Lyrical Inquiry and Poetic Inquiry: My Kind of Artistic Representation!

June 2007: A group of writers and I did a MAPW (Masters in Professional Writing) workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. My original plan was to work on my draft of my middle grades fantasy novel, which I did. However, the scenes of the beach and Old San Juan encouraged me to return into one of my own loves, poetry. I hadn't written poetry in a long time. A couple of workshop experiences had discouraged me, and my early experiences of secondary teaching left me with limited time and creative energy. Yet Dr. Elledge and my classmates were so supportive of my gifts, and many of my friends have told me that I have a poet's heart and soul. So I began to write it again. I am still working on my technique, but I love how a poem can say in few words what some accounts cannot say in pages. Above is a picture of an experience that remains engrained in my memory, a poetry reading my classmates and I went to in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. There, we connected with our fellow creative souls, and the boundaries of language and ethnicity that sometimes exist seemed to dissipate.  Now, as I strive to balance my creative writing with my scholarship, I think of how I might bring my poetry into my methodology and research.

Shields, S. (2014). Like climbing Jacob's ladder: An arts-based exploration of the comprehensive exam process. Arts & Humanities in Higher Education, 0(0), 1-22.

Oh, how I feel this article was written for me. I am in the second year of my doctoral studies, meaning that I am finishing up the bulk of my coursework this semester.  Therefore, I know the cloud of comprehensive exams is about to float over my head. I absolutely love to research and to write, but I also love to interact with people. People like to categorize themselves as introverts and extroverts, but I, my friends, am a true ambivert. I loved working with middle school students, but I went home exhausted every day. Tonight, as I write amidst an ice rainstorm outside, I am glad I went to breakfast with a good friend, so as to ensure my dose of social interaction today. As someone who is currently single and lives alone, minus my cat TJ, the comprehensive exam period is one that causes me great trepidation. I will take a class this fall and hopefully stay involved with my department's journal. However, I know many hours of solitude are forthcoming.

Yet this article gave me hope. In addition to being around friends and family who are near and dear to me, another major source of energy for me is creating. Writing my comprehensive exam essays will be a creation process, but I need some additional art to fuel my soul. Therefore, as Shields (2014) write poems and drew during her comps process, I plan to blog, write poems, and write memoir essays. These were the acts that kept me sane during my sometimes roller coaster ride, sometimes glorious years of teaching public school, along with the community of writers in my MAPW classes. My job was unpredictable, but my friends were steady. I'm sure the comps process, for me, will involve me hitting my head against the table a few times. Some of my friends who know me well have already promised to take me out for an occasional glass of wine to soothe my anxiety. Hopefully, my outside of comps writing can do the same for me. And who knows, perhaps I, like Shields, can find a way to marry my comps process with poetic analysis.

In her article, Shields (2014) explains that lyrical inquiry refers to both "the process of writing and the outcome of the writing process" (p.10 )  As a research tool, lyrical inquiry can both explore and represent data in both an aesthetic and personal way and challenges the typical fact versus fiction relationship. Patricial Leavy, an arts-based researcher, has done a lot of work in the area of lyrical inquiry, which I hope to further explore. Shields (2014) used poetry and drawing as escapism from her comps writing, but also as a way of processing the experience. She was able to use metaphor and story to better express her writing process. As related to lyrical inquiry, poetic inquiry allows a writer to analyze his or her poetic technique and how it best expresses an experience. It is a way of representing data that is more accessible to people, including ethnopoetic methodologies. Similarly, textu(r)al inquiry, with roots in journal writing and autoethnography, allows people to build "texture and written sculpture out of text" (Shields, 2014, p. 10).

My hope is that I can use lyrical inquiry and poetic inquiry to analyze the poems I write during comps and otherwise to see what they say not only about me as a person, but also about me as a creator and as a scholar. Hopefully, over time, I can also learn to use poetry, prose poems, and memoir to represent my data.  

A/r/tography: When Teacher, Researcher, and Artist Roles Combine

France, 2009: I took a travel writing class with instructor Catherine Watson and peer Susan Biel Kerly, along with several art students from Brown University. We spent a week on an artist's colony in the Douaarnenez, France, followed by a few days in Paris. I got to experience the Latin Quarter, Shakespeare and Company, the Impressionist museum, and a region of France that inspired impressionistic paintings, all well before I turned 30. I count myself lucky. That summer was the first time I, without knowing it, dappled with elements of a/r/tography, which I would later read about much later. Additonally, I turned some of the travel experiences I had during college and in my earlier twenties into art. Photographs and old journal entries served as my guides, along with pieces of my memory and snippets of conversations remembered. Journal entries and photographs can turn experiences into art, facts into arts-based research, and blur the line between fact and fiction, Truth and truth.

