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.