Monica Prendergast

BIO
 
Dr. Monica Prendergast is conducting a SSHRC-funded postdoctoral research project into poetic inquiry practices from May 2006 to April 2008 at the Centre for Cross-Faculty Inquiry, under the supervision of Dr. Carl Leggo.  Dr. Prendergast completed both her Master's and Ph.D. programs at the University of Victoria in interdisciplinary studies [theatre and curriculum studies].  Her dissertation - "Audience in performance: A poetics and pedagogy of spectatorship"[2006] - is a compilation study featuring ten publications that have appeared in such journals as Journal of Aesthetic Education, Research in Drama Education, Alberta Journal of Educational Research and Youth Theatre Journal.  Her Master's thesis - "'Imaginative complicity': Audience education in professional theatre"- received the Distinguished Thesis award from the American Alliance for Theatre & Education [2003].  Dr. Prendergast currently teaches applied theatre and drama education at the University of Victoria.  She may be contacted at poetic.inquiry@yahoo.ca.
 
 
POSTDOCTORAL PROJECT INTO POETIC INQUIRY - PROGRAM OF WORK

TOPIC: To be called a poet in our culture, no matter if one is a cook, an engineer, a hairdresser or a brain surgeon, is to receive the highest form of praise (Eisner, 2004). It has always been the function of poetry to see both widely and wisely, to reveal the hidden, and – as Walt Whitman put it – to express the inexpressible. Given this, what can poetry offer to inquiry? Like some exemplary practices in qualitative research, poetry has powers to express understanding, to move and to enlighten. This postdoctoral research project builds on the methodological interests and contributions that I have made throughout the course of my graduate work in the field of arts-based research approaches, specifically in the sub-field of poetic forms of inquiry. My objective is to conduct a meta-analytical cross-disciplinary study on the methodological value of using poetry, as both art and research, in qualitative inquiry.

QUESTIONS: The apparent growing interest in and acceptance of poetic forms of inquiry leads to my questions here:

• What are the theoretical, philosophical and aesthetic roots of poetic inquiry?
• What types of investigation are best suited to engaging with poetic inquiry practices?
• What are the challenges in evaluating the quality, integrity and utility of poetic forms of inquiry?
• What is the potential for poetic forms of inquiry to succeed as creative writing and as research?

PROJECT: This project will consist of three main components. First, I will co-organize and host an international symposium on poetry in qualitative research practice, inviting both research poets and other poet/scholars to participate. This event will take place at the University of British Columbia in 2007.  Participants will be challenged to consider poetic inquiry practices in the light of questions raised by the symposium, the existing literature featuring poetic forms and the few academic articles that have been written on this topic. Second, I will document the papers, panels and roundtables that emerge from this gathering, taking up the questions offered above, and more. This data will then be analyzed from multidisciplinary perspectives that will include poetic transcription and representation together with more traditional critical and interpretive ways of working. Focus will be on highlighting exemplary poetic inquiry practices, as determined throughout the project, in collaborative and participatory approaches that facilitate rich dialogues amongst poets and poet-scholars. Exemplary poetic inquiry practices are those that succeed in cross-disciplinary contexts as creative writing (fine arts), literature (humanities) and qualitative research (social sciences). The third and final result of this research will be to write, present and publish a critical anthology of poetic forms of inquiry, to be completed by the spring of 2008.

OVERVIEW: The research questions, above, have already led me into gathering an annotated bibliography of poems published in peer-reviewed qualitative research journals, a bibliography that now numbers over one hundred citations, and is still growing. This is a multidisciplinary compilation, with contributions from education, anthropology, sociology, psychology, cultural studies, social work, nursing, health, even from more surprising places such as administration and urban planning. I have made five early findings in regard to poetic forms of inquiry, based on the annotated bibliography.

1. A large number of citations – almost half – are poems that are autobiographical in nature, intended to reveal the researchers stance, biases, and/or life experiences in relation to or as the topic of the inquiry.
2. Almost all entries are poems created from observational or participant data in studies focussed on understanding some form of affective experience: loss; grief; parenting; gender; illness; relationships; sense of place; pedagogical experience; cross-cultural experience; and reflective practice. Many items are mislabeled as poems; they could, more accurately and usefully, be described as dramatic monologues, drawing more on the representation of narrative voice and character found in the field of drama than the generally more metaphoric and symbolic voice of poetry.
3. Although the use of found poetry (poems crafted from pre-existing texts) is prevalent in the bibliography, that term from poetic practice in literature is rarely employed (Sullivan, 2000; Butler-Kisber, 2002).
4. Researchers engaging in poetic forms use a diverse number of terms to describe their methods: research poetry (Cannon Poindexter, 2002); data poetry (Commeyras, 2001); poetic representation (Richardson, L., 1994, 1997); poetic transcription and poetic narrative (Glesne, 1997); anthropological poetry (Brady, 2000); narrative poetry (Tedlock, 1983); aesthetic social science (Richardson, M., 1998); poetic, fictional narrative (Smith, P., 1999); ethno-poem (Smith, W., 2002); transcript poems (Santoro & Kamler, 2001); map-poems (Hurren, 1998); poetic condensation of oral narratives (Öhlen, 2003); and fieldnote poems (Cahnmann, 2003).