Irwin, R. & Springgay, S. (2008). Artography as practice-based research. Arts-based research in education: Foundations for practice. Eds. Melisa Cahnman-Taylor & Richard Siegesmund. New York: Routledge. 

Bickel, B. (2008). Who will read this body? An a/r/tographic statement.  Arts-based research in education: Foundations for practice. Eds. Melisa Cahnman-Taylor & Richard Siegesmund. New York: Routledge. 

The roles of teacher, artist, and researcher combine in this methodology, which is why I am drawn to it. These chapters explain that embodiment and critical hermeneutics both influence a/r/tography, along with the desire to use photographs and various forms writing to tell stories. Data collection occurs, as in any form of qualitative research, through such means as photographs, journal entries, artifacts, and interviews. Such artistic forms as music, poetry, student journal entries, painting, and narratives can represent the data. When I first started writing creative nonfiction, I relied on past diary entries and photographs to help me tell my story. The same can be done through a/r/tographic research.  

Many people think of a/r/tographers as practitioners, as they use their arts-based research to teach people about voices and accounts that otherwise might remain unheard. Additionally, a/r/tography can be emancipatory, particularly when it encourages women to escape patriarchal definitions of female roles. It also allows for alternative representations of time, as "artists, poets, performance artists, novelists, and musicians perceive time and space differently. They often speak of time as pausing, enduring, changing interrupting, and pacing, and speak of space as openness, fragmented, endless, confined, and connected. Artists see time and space as conditions for living, conditions for engaging with the world through inquiry" (Irwin & Springgay, 2008, p. 114). Metaphor plays a strong role in such inquiry, along with community. An artist's work is related to interaction with others, which is why it is important to dialogue about our work with each other and with the public community. A/r/tographers should be people who are interested in inquiry and in discussion of how we can continue to move artistic and research fields forward.  

A/r/tography, to me, has roots in hermeneutics, semiotics, and ethnography, all of which I am learning about in my Qualitative Research Traditions course. The added element is the aspect of musical, poetic, creative, or visual expression.  To me, an ideal way of putting this methodology into practice would be to use photographs and interviews combined to tell of a life-changing study abroad experience through prose poems and memoirs.  Through doing so, I would hope to become a greater advocate for abroad travel in a world where only about 10 percent of people have a passport and a proponent of scholastic study abroad programs, particularly for artistic students.   

The Guerrilla Girls

Last night, I was fortunate enough to go to the following event at the Georgia Museum of Art, as announced on the Guerrilla Girls Facebook Page:
Guerrilla Girl Frida Kahlo and curator Neysa Page-Lieberman will be talking about the exhibition "Not Ready To Make Nice" at the Georgia Museum of Art tomorrow at 5:30pm. http://georgiamuseum.org/…/panel-discussion-guer…/2015/02/19

The Guerrilla Girls first came to being in 1985, around the time I was first starting school. Therefore, I knew very little about them or their work until the event last night. As a feminist and as a female writer, I was very inspired both both the exhibit and by way "Frida Kahlo" and Neysa Page-Lieberman had to say. I was disappointed, although not surprised, to hear that most of the major galleries in the world have very few, if any, exhibits that feature women and/or people of color. Also, only four women have been nominated for the Best Director Oscars award, and the only woman to ever win it has been Kathryn Bigelow, in 2009, for The Hurt Locker.

It took until 2009 for a woman to win the award for Best Director? Really? Perhaps we haven't progressed as much as I thought we had. It made me even more happy that I made the decision to become a female academic rather than fitting society's ideas of what women should do in this still very clearly patriarchal society.  Also, the exhibit included the statistic that 92-93% of writing awards have gone to men. Women may dominate programs related to theater, art, and writing, but we don't seem to get the leadership roles or win the awards. Clearly, something is wrong here.  I am both angry and even more determined to get recognition for my writing. Also, as my classmates and I discussed last night after the event, we female artists need to support each other rather than tearing each other down.  I think that's part of what the Guerrilla Girls is about.

