggins-Jr-outside-daughters-school.html
27
See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/ramarley-graham/
28
See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/08/jack-lamar-roberson_n_4064133.html
29
See http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/04/nopd_hands_probe_findings_over.html
320
30
See http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/crime-law/guards-in-dante-price-shooting-
indicted-on-murder-/nPwYB/
31
See http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2013/07/tremaine_mcmillian_teen_in_deh.php
32
See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/16/jonathan-ferrell-shot_n_3937175.html
33
See http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2013/may/31/ft_worth_man_tasered_death_fruit
34
See http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ga-teen-ervin-jefferson-allegedly-shot-by-security-guard-during-
chaotic-scene-says-report/
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187–200.
William-White, L., & White, J. (2011). Color marks the site/sight of social difference: Dysconscious
racism in the “Age of Obama”. Qualitative Inquiry, 17(9), 837–853.
Jazmin A. White
Department of Counseling Psychology
Holy Names University
Oakland, California, USA
Lisa William-White
Department of Graduate and Professional Studies in Education
Sacramento State University
Sacramento, California, USA
322
CONTRIBUTORS
Francis (Fran) Biley trained as a mental health nurse, after a longstanding period
of practice Fran went on to study for two teaching qualifications and a Master’s in
nursing before completing a PhD at the University of Wales, College of Medicine. His
last qualification was a Postgraduate Diploma in Medical Humanities in 2008. Fran
moved from nursing practice into academic roles in 1991, working at the University
of Wales (now Cardiff University) for 16 years before accepting a post in the Centre
for Qualitative Research at Bournemouth University in 2007. Passionate about
good nursing practice and care, Fran was a gifted and thoughtful academic whose
work as an educator was respected worldwide. As Associate Professor, he inspired
many graduates who have since taken up senior posts across the globe. President
of the Society of Rogerian Scholars from 2005 until 2008, he was also active in the
international nursing scholarship society Sigma Theta Tau and appointed Adjunct
Professor of Nursing at Seton Hall University, New Jersey, in 2007. Friends and
colleagues miss him deeply.
Rama Cousik works as an Assistant Professor of Special Education at Indiana

University Purdue University, Fort Wayne, Indiana. Rama is interested in arts-based
qualitative research and using creative arts to inform teacher education pedagogy.
Rama is a reflective practitioner, deeply conscious of the interplay between culture
and school performance.
Iris E. Dumenden was awarded a PhD by La Trobe University (Melbourne,

Australia) for her thesis titled The soft bigotry of low expectations: The refugee
student and mainstream schooling. In her thesis, she presents transcripts of
conversations between herself and her student in poetic format, allowing the reader
to get to know her student by hearing the poetry in his words, in his pauses and
repetitions, and in his silences.
Kate Evans is a writer and is trained as a psychotherapeutic counsellor. Both

personally and professionally, she has explored poetry’s facility to unpeel human
experience. Poetry was a method of data collection for her case study considering
the therapeutic worth of creative writing (Autumn 2011, “The Chrysalis & the
Butterfly”, Journal for Applied Arts in Health). It also supported the writing of
her book Pathways Through Writing Blocks in the Academic Environment (Sense
Publishers 2013).
Sandra L. Faulkner is Director of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at

BGSU. Her poetry appears in places such as Gravel, Literary Mama, TAB, and
damselfly. She has authored two chapbooks, Hello Kitty Goes to College (dancing
323
CONTRIBUTORS
girl press, 2012), and Knit Four, Make One (Kattywompus, 2015). Her memoir in
poetry, Knit Four, Frog One, was published by Sense Publishers (2014). She lives in
NW Ohio with her partner, their warrior girl, and a rescue mutt.
Alexandra Fidyk serves as an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta,

Canada, where she teaches curriculum, pedagogy and research courses as well as
Adjunct Faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California. Her work intersects the
fields of process philosophy, education, depth psychology and Buddhist thought.
She is a Certified Jungian Psychotherapist and is currently training with the Bert
Hellinger Institute of Western PA in Family Systems Constellation and Body
Psychodynamics. She has published widely in education (articles, chapters, poetry),
co-edited Democratizing Educational Experience: Envisioning, Embodying,
Enacting (2008), with the following forthcoming: Silence and Eros: Beckoning the
Background Forward (Sense), and a co-edited collection, Jung and the Classroom:
Education for Diversity and Meaning (Routledge).
Kathleen T. Galvin is Professor of Nursing Practice at the University of Hull.

