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

Abstract

Over the last ten years, Poetic Inquiry (PI) has proven itself as an emergent arts-based research methodology. It has gained greater acceptance in the larger community of qualitative research due in large part to the hundreds of published studies that employ the writing or analysis of poetry as a major focus of the research process (Finley, 2003; Prendergast, Leggo & Sameshima, 2009; Prendergast & Galvin, 2012). However, despite this greater acceptance and increase in studies found in the literature, there has not been a critical contemporary exploration of the history, theory and method of PI that could lend itself to defining what the method is, for those unfamiliar with it. This article provides a summary of PI as it exists in the literature today. This includes surveying the rhizomatic history of the method, exploring debates around who should or should not use the method and conversation around the current uses of PI in qualitative research.

Pulping as Poetic Inquiry: On Upcycling “Upset” to Reckon Anew With Rape Culture, Rejection, and (Re)Turning to Trauma Texts

“…Poetic inquiry is a methodology that I have been endeavoring to productively play with recently (see Moore, 2017, 2018a, 2018b, 2019), as I prepare for using it in my doctoral writing. An increasingly popular form of arts-based qualitative research due to its “capaciousness of expression” (James, 2017), poetic inquiry is understood and employed in a plethora of ways (see especially, Prendergast, 2009), appearing in diverse forms across many fields of scholarship, though it is especially engaged with in anthropology, education, health care, and sociology (Vincent, 2018). This methodology is “the use of poetry crafted from research endeavours, either before project analysis, as a project analysis, and/or poetry that is part of or that constitutes an entire research project” (Faulkner, 2017, p. 210).…”

“Institutionalized States of Information Abstinence”

“…Cut-up Poetic Unit feminist embodiment (Faulkner, 2016; and critical sexuality (Machado, 2016). I build on Vincent (2018) to view poetic inquiry as a means for providing embodied, material interactions with language and expression, which can provide a different way to know and document experiences. Poetic inquiry brings attention "to silence (or as a poet might say, to space) and also relies on emotional evocation as part of meaning making, while simultaneously exposing the fluidity and multiplicity of meaning" (Leavy, 2015, p. 66).…”

My Poetic Inquiry

“…Poetic Inquiry is concerned with and delves into ordinary individuals’ emotions, feelings, and lives and integrates original poetry into academic research. Seemingly, Poetic Inquiry is different from “traditional texts” (Butler-Kisber, 2012, p. 144), and the tradition she mentioned is “scientific” studies (Vincent, 2018, p. 51). Science can be “orthodox science” (Irwin, 1989, p. 1), “conventional science” (Irwin, 1989, p. 2), or pioneer science, and Poetic Inquiry is not “a way to avoid the stringent nature of scientific studies” (Vincent, 2018, p. 51).…”

“…Seemingly, Poetic Inquiry is different from “traditional texts” (Butler-Kisber, 2012, p. 144), and the tradition she mentioned is “scientific” studies (Vincent, 2018, p. 51). Science can be “orthodox science” (Irwin, 1989, p. 1), “conventional science” (Irwin, 1989, p. 2), or pioneer science, and Poetic Inquiry is not “a way to avoid the stringent nature of scientific studies” (Vincent, 2018, p. 51). It integrates scientific studies with the thousand-year-long philosophical and artistic tradition of scholarly research.…”