Collaborative Poetic Processes: Methodological Reflections on Co-Writing with Participants

Authors

Susan M. Manning, Mount Saint Vincent UniversityFollow

Abstract

This article illustrates how the author engaged in a collaborative poetry-making process with two participants, Margaret and Mary, in this feminist qualitative research study exploring women’s experiences of displacement, as loss of sense of place, in Newfoundland, Canada. The author evaluates some of the key successes of this type of process, including credible representation of participants’ experiences and reciprocity in the research process, as well as some of the methodological and philosophical tensions surrounding co-writing with participants that emerged during the poetry process. This article will be of particular interest to researchers and students who are looking for ways to collaborate with participants in crafting poems about their lived experience in poetic inquiry work.

Keywords

Poetic Inquiry, Participatory Research, Newfoundland, Arts-Informed Research, Research Ethics, Feminist Research Methods, Social Justice

Author Bio(s)

Susan M. Manning is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at Dalhousie University. This research was completed while she was an MA Candidate at Mount Saint Vincent University. Correspondence regarding this article can be addressed directly to: susan.manning@dal.ca.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Margaret and Mary for their contributions to this research and Deborah Stienstra, Gail Baikie, and Vicki Hallett for their helpful feedback on this manuscript. This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under a Canada Graduate Scholarship - Master's.

Publication Date

4-1-2018

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2018.3185

Recommended APA Citation

Manning, S. M. (2018). Collaborative Poetic Processes: Methodological Reflections on Co-Writing with Participants. The Qualitative Report, 23(4), 742-757. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2018.3185