Abstract
In this autoethnographic essay, the author argues for the use of poetic inquiry as a feminist methodology by showing her use of poetry as research method during the past 13 years. Through examples of her poetic inquiry work, the author details how poetry as research offers Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies scholars a means of doing, showing, and teaching embodiment and reflexivity, a way to refuse the mind-body dialectic, a form of feminist ethnography, and a catalyst for social agitation and change. The author uses examples of her ethnographic poetry that critique middle-class White motherhood, address the problems of White feminism, and reflects the nuances of identity negotiation in research and personal life to show the breadth of topics and approaches of poetic inquiry as feminist research practice and feminist pedagogy.
Highlights
In this autoethnographic essay, the author argues for the use of poetic inquiry as a feminist methodology by showing her use of poetry as research method during the past 13 years
I detail my use of ethnographic poetry that critiques middle-class White motherhood, addresses the problems with White feminism, and reflects the nuances of identity negotiation in research and personal life to show the breadth of topics and approaches of poetic inquiry as feminist research practice
I use poetic inquiry in my feminist research and teaching to agitate for social change, to show embodiment and reflexivity, to collapse the false divide between body and mind, public and private, and as a feminist ethical practice
Summary
I write poetry because I am a bad (BAD!) social scientist (Faulkner 2009). I study personal relationships; I am most interested in what relationships feel like and sound like and smell like more than how they function as some kind of analytic variable to be deconstructed. Poetry lets me goodwill my secure cloak of citations, argue in verse that there is space for critical work and personal experience in the study of close relationships. “Writing poetry helped me recover from my training in graduate school and the numbing realities of academic writing It helped me reclaim creativity and its rhythms” As I shift, catch words with my recorder, camo cargo pants belie my worry with uniform Another participant claims I walk lesbianlike, confident stride and spiky cut hair, into her usual diner on 7th Avenue where we eat rice pudding like family. I longed to send the poem, Letter to the IRB from South Jersey, as a response to my Institutional Review Board instead of the typical template to ask for continued approval to talk with LGBTQ Jews about their identities and life. What really matters is this. (Faulkner 2005)
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