Homophobic Graffiti on the Portable Wall

• In Event: What Is a Poem Good For? The Possibilities of Poetic Inquiry Within Educational Research

Abstract

John J. Guiney Yallop believes that poetry opens spaces for conversations and that each poem is an invitation into an experience, as well as being an experience itself. Reading his poem, Homophobic Graffiti On The Portable Wall, Guiney Yallop will invite us into the experience of an out gay elementary school teacher. He will invite us to linger there "[i]n late May" with him, to linger with his "grade five students," to linger with each other. He will invite us to "read the message / delivered," and to linger still in the violence of homophobic harassment and discrimination.

Guiney Yallop uses poetic inquiry to explore emotional landscapes, identities, and communities. His work has been described as evidence that “emotional intelligence is not just an oxymoron,” as “an aesthetic pedagogy that reveals the subtleties of poetic vision and the depths of narrative relation,” as “insightful and corroborating guidance for readers interested in exploring what poetic inquiry ‘looks like’,” and as “a singular gift”

In this poem, as in other poems he has written, Guiney Yallop uses memory and artefacts to write his way back into an experience of homophobic harassment and discrimination. This poem was originally presented at an academic conference, where it received some diverse responses, and was subsequently published and then republished. In discussing what this poem might be good for, Guiney Yallop reflects on the responses to that original reading and to those two publications of this poem. Guiney Yallop will also discuss how this poem, and poetry in general, is useful to him as a teacher educator who worked as an out gay elementary school educator for over two decades. He will also invite the audience to consider what the poem might be good for in their own work, in their own lives.

Author

• John J. Guiney Yallop, Acadia University