Poetic Inquiry

I believe that poetry is a powerful form of communication, that it can open a direct line between information (intellectual, emotional, spiritual) and the reader. With such strong and deep potential to connect people with information, it is not surprising that arts based researchers would use poetry to both collect data and represent data.  However, there is a huge range of the genres of poetry.  In addition, not all researchers are adequate poets.  In their paper, (Re)Forming Research Poetry,  Lahman et al address these possible pitfalls in a clear way.  They collect the data (interviews) and then try four different methods of presentation – traditional prose article, free form poetry, elegy and haiku.  What I found really interesting in this work, was that each type of poem revealed both meaning within the research as well as limitations of the poetic form to deliver the meaning.  One limitation is that the audience may not be comfortable with the poetic form.  They state, “While we would agree and believe that poetry might make research more accessible to an audience, we do not feel this is a given (p. 894).  They conclude by saying that, “researchers should use caution in wholeheartedly embracing any one form at the expense of degradation of other forms, including traditional work” (p 894). 

As I move through trying to understand arts based research, I find my focus is on the process of gathering and presenting the data. My graduate work is centered on how artists and scientists share common ground when it comes to approaching a problem:  there is curiosity, exploration, unknowns and discoveries.  Poetic inquiry, as an arts based research method, offers me a  way to blend these approaches to problem solving in a way that can reach across and within these two communities.  My challenge will be creating a poem that can stand alone.