Found Poetry

Abstract

This theoretical position article inquires into poetic methodologies in literacy research and argues for the inclusion of poetry in social science research writing. The unconventional use of poetry in research writing challenges the traditionally accepted role prose plays in academic writing. Research poetry is written from and about research subjects and data; more specifically, research found poetry is written from the words of study participants. I identify as a research poet. In particular, I am a writer of found poetry composed from my qualitative research data. The data presented in this article are from a larger study where I investigated what happened when prospective teachers wrote found poetry using young adult literature. I used the words of my study participants to write found data poems in order to analyze and represent data, seeking congruence across multiple forms of data analysis and representation. Crafting poetry from qualitative data holds implications for research methodologies. Research poetry provides academic poets with an alternative means for both analyzing and representing qualitative data. As well, research poetry may impact how scholarly texts are received by research audiences. Although research poetry holds promise for qualitative researchers, the inclusion of poetry in scholarly writing not without risk; the choice to include poetry is contested. Creating space for the poetic arts within the academy confronts conventionally accepted modes of research writing and provides access to the creative and imaginative discourse of poetry.

Experiences of grief-bereavement after a medically assisted death in Canada: Bringing death to life

“…We then chose to create a condensed composite story of two or three narratives that held similarities. To further maintain a depth of immersion in the data, we drew on participants' words to generate "found poetry" (Patrick, 2016). These two narrative techniques offered our team a reflexive and creative means to embrace our methodology fully.…”

Composing Sexuality in the Midst of Adolescent Cancer

“…In this article, participants’ words are presented as found poetry (Butler-Kisber, 2002) in italicized text. Found poetry captures and distils important aspects of experience (Lahman & Richard, 2014) and is used in the narrative accounts for effect, to evoke participants’ voices (Battacharya, 2007) as well as key aspects and moments of participants’ stories (Patrick, 2016; Sjollema, Hordyk, Walsh, Hanley, & Ives, 2012) within the constraints of a manuscript word limit. To keep their voices central to the discussion, participants’ voices are italicized and justified to the right of the page, in the narrative threads section.…”

Is There a Definition? Ruminating on Poetic Inquiry, Strawberries and the Continued Growth of the Field

“…Roberts, Brasel and Crawford (2014) also discussed the benefits of using formula poems when working with in-service and pre-service teachers to help them reflect on their professional experiences as well as to identify struggles that students may have with test and assignment anxiety. Patrick's (2016) study also revealed a need for a space in qualitative educational research for poetry, as the findings indicated that found poetry written by teachers allowed them to refine information and seek greater scholarship around what can be done with poetic data. Similarly, Dobson (2012) argued for additional interactions through poetry in education suggesting that, "as an artefact, the poem offers valuable insights regarding the process of awakening in consciousness and of possibilities for the reinvigoration of education, from the Latin, educo, educare, to draw forth from within" (p. 132).…”