Poetic Inquiry as Social Justice and Political Response

Abigail Cloud · Sandra L. Faulkner

Dec 2019 · Vernon Press

About this ebook

This volume speaks to the use of poetry in critical qualitative research and practice focused on social justice. In this collection, poetry is a response, a call to action, agitation, and a frame for future social justice work. The authors engage with poetry’s potential for connectivity, political power, and evocation through methodological, theoretical, performative, and empirical work. The poet-researchers consider questions of how poetry and Poetic Inquiry can be a response to political and social events, be used as a pedagogical tool to critique inequitable social structures, and how Poetic Inquiry speaks to our local identities and politics. The authors answer the question: “What spaces can poetry create for dialogue about critical awareness, social justice, and re-visioning of social, cultural, and political worlds?” This volume adds to the growing body of Poetic Inquiry through the demonstration of poetry as political action, response, and reflective practice. We hope this collection inspires you to write and engage with political poetry to realize the power of poetry as political action, response, and reflective practice. 

About the author

Abigail Cloud is a poet and Senior Lecturer at Bowling Green State University. She is Editor-in-Chief of Mid-American Review and faculty advisor to Prairie Margins. Her first collection, Sylph (Pleiades, 2014), was a Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize winner. Her research interests include Laban’s effort principles as applied to language and mortality theory. 

Sandra L. Faulkner is Professor of Communication and Director of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Bowling Green State University. Her interests include qualitative methodology, poetic inquiry, and the relationships among culture, identities, and sexualities in close relationships. Her poetry appears in places such as Literary Mama and damselfly. She authored three chapbooks, Hello Kitty Goes to College (dancing girl press, 2012), Knit Four, Make One (Kattywompus, 2015), and Postkarten aus Deutschland (http://liminalities.net/12-1/postkarten.html), and a memoir in poetry, Knit Four, Frog One (Brill/Sense, 2014). Her latest book is Poetic Inquiry: Craft, Method, and Practice (Routledge). She was the recipient of the 2016 Norman K. Denzin Qualitative Research Award.