The Guerrilla Girls wear guerrilla masks. This is, in part, to show their solidarity and their assertiveness in a world in which women who want to shine in art and other careers must be assertive. Also, I believe this mask is symbolic of the fact that women sometimes still feel silenced. For these women to speak up with criticisms of pop culture and art, they must wear masks, or they could risk losing their day jobs and their art gigs. Would this possibility be as real if they were men? I still feel that if a man speaks up, he's assertive, but if a woman speaks up, she's a bitch. When is this going to change?

The art exhibit and the interview with Frida Kahlo were both powerful and personal ways to share information and to make the world more aware of a phenomenal group of women. To me, this event was an effective example of public scholarship. Research still occurred, yet it was depicted in the form of art and of an on-stage interview. I do hope that some of my scholarship can be read, understood, and appreciated by a public audience.

Ethnodrama and Ethnotheatre: Parallels to my Own Work

Saldana, J. (2003). Dramatizing data: A primer. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(2), 218-236.

I found this article intriguing, and I agree with the author that all playwrights (and perhaps even all writers) are ethnographers to a degree. We study people's interactions and cultures and use these observations to tell our stories. Very much like some fiction and creative nonfiction stories, "theatre's primary goal is neither to 'educate' nor to 'enlighten.' Theatre's primary goal is to entertain" (p. 220). For my own artistic endeavors, creative writing, I strive to find a balance between entertaining people and keeping their interest, yet also enlightening them and helping them to consider their perceptions of the world. Good art, like good scholarship, should encourage people to think and to question. Otherwise, what is the point? I enjoy being entertained, and I think there is a place for writing that is purely self-reflective or entertaining. However, writing that is of a higher quality, and meant for an audience, should also encourage others to reflect.  As I have aspirations to do ethnographic research at some point in my academic work, I hope these endeavors will effectively combine my research skills and my ability to narrate stories.

Saldana (2002) notes Jean Luc Godard's plotting idea: "A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end--but not necessarily in that order" (p. 220). To construct a great piece of writing or ScholArtistry, one should consider where the story truly begins and ends and what should be shared first. As I re-think how to turn some of my teaching pieces into true works of art, I'm thinking that the "beginning" of my story is at a dance that I once supervised, and where I will introduce the students, who are actually microcosms and composites of students I taught over the years. Although this is how I envision the beginning of my memoir in progress, I do not see myself working on the stories in chronological order. As Misha says, I need to work on small pieces at a time and make them of high literary quality, thinking about characterization, dialogue, and setting in addition to the ethnographic details of place. One advantage of memoir is that I can veil some of the factual details in order to protect people's identities.

Just as Nilaja Smith's theater work of student impressions/monologues is based on several years of observations and interactions, so will be my own prose poems and short memoirs about my years as a middle school teacher.  Her youtube video gave me ideas on how to approach my own work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbx5MNj0a-A

Urban Bushwomen Performance

Urban Bushwomen at the UGA Fine Arts Center, Friday, January 23rd, 2015 at 8:00 p.m.

My classmates and I enjoyed this dance performance by the Urban Bushwomen, and I'm glad Dr. Cahnmann-Taylor gave us an opportunity to attend. Our class accompanied her undergraduate group, some other graduate students, and her family to dinner and then to the performance. The whole evening felt like a community experience, and it was nice to talk about the event with other people who are passionate about the arts and arts-based research.

Some of the choreographic and narrative techniques the artistic director used reminded me of the arts-based research and the memoirs I have read in the past, both for Dr. Cahnmann Taylor's LLED/QUAL 8590 class and Dr. Niemann's Creative Nonfiction class at KSU. Jawole Willa Jo Zollar narrated her family's story of migration from Texas to Kansas City as the dancers moved to the rhythm of her words. She said her story was a combination of facts, memories, and legends. All of her story was true, but not all of it was factual, or capital "T" truth as we discuss in my Qualitative Research 8400 class. What I love about memoir stories and performances is that truth doesn't always have to be literal, but it is still important to learn of people's experiences, especially those who have been oppressed or marginalized. In a way, I think Jawole's story was both narrative and ethnographic, as she was telling the history of her family and of the cities in which they lived. Some of her memories were painful, yet she and the dancers very skillfully turned painful experiences into art.

