the scholar dances

Abstract

This poem was written in response to the speech given by Donald Blumenfeld-Jones in his role as Vice-President of Division B [Curriculum Studies] at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association meeting in April of 2006. Like many creative acts, it has required a long gestation and I have revisited it from time to time over the past 2 years. Creative researchers may struggle as do some artists with the process of letting-go; it is time to let this poem go and to wish that it communicates some small part of the powerfully visceral, intellectual and emotional response I had to Donald’s dance and speech that day. As a fragment of arts-based inquiry, I intend for it to reveal the sometimes hidden intersections between the scholarly and personal, often found in the overlapping landscapes of experience and memory (which also happens to be the landscape of poetry).