5. Exploring Identities Through Poetic Inquiry: Heartful Journeys Into Tangled Places of Complicated Truths and Desires

Abstract

One of the challenges we face in higher education is knowing who we are as individuals and as communities. Poetic inquiry (Prendergast, Leggo, & Sameshima, 2009) is a way into that knowing, a way of exploring our own identities and our relationships with each other. Poetic inquiry creates a space for evocative knowing. This research project, supported by the Acadia University Research Fund, included two graduate students as co-participants, one graduate student as co-investigator, and a principal investigator. Through writing, feedback, editing, and rewriting, we sought to create poetry that would show our identities as individuals and in relationships with our communities. We met for four three-hour sessions to write poetry, after reading the work of a poet / scholar. For our fifth session, we performed our poetry at a public reading that was advertised throughout the University community. Audience members were given a copy of our chapbook of poetry (Guiney Yallop, Naylor, Sharif, & Taylor, 2009), which included participant-selected pieces from our own work completed during, or between, the sessions.