A pedagogy of liminality: towards visual poetry as a practice in decolonising creative writing pedagogy

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores what we perceive as a lack of visual poetry studies in creative writing classrooms, largely due to its characteristic incompatibility to familiar literary devices, analytical tools, and ways of reading. While our inquiry initially sought to provide an approachable visual poetry curriculum for creative writing teachers, our doing so prompted us towards theoretical frameworks that take seriously subject matter oft-misunderstood as unfit for traditional educational practices, turning to how decolonial theorising might inform our pedagogy. From there, our priorities stayed rooted in decolonising pedagogy, working to de-center traditional forms of literary knowledge and support lesser-known, borderless, ‘in-between’ spaces – spaces effectively considered in visual poetry’s liminality between visual art and written word. Working to equip ourselves with new poetic conceptions of language and image, we aim to consider visual poetry in a way that renders it more approachable and theoretically considered for the higher education classroom setting.