The sound of violets: the ethnographic potency of poetry?

Abstract

This paper takes the form of a dialogue between the two authors, and is in two halves, the first half discursive and propositional, and the second half exemplifying the rhetorical, epistemological and metaphysical affordances of poetry in critically scrutinising the rhetoric, epistemology and metaphysics of educational management discourse.Phipps and Saunders explore, through ideas and poems, how poetry can interrupt and/or illuminate dominant values in education and in educational research methods, such as:• alternatives to the military metaphors -targets, strategies and the like -that dominate the soundscape of education;• the kinds and qualities of the cognitive and feeling spaces that might be opened up by the shifting of methodological boundaries;• the considerable work done in ethnography on the use of the poetic: anthropologists have long used poetry as a medium for expressing their sense of empathic connection to their field and their subjects, particularly in considering the creativity and meaning-making that characterise all human societies in different ways;• the particular rhetorical affordances of poetry, as a discipline, as a practice, as an art, as patterned breath; its capacity to shift phonemic, and therewith methodological, authority; its offering of redress to linear and reductive attempts at scripting social life, as always already given and without alternative.

Preparing a supervision model for the aftermath of Grenfell: an auto-ethnographic inquiry of relationship-based supervision

“…It is unconventional to separate voices in an academic paper, although not without precedent (Phipps & Saunders, 2009). Our choice in presenting the paper in this format mirrored the choice we made in the creation of the supervision model: we committed to a relational supervision approach where meaning was co-constructed with the aim of generating greater understanding of self, other, place, and practices.…”

The use of poetry in a spiral-patterned methodology for research about love in early childhood

“…This 'spiral-patterned' research process, with distinct places and times for "dwelling" (Phipps andSaunders, 2009, p.361, Barone, 2001, p.25) along the way, I suggest, is in tune with this narrative and poetic inquiry. Individual stories were at the heart of this research process.…”

“…Additionally, poetry allowed me a means through which to present the data in a different way to stimulate renewed attention on the topic (Winterson, 1996, Phipps and Saunders, 2009, Lapum et al 2011. Lapum, Ruttonsha, Chursh, Yau and David (2011) used poetry to "disrupt the way [people] see, perceive, and understand … the world around…”

Drawing Breath: Creative elements and their exile from higher education

“…with whoever or whatever has colonized their imaginations. They are very careful with 'Empire's' language and tackle the dominant, failing script as they experience it from their places of pain, with words of their own, with old words, odd words, with poetic words (Phipps and Saunders, 2009). Exiles engage in elemental memories.…”