She has been pursuing qualitative research to understand experiences of illness
and wellbeing. The world of phenomenology has opened a path to the fullness of
something that was there for her formatively, how poetry and written language can
convey something thicker than science alone, and something which is palpably
present. She has been pursuing interests in Phenomenological Research, Existential
Philosophy, and Poetry to a number of concerns in Health and Social Care,
particularly on the meaning of ‘what it means to care’. She has co-authored with Les
Todres, Caring and Wellbeing: A Lifeworld Approach (Routledge).
John J. Guiney Yallop is a parent, a partner and a poet. He has also discovered that
he is a grandson. As well, John is an Associate Professor at Acadia University where
he teaches about literacy and the creative arts in research and teaching.
Graham Hartill is a poet and performer who has been involved in the field of
creative writing in health and social care for over twenty years. Having helped
establish Lapidus, the national organisation for the field, he worked in mental health
and ageing, and is now writer in residence in Her Majesty’s Prison, Parc. He teaches
on the MSc in Creative Writing For Therapeutic Purposes for the Metanoia Institute.
Jacquie Kidd is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Auckland. Her research focus
pushes the boundaries of how knowledge is created and re-presented for a range
of audiences. She uses kaupapa Māori, autoethnography, and arts-based research
practices. Poetic re-presentation of these heart-felt projects is the best way she
knows and wants to pursue in order to engage deeply with readers.
Lori E. Koelsch is an Assistant Professor and Director of Undergraduate Programs

in the Psychology Department at Duquesne University. She earned her Ph.D. in
324
CONTRIBUTORS
Clinical Psychology at Miami University. Dr. Koelsch first encountered poetic

inquiry while using the feminist method The Listening Guide. Since that time, Dr.
Koelsch has continued to incorporate poetry into her work, which typically focuses
on young women’s sexuality.
Christi Kramer completed her PhD, focused on exploration of a deeper understanding

of poetic imagination ‘as a wellspring for peacebuilding’ at the University of British
Columbia. This followed the award of MFA Poetry, George Mason University, and
a BA in Anthropology and Creative Writing at Linfield College. Her field of study
is interdisciplinary, cross cutting poetry, poetic imagination, language and literary
education with peacebuilding.
Carl Leggo is a poet and Professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
His books include: Growing Up Perpendicular on the Side of a Hill; Come-By-
Chance; Lifewriting as Literary Métissage and an Ethos for Our Times (co-authored
with Erika Hasebe-Ludt and Cynthia Chambers); Poetic Inquiry: Vibrant Voices in
the Social Sciences (co-edited with Monica Prendergast and Pauline Sameshima);
and Sailing in a Concrete Boat: A Teacher’s Journey.
Patricia L. Maarhuis, an administrator and educator at Washington State University

Counseling Services, researches the intersections between health, culture, aesthetics,
art, and transformative learning. She is a PhD candidate in the College of Education
with an emphasis in Cultural Studies & Social Thought. As a researcher-artist,
Patricia’s work involves layers of art media – poetry, collage, sculpture, photography
– about experiences, difficult topics, and alternative means to question and dialog.
Cynthia Nicole completed her BA and MA in Communication Studies from Texas

State University – San Marcos. After working for four years on her PhD in the
School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University, she left
academia to pursue a career in the beverage industry. She now manages a wine bar in
Boise, Idaho and enjoys a lifestyle that encourages her to occasionally get drunk…
on either wine or poetry.
Collette Quinn-Hall is an educator at an arts-centered learning school; a space

where twelve to fifteen year olds enter the curriculum through poetic experiences
in the disciplines of dance, music, drama, visual and media arts. She completed her
MA at the University of Calgary in Interpretive Education on storying student voices
through poetry. Collette is a passionate advocate for poetry and has published works
in a number of journals.
Lorri Neilsen Glenn is former Poet Laureate of Halifax (2005–2009). Lorri grew
up in Western Canada and moved to Nova Scotia in 1983. She teaches at Mount
Saint Vincent University and is a mentor in the University of King’s College MFA
program in creative nonfiction. Lorri’s most recent books include Untying the Apron:
325
CONTRIBUTORS
Daughters Remember Mothers of the 1950s (Guernica Editions, 2013, now in its
third printing), Threading Light: Explorations in Loss and Poetry (Hagios Press,
2011), and Lost Gospels (Brick Books, 2010).
Jane Piirto is Trustees’ Distinguished Professor at Ashland University. She is

the author of 20 books. Among these are Saunas (collected poems, Mayapple), A
Location in the Upper Peninsula (Sampo), Creativity for 21st Century Skills (Sense),
Organic Creativity (Prufrock). Piirto has received an Individual Artist Fellowship in
Poetry from the Ohio Arts Council and is listed in the Directory of American Poets
and Writers as both a poet and a writer. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for
poems in an anthology, The Way North (Wayne State University Press).
Lesley Porter is a Relational Narrative Therapist based in Adelaide Australia. Her