Ethnography and narrative inquiry use a combination of fact, memory, and personal anecdotes to tell stories. We hear the truth from one person's lens, yet it is an important truth to understand to give us access to stories that might otherwise be untold. Although many of the resulting articles are written as more traditional research articles, they serve some of the same purposes of memoirs, the dance performance described above, and other artistic representations of people and culture. Through the understanding of mutual purpose, I believe more people will become even more open to artistic methodologies in qualitative research.

Thoughts on Ruth Behar, My Fellow Poetic Soul

Behar, R. Between poetry and anthropology: Searching for languages of home. Arts-based research in education: Foundations for practice. Eds. Melisa Cahnman-Taylor & Richard Siegesmund. New York: Routledge.

As I read this chapter for my Arts-Based Inquiry course, I found myself getting choked up and emotional at times. I don't always feel that way when reading texts for my class, but Behar's account was so beautifully composed and personal that I felt emotionally invested. Also, I saw parallels between her life and mine. Like her, I feel that I have a poetic soul, but was sometimes discouraged from pursuing this passion.  Also, she and I both have academic careers that we love, yet also want to express some of our scholarship creatively.

I was inspired by Behar's use of poetry to depict scholarly accounts of her anthropology career, as I too hope to blend my research with my creative endeavors. I believe ethnography is a methodology very conducive to poetry writing, along with autoethnography. Since ethnography has roots in both anthropology and creative writing, a skilled writer can use poetry to tell the story of a community's lifestyle or a researcher's individual journey. I'm learning that my field of language and literacy blends well with anthropology and other cultural fields of study.

A poet is one who explores both the inner and outer world.  As scholars, we sometimes feel pressure to utilize traditional research and essay writing practices. While there is a time and a place for such choices, it is also important to stay in touch with our creative side. As Behar wrote, "you will reach a point, as I did, where there is no choice but to work from your poetic self" (p. 67). In reality, I have been at that point all along. When I write, I am in touch with my poetic soul, whether I am writing a poem or a content analysis essay.  Children's literature, to me, is a form of high art worth of study and reflection, as is poetry.  I'm glad that my doctoral studies can be multi-faceted. Now, I realize I do not have to separate my poetic self from my scholarly self.

I used to think my creative writing was impractical and that it was not going to help me progress in life. However, through the support of my Ph.D. professors, I realize that my creative writing and my academic writing aren't mutually exclusive. In the past, I have told my professors that I feel more confident in my academic writing than my creative writing. Bob Fecho and JoBeth Allen have both asked me why I separate the two. It is a valid question. We are all involved with the National Writing Project, so we believe in the power of narrative writing, that people who teach writing should write themselves, and that all genres of writing have value. It's been nice to work with people who have that values system. Misha Cahnman-Taylor is a "ScholArtist" herself and a poet, so she understands my creative writing passion.  I do feel more confident in my prose than in my poetry, but I still want to write poetry. Plus, my poetic language comes through in some of my prose pieces.

Ruth Behar, like me, has a strong teacher identity to accompany her writer identity. In this chapter, she notes, "I am always afraid that I will break the transparent butterfly wings of my students, who grow younger and more delicate...with every passing year. The kind of teacher I am: too nice, because I'm absolutely terrified of causing harm. I know all too well, from my own life, that we are susceptible as students to the words of our teachers. So as teachers we need to be careful about our words. Nothing we say can be taken for granted" (p. 67). Here, she definitely expresses thoughts and feelings about teaching that have always been hard for me to articulate. I too struggle to find that line between giving constructive criticism and building my students up, discipline and praise, honesty versus kindness. Yet I want students to grow wings so they too can become butterflies.  I too know that actions might speak louder than words, but words have the power to heal or hurt a fellow human.  I am passionate about teaching, but I understand the fears she expresses. I am learning to be more careful with my words in all areas of my life.

Behar fascinates me, as a teacher, scholar, and writer.  Her interest in Latin@ Jewish communities intrigues me, and I want to read more of her work. My sister and my brother-in-law are Jewish, as will be their future children. For the past few years, I've wanted to learn more about Jewish culture to connect to this side of my family. I am sure Behar writes about all sides of her ethnic identity beautifully, just as she expressed her professional identity so well in this book chapter.

Now, I plan to write more poetry, even if it is sketches in my journal that I carry in my book bag every day.  I too need to stay in touch with my poetic soul.