Abstract
One of the challenges we face in higher education is knowing who we are as individuals and as communities. Poetic inquiry (Prendergast, Leggo, & Sameshima, 2009) is a way into that knowing, a way of exploring our own identities and our relationships with each other. Poetic inquiry creates a space for evocative knowing. This research project, supported by the Acadia University Research Fund, included two graduate students as co-participants, one graduate student as co-investigator, and a principal investigator. Through writing, feedback, editing, and rewriting, we sought to create poetry that would show our identities as individuals and in relationships with our communities. We met for four three-hour sessions to write poetry, after reading the work of a poet / scholar. For our fifth session, we performed our poetry at a public reading that was advertised throughout the University community. Audience members were given a copy of our chapbook of poetry (Guiney Yallop, Naylor, Sharif, & Taylor, 2009), which included participant-selected pieces from our own work completed during, or between, the sessions.
Highlights
One of the challenges we face in higher education is knowing who we are as individuals and as communities
John: When I write a poem I’m doing research (Day & Guiney Yallop, 2009; Guiney Yallop, 2009, 2008, 2005) and when I’m doing research it usually results in a poem
We chose different sites throughout our university and its surrounding communities in which to write because, in addition to exploring our identities and our relationships with our communities, we wanted to explore the effect of place on our writing
Summary
We chose different sites throughout our university and its surrounding communities in which to write because, in addition to exploring our identities and our relationships with our communities, we wanted to explore the effect of place on our writing. Cornelia Hoogland’s (2005) award-winning chapbook, Second Marriage, was read in preparation for our second session where we talked and wrote about our theme of “relationships.” Our identities are connected to our relationships – to who we are as individuals within and without communities. In preparation for that session, we read Lorri’s recent collection of poetry (Neilsen Glenn, 2007), Combustion. We chose “possibilities” as the theme of our writing for session four. The writing and sharing of the poems offered a new way for me to understand the complexities of my personal and professional development as a counsellor. Shamim: When Nancy first suggested I be a participant in a research project on poetic inquiry, my insides laughed – Me? The fact that I have a poem in me is a discovery, like a new world.
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