therapy practices draw on the client’s resources (body, breath, mind, heart & spirit),
their language, strengths and culture to enter into a place of sense making and inquiry.
Informed by her PhD research, she believes that unnamed moments are central to all
that occurs in therapy and it is in these moments that clients and therapists change.
Lesley’s thesis focuses on therapists, their therapeutic relationships and the ways
they make their therapy practices and their practice ethics through the making and
doing of their therapy.
Monica Prendergast is Associate Professor of Drama/Theatre Education at the

University of Victoria, BC, Canada. Monica has published her poetic inquiry work
widely, in journals such as the International Journal of Education and the Arts,
Qualitative Inquiry, Research in Drama Education and Cultural Studies ßà Critical
Methodologies and (with Carl Leggo) in the International Handbook of Research in
Arts Education. She has co-edited two special issues on poetic inquiry (Educational
Insights [2009] and Creative Approaches to Research [2012]), and the first volume
Poetic Inquiry: Vibrant Voices in the Social Sciences (Sense, 2009).
Frances Rapport is Visiting Professor of Qualitative Health Research at the College

of Medicine, Swansea University and Directs ‘Qualitative Enquiry Supporting Trials
Unit’. She is currently taking up a new position at Macquarie University, Australia.
She has held several Visiting Professorships, including: Harvard University,
Texas University, Bournemouth University, and University of Tromsø. With wide
research interests, she investigates: the impact of chronic conditions on patients
and the environment within which healthcare is performed, examining the scope of
qualitative methods for enhancing clinical trials.
Pauline Sameshima is a Canada Research Chair in Arts Integrated Studies

at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. Her work centres on
expanding notions of holistic learning, researching, and living. Specifically, Pauline’s
interdisciplinary projects integrate multi-modal translations of data to catalyze
326
CONTRIBUTORS
creative innovation, generate novel understandings, and provoke new dialogues.

She co-edited Poetic Inquiry: Vibrant Voices in the Social Sciences with Monica
Prendergast and Carl Leggo in 2009.
Jonathan A. Smith is Professor of Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London

where he leads the interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) research group.
He developed IPA as an experiential qualitative approach in psychology and has
employed it to address a wide range of research questions.
Mary Lou Soutar-Hynes is a poet/educator. Poetic inquiry has become a source of

insights into her poetic practice, ways of knowing/making sense of experience and
the world. Her publications include Dark Water Songs (Inanna, 2013), Travelling
Light (Seraphim Editions, 2006) and The Fires of Naming (Seraphim Editions,
2001); work in journals and books such as Poetry Wales, Canadian Woman Studies
Journal, and The Art of Poetic Inquiry (Backalong, 2012).
Johanna Spiers is a qualitative health researcher who has used Interpretative

Phenomenological Analysis to explore issues as diverse as renal failure, adherence
to HIV medication and life with an ileostomy. She undertook her PhD at Birkbeck
College, University of London. She is also a performance poet.
Suzanne Thomas received her PhD from Ontario Institute for Studies in Education,
University of Toronto. She held SSHRC Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships at
OISE/UT and was a founding member of the Centre for Arts-Informed Research. She
is the author of Of earth and flesh and bones and breath: Landscapes of embodiment
and moments of re-enactment (2004) and currently Associate Professor, Faculty of
Education, University of Prince Edward Island, Canada.
Mary Weems is an author and social/cultural foundations scholar, who has written
and/or editor of thirteen books including Blackeyed: Plays and Monologues (Sense,
2015), and Writings of Healing and Resistance: Empathy and the Imagination-
Intellect (Peter Lang, 2012), and two full collections of poetry: An Unmistakable
Shade of Red and the Obama Chronicles (Bottom Dog Press, 2008) and For(e)
closure (Main Street Rag Press, 2012) finalists for Ohioana Book awards. Weems
was awarded the 2015 Cleveland Arts Prize for Literature.
Jazmin A. White, received her B.A (Critical Race Gender and Sexuality Studies),
Humboldt State University (2012) and M.A. (Forensic Psychology), from Holy
Names University (2013). She is a Behaviour Specialist for children with Autism
Spectrum Disorders, mental, emotional, and mild to severe physical disabilities. She
engages in developing writing with a critical lens and promoting advocacy within
the community.
327
CONTRIBUTORS
Sean Wiebe is an Associate Professor of education at the University of Prince

