“…Love Me”: A Found Poem Exploring Black Women’s Romantic Relationships

Abstract

A found poem from a phenomenological exploration of Black women’s romantic relationship narratives and the author’s reflexive notes is presented. Drawing from Monica Prendergast’s vox autobiographia/autoethnographia and vox participare, the author considers the poem an autobiographia vox participare as it was sculpted from merging participants’ voices and the author’s personal reflections. In sculpting the poem, the author was attentive to craft and aesthetics but prioritized emotion and mending by selecting words and phrases to highlight the intensity of the experiences and sectioning the poem to represent BREATH-ing (i.e., balancing, reflection, energy, association, transparency, healing, and empowerment) as a healing process.

Tools My Mother Gave Me: Four Autoethnographic Poems

“…Like Gray (2019) andWallschlaeger, (2015), my purpose was to interrogate culture and make the familiar strange through poetry. Like many poet researchers (see Cutts, 2019;Glesne, 1997;West, 2009;Whitney, 2004), I also used voice and excerpts from the transcribed interview in the poetry.…”

Researching With Poetic and Artistic Dispositifs

“…Poetic logic is a resource that amplifies the understanding of the human experience. The contributions of the researchers who work on this methodology have opened a path for the use of poetry to be an important resource to unveil characteristics that enhance the experience and skills of the populations with which they work (Borti, 2019;Cutts, 2018;Faulkner, 2018;Lahman et al, 2019;Lail & Lahman, 2019;Machado, 2018;McKnight et al, 2017;Moore, 2020;Pelias, 2019;Prendergast, 2017Prendergast, , 2019Weems, 2017).…”