Poetry as research: Advancing scholarship and the development of poetry therapy as a profession

Abstract

To be effective and to achieve legitimization, each profession must develop its own body of knowledge. Within a social context characterized by the increasing influence of for-profit managed care corporations and the expanded influenced of the medical model, many helping professions have turned to logical positivism as a model for knowledge acquisition. Yet, the methods associated with this epistemological position may not be consonant with the values and knowledge needs of poetry therapy as a profession. Fortunately, advances in expressive arts research has lead to the development of methods congruent with the aims and needs of the burgeoning profession. The research poem is examined as one potential vehicle through which to improve the research agenda of poetry therapy.

The Creation of Fiction to Share Other Truths and Different Viewpoints: A Creative Journey and an Interpretive Process

“…Some have claimed that the omission of details is an effective method of analysis, ensuring that the reader is engaged with what is presented and then works with their imagination (Rinehart, 1998) with many arguing that poetry has a great capacity to penetrate experience more deeply than prose (Furman, 2006a(Furman, , 2006bFurman et al, 2006;Glesne, 1997;Poindexter, 2002;Richardson, 1994). The compression of a poem makes the data more consumable, and readable, than longer prose narratives, enabling the reader to explore the currency and relevance of the poem to their life (Furman, 2006a(Furman, , 2006b.…”

“…Poetic forms are acknowledged to have different effects on data re-presentation, with the increasingly compressed outcomes of some forms of poetry (see Clarke et al, 2005;Furman, 2006b, p. 565) ensuring that researchers capture the essence of their clients' words and meaning more clearly and succinctly (Clarke et al, 2005;Furman, 2006aFurman, , 2006bFurman, Lietz, & Langer, 2006). Some have claimed that the omission of details is an effective method of analysis, ensuring that the reader is engaged with what is presented and then works with their imagination (Rinehart, 1998) with many arguing that poetry has a great capacity to penetrate experience more deeply than prose (Furman, 2006a(Furman, , 2006bFurman et al, 2006;Glesne, 1997;Poindexter, 2002;Richardson, 1994). The compression of a poem makes the data more consumable, and readable, than longer prose narratives, enabling the reader to explore the currency and relevance of the poem to their life (Furman, 2006a(Furman, , 2006b.…”

“…Some have claimed that the omission of details is an effective method of analysis, ensuring that the reader is engaged with what is presented and then works with their imagination (Rinehart, 1998) with many arguing that poetry has a great capacity to penetrate experience more deeply than prose (Furman, 2006a(Furman, , 2006bFurman et al, 2006;Glesne, 1997;Poindexter, 2002;Richardson, 1994). The compression of a poem makes the data more consumable, and readable, than longer prose narratives, enabling the reader to explore the currency and relevance of the poem to their life (Furman, 2006a(Furman, , 2006b. Researchers use poetry as a means of data representation (Poindexter, 2002), with some beginning, as I did here, with data gathered in the traditional qualitative way, before forming poems from the words of respondents (Clarke et al, 2005;Furman, 2006aFurman, , 2006bGlesne, 1997;Poindexter, 2002).…”

Mexican men and their fathers: Analyzing and representing data through the research poem

“…In a previously published article in this journal (Furman, 2006a), the first author explored the uses of poetry as an important vehicle of social research. The author asserted that for the profession of poetry therapy to advance, it must not only develop its own knowledge base, but methods that are congruent with its core values and aims.…”

Workplace Bullying as Workplace Corruption

“…Such work has included varied forms of fiction and nonfiction techniques, undertaken with a view of capturing and highlighting various aspects of individual, social, and organizational experience. Some have used poetic, artistic, and narrative devices (see Furman, 2006aFurman, , 2006bGlesne, 1997;Vickers, 2006); others have analyzed current works of fiction (Czarniawska, 2006(Czarniawska, , 2008; still others have devised fictional, semifictional, or creative nonfictional accounts of the goings on in a myriad of social and organizational contexts (Clarke, Febbraro, Hatzipantelis, & Nelson, 2005;Finley & Knowles, 1995;Gutkind, 2009;Ketelle, 2004;Rolfe, 2002;Spindler, 2008;Vallant, 2005;Vickers, 2010Vickers, , 2011. Fiction and fiction-writing techniques have long been used in scholarly work to shine a light on lives and events (Czarniawska, 2006(Czarniawska, , 2008Rhodes & Brown, 2005), in autoethnographic accounts (Ellis & Bochner, 2003), as well as through creative nonfiction or semifiction (Caulley, 2008;Gutkind, 2009;Ketelle, 2004;Vallant, 2005;Whiteman & Phillips, 2006), such as that presented here.…”