Edward Island, teaching courses in language and literacy, curriculum studies, and
global issues. He is currently working on a two-year project conducting research on
poets’ pedagogies and alternative forms of knowing.
lisa william-white has co-authored/authored chapters focused on Critical Race

Theory, Gender Studies, Multicultural Education, Autoethnography and Spoken Word
scholarship. A sampling of her poetic work appears in “Color Marks the Site/
Sight of Social Difference: Dysconscious Racism in the ‘Age of Obama’’’ in
Qualitative Inquiry (2011); and, “The Measure of a Black Life? A Poetic
Interpretation of Hope and Discontent,” in Qualitative Research in Education
(2013).
328

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Poetic Inquiry II – Seeing, Caring, Understanding

Poetic Inquiry II – Seeing, Caring, Understanding

ISBN: 978-94-6300-314-8 (paperback)

Published by: Sense Publishers,

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved © 2016 Sense Publishers

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted

Section 1: Seeing: Poetry as Inquiry

2. Lean in as the Story Is Told: Vestibular Sense, Poetic Image,

3. A/R/T(herapist)-ography: Examining the Weave 41

4. The Unpredictability of Bliss: A Grandfather’s Poetic Riffs 51

5. Joys and Dilemmas: Documenting, Disentangling, and

6. Embodied Poetics in Mother Poetry: Dialectics and Discourses

7. Resonance and Aesthetics: No Place That Does Not See You 99

Section 2: Understanding: Poetry through Inquiry

8. Poetics in a Capacious Landscape 107

9. White Skin, Brown Soul: A Poetic Autoethnography 135

10. Poems Written in Service of “Service” 141

11. Finding Grandma: Memories, Stories, Gifts 155

12. The Use of I Poems to Better Understand Complex Subjectivities 169

14. Geopoetics: An Opening of the World 191

Section 3: Caring: Poetry with and for Ethically Sensitive Practice

15. Waking up Following Breast Surgery: An Insight from the Beats,

18. Using Autobiographical Poetry as Data to Investigate the

19. Unnamed Moments, Transformation and the Doing and Making

20. Poetic Inquiry, Refrigerator Magnets and Kedrick? 273

21. Materializing the Punctum: A Poetic Study of the Washington

22. Research in Special Education: Poetic Data Anyone? 303

23. The Stories We Tell in America: State-Sponsored Violence

Frontispiece and section photographs by Pauline Sameshima.

ourselves’ through the enactment of technology. He puts to use two metaphors

1. SEEING WITH AN UNCONSCIOUS EYE

EMILY CARR – WOMAN, ARTIST, INDIVIDUAL & VISIONARY

THE EARLY YEARS

so deeply needed. Her stubborn and independent character challenged constantly

encounter – a profound numinous experience – a “feeling of the supersensual”

THE CREATIVE SURGE

Considered psychologically, when the artist creates, it is not the manifestation of

as the happening of the transcendent function can be affected by the person’s

THE MATURE YEARS

When psychological maturity comes – it may or may not be accompanied by years –

This is perhaps the way

There is a torn and splintered ridge

The cedars are good.

There are the fallen logs

How badly I wanted that nameless thing.

Sometimes the soul

The beach was sublime

I think perhaps this is the way in art.

2. LEAN IN AS THE STORY IS TOLD

Purpose: to understand methodology, where poetic inquiry may be understood

[And, specifically, we are here:]

[And, at last, we are here:]

There is a vestibular sense and a threshold of pain.

The hardest bone of the body holds this labyrinth

sometimes we cover our ears with our hands

There’s the risk:

Image 2. Pilot project3

If one wanted to analyze this: discourse of proximity

We all already know a bucket holds nothing of ocean

To see the world whole it is

Is there a window in the heart? The heart itself is a window.

Image 3. Pilot project

There is nothing like

3. A/R/T(herapist)-ography: Examining the Weave 41

4. The Unpredictability of Bliss: A Grandfather’s Poetic Riffs 51

7. Resonance and Aesthetics: No Place That Does Not See You 99

8. Poetics in a Capacious Landscape 107

9. White Skin, Brown Soul: A Poetic Autoethnography 135

10. Poems Written in Service of “Service” 141

11. Finding Grandma: Memories, Stories, Gifts 155

12. The Use of I Poems to Better Understand Complex Subjectivities 169

14. Geopoetics: An Opening of the World 191

20. Poetic Inquiry, Refrigerator Magnets and Kedrick? 273

22. Research in Special Education: Poetic Data Anyone? 303

Frankincense, copal: Grogram wrapped cedar box7

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Awe is the entrance