Narratives of Community Trauma: Poetic Inquiry as a Means of Listening
Format Type
Plenary
Format Type
Paper
Start Date
14-1-2021 3:50 PM
End Date
14-1-2021 4:10 PM
Abstract
Emotionally resonant poetry, called I poems, were constructed from interviews from a qualitative study about meaningful life experiences of women in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (USA). The Hill District was once a vibrant community that experienced socioeconomic decline through urban renewal polices and related factors. Interviews were completed as part of an undergraduate-level community-engaged learning course, in collaboration with a local agency. The poems were created through use of the Listening Guide, a feminist relational method. The poems attend to the subjective experience of each participant by focusing on her use of “I” throughout the interview. One component of the course was a public reading, during which the poems were shared with members of the community and the university. While individual in nature, these poems are inseparable from the historical trauma the Hill District has experienced. Seen through the lens of root shock, interpersonal and intergenerational traumas are also the trauma of the Hill District. Poetic inquiry provides an avenue for connecting individual experience with the larger community story.
Keywords
Poetic Inquiry, The Listening Guide, Community Based Research, Root Shock, Community-Engaged Research
ORCID ID
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3310-9833
ResearcherID
Y-6365-2019
Narratives of Community Trauma: Poetic Inquiry as a Means of Listening
Emotionally resonant poetry, called I poems, were constructed from interviews from a qualitative study about meaningful life experiences of women in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (USA). The Hill District was once a vibrant community that experienced socioeconomic decline through urban renewal polices and related factors. Interviews were completed as part of an undergraduate-level community-engaged learning course, in collaboration with a local agency. The poems were created through use of the Listening Guide, a feminist relational method. The poems attend to the subjective experience of each participant by focusing on her use of “I” throughout the interview. One component of the course was a public reading, during which the poems were shared with members of the community and the university. While individual in nature, these poems are inseparable from the historical trauma the Hill District has experienced. Seen through the lens of root shock, interpersonal and intergenerational traumas are also the trauma of the Hill District. Poetic inquiry provides an avenue for connecting individual experience with the larger community story.
Comments
Koelsch, L. E., Goldberg, S. G., & Bennett, E. (2020). " Am I Telling the Story Right?" Poetry, Community, and Trauma. The Qualitative Report, 25(6), 1540-1554.