The Place of the Poem in Poetic Inquiry

• In Event: 75.060 - Roundtable Session 33
  In Roundtable Session: 75.060-7 - Examining Poetic Inquiry, Autoethnography, and Emancipatory Disability Research

Abstract

In this paper, I describe the process of using poetic inquiry as a scholarly and creative means for conveying complicated aspects of my own experience as a poet/researcher conducting a writing workshop designed to facilitate healing for survivors of the 1994 genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda. Tracing the development of two poems across time (including my return to Rwanda to share the poems with the subjects of the work), I demonstrate the affordances and tensions between The Poem as research and The Poem as art when the results of poetic inquiry lead to wider publication in literary venues.

Author

• Laura Apol, Michigan State University