Abstract:

Poetic inquiry is an approach which has been gaining popularity as a qualitative research method. This paper presents transcription poems (Faulkner, 2017) which have been generated using data from a project looking into student experiences of interrupted study.

Sixteen mature undergraduate students studying part-time at a distance learning university were interviewed about their experiences of interrupted study. The resulting transcripts were rich with emotional complexity around their attitudes to study, the situation which interrupted their studies and decisions to pause or resume. Such nuanced emotion can be lost when reporting the summaries of student situations hence turning to poetry to provide a more authentic representation.

Combining presentation with poetry reading this session seeks to demonstrate the power of poetry as a mechanism to portray student experiences. Using the exact words from interview transcripts gives authentic voice to the participants in portraying their lived experience (Carr, 2003) allowing the listener an embodied experience where they ‘feel with, rather than about a poem’ (Faulkner, 2017, p.23).

References:
[1] Carr, J. M. (2003) Poetic expressions of vigilance, Qualitative Health Research, Vol 13, pp. 1324-1331.
[2] Faulkner, S. (2017) Poetic Inquiry. Craft, Method and Practice. 2nd ed. Routledge, Abingdon, UK.

Keywords:

Poetic inquiry, transcription poems, poetry, student experience, interrupted study.