Adding to this diversity is the term I have created, ekphrastic inquiry, that has been very useful in my own research poetry-writing practice. Ekphrasis is the long historic practice in literature of poetic writing about art, most commonly about visual art. My graduate research and data on understanding audiences' perceptions and experiences of live performance through audience education are often rendered in poetic form. I discovered this methodological move was necessary in order, fully and authentically, to articulate my inquiry; I describe it as falling into poetry. However, ekphrastic inquiry may also prove useful for others who are interested in arts-based inquiry into arts-based topics, providing a desirable consonance of method and topic.

RESULTS: The results of this study will offer a comprehensive survey of current poetic inquiry practice, along with defining criteria for the successful use of this approach, to be completed in 2008. The potential audience for the study is broad and includes qualitative researchers and social scientists of all disciplines. Its findings, and its poetry, will reach those who are interested in challenging and expanding their definition of what constitutes arts-based inquiry practice, and those who may become new audiences for more aesthetic forms of qualitative research.

CONCLUSION: This proposed study will enhance the ongoing multidisciplinary conversation about the phenomenon of arts-based inquiry on a national and international level. Poetic inquiry in qualitative research practice: A critical study will also provide an accurate reflection of the facility of arts-based inquiry, as demonstrated in poetic forms, to communicate research in cognitive and aesthetic domains, both as knowledge and as art.

REFERENCES

Brady, I. (2000). Three Jaguar/Mayan intertexts: Poetry and prose fiction. Qualitative Inquiry, 6(1), 58-64.

Butler-Kisber, L. (2002) Artful portrayals in qualitative inquiry: The road to found poetry and beyond. The Alberta Journal of Educational Research, XLVIII(3), pp. 229-239.

Cahnmann, M. (2003). The craft, practice, and possibility of poetry in educational research. Educational Researcher, 32(3), 29-36.

Commeyras, M. & Montsi, M. (2000). What if I woke up as the other sex? Batswana youth perspectives on gender. Gender & Education, 12(3), 327-347.

Cannon Poindexter, C. (2002). Research as poetry: A couple experiences HIV. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(6), 707-714.

Eisner, E. (2004). What can education learn from the arts about the practice of education? International Journal of Education and the Arts, 5(4),1-12. Available at: http://ijea.asu.edu/v5n4/

Glesne, C. (1997). That rare feeling: Re-presenting research through poetic transcription. Qualitative Inquiry, 3(2), 202-221.

Hurren, W. (1998). Living with/in the lines: Poetic possibilities for world writing. Gender, Place and Culture, 5(3), 301-304.

Irwin, R.L. & de Cosson, A. (Eds.). (2004). A/r/tography: Rendering self through arts-based living inquiry. Vancouver: Pacific Educational Press.

Leggo, C. (2004a). Tangled lines: On autobiography and poetic knowing. In A. L. Cole, L. Neilsen, J.G. Knowles & T.C. Luciani(Eds.), Provoked by art: Theorizing arts-informed research (pp. 18-35). Halifax: Backalong Books.

_______. (2004b). The poet’s corpus: Nine speculations. JCT: Journal of Curriculum Theorizing. 20(2), 65-85.

_______. (2004c). The curriculum of joy: Six poetic ruminations. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 2(2), 27-42.

_______. (2003). Backyard quest(ion)s written in stone and water: Alchemic possibilities in the space of the heart. In E. Hasebe-Ludt & W. Hurren (Eds.), Curriculum Intertext: Place/Language/Pedagogy (pp. 131-148). New York: Peter Lang.

Öhlen, J. (2003). Evocation of meaning through poetic condensation of narratives in empirical phenomenological inquiry into human suffering. Qualitative Health Research, 13(4), 557-566.

Prendergast, M. (2006). Audience in performance: A poetics and pedagogy of spectatorship. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Victoria, BC.

____________. (2001). "Imaginative complicity": Audience education in professional theatre. Unpublished Master's thesis, University of Victoria, BC.

Richardson, L. (1997). Fields of play: Constructing an academic life. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

___________. (1994). Nine poems. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 23(1), pp. 3-13.

Richardson, M. (1998). Poetics in the field and on the page. Qualitative Inquiry, 4(4), pp. 451-462.

Santoro, N. & Kamler, B. (2001). Teachers talking difference: Teacher education and the poetics of anti-racism. Teaching Education, 12(2), 191-212.

Smith, P. (1999). Food Truck's party hat. Qualitative Inquiry, 5(2), 244-261.

Smith, W. (2002). Ethno-poetry notes. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 15(4), 461-467.

Sullivan, A.M. (2000). The necessity of art: Three found poems from John Dewey's Art as Experience. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. 13(3), 325-327.

Tedlock, D. (1983). The spoken word and the work of interpretation. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press.