In this article, the authors examined the current use of poetry in qualitative research. The literature yielded the following purposes of poetry: poetic allusions, cultural poetry research, participants’ poetry as data, data poems, research experience poems or poems from the field, and autoethnographic poetry.The authors drew on the experiences from a research poetry group, a reflexive circular e-mail, and research poems they authored. The authors deconstructed the reflexive circular e-mail for future possibilities as a data collection method and explored the following tensions: representation of research, research poets’ training and experience, explanation or interpretation, and trustworthiness. The authors composed Poetic Interludes throughout the article as a way of poking around at, with, and through poetry.
Boylorn, R.M. ( 2006). E pluribus unum (out of many, one). Qualitative Inquiry, 12, 651-680.
2.
Chawla, D. ( 2006). The bangle seller of Meena Bazaar. Qualitative Inquiry, 12, 1135-1138.
3.
Chawla, D. ( 2008). Poetic arrivals and departures: Bodying the ethnographic field in verse. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 9(2). Retrieved March 3, 2009, from http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/382/834
4.
Childers, S. ( 2008). Methodology, praxis, and autoethnography: A review of getting lost. Educational Researcher, 37, 298-301.
5.
Denzin, N.K. ( 1997). Interpretive ethnography: Ethnographic practices for the 21st Century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
6.
Denzin, N.K. ( 2003). Performing [auto] ethnography politically. The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 25, 257-278.
7.
Derrida, J. ( 1976). Of grammatology. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press.
8.
Durica, K.M. ( 2007). How we "do" school: Poems to encourage teacher reflection . Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
9.
Faulkner, S.L. ( 2007). Concern with craft: Using Ars Poetica as criteria for reading research poetry. Qualitative Inquiry, 13, 218-234.
10.
Furman, R. ( 2006). Poetic forms and structures in qualitative health research . Qualitative Health Research, 16, 560-566.
11.
Gannon, S. ( 2001). (Re)presenting the collective girl: A poetic approach to a methodological dilemma. Qualitative Inquiry, 7, 787-800.
12.
Glesne, C. ( 1997). That rare feeling: Re-presenting research through poetic transcription. Qualitative Inquiry, 3, 202-221.
13.
Graglia, P. ( 2008). Reflections on the realization that I have been holding my breath. Qualitative Inquiry, 14, 111-113.
14.
Hesse-Biber, S., & Leavy, P. ( 2008). Introduction: Pushing on the methodologic boundaries . In S. N. Hesse-Biber & P. Leavy (Eds.), Handbook of emergent methods (pp. 1-15). New York: Guilford .
15.
Hurston, Z.N. ( 1996). Dust tracks on the road: An autobiography. New York: HarperCollins.
16.
Lahman, M.K.E. ( 2008). The blue period. Qualitative Inquiry , 14, 1540-1542.
Lather, P. ( 2007). Getting lost: Feminist efforts toward a double(d) science . Albany: State University of New York Press.
19.
Lather, P., & Smithies, C. ( 1997). Troubling the angels: Women living with HIV/AIDS. Boulder, CO: Westview.
20.
Lawrence-Lightfoot, S. ( 1983). The good high school: Portraits of character and culture . New York: Basic Books.
21.
Mammeri, M., & Bourdieu, P. ( 2004). Dialogue on oral poetry. Ethnography , 5, 511-551.
22.
Markula, P. ( 2006). Body-movement-change: Dance as performative qualitative research. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 30, 353-363.
23.
Piirto, J. ( 2002). The question of quality and qualifications: Writing inferior poems as qualitative research. Qualitative Studies in Education , 15, 431-445.
24.
Prendergast, M. ( 2006). Found poetry as literature review: Research poems on audience and performance. Qualitative Inquiry, 12, 369-388.
25.
Richardson, L. ( 1993). Poetics, dramatics, and transgressive validity: The case of the skipped line. Sociological Quarterly, 34, 695-710.
26.
Richardson, L. ( 1994a). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 516-529). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
27.
Richardson, L. ( 1994b). Nine poems. The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 23, 3-13.
28.
Richardson, L. ( 2000). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 923-948). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
29.
Sorsoli, L., & Tolman, D. ( 2008). Hearing voice: Listening for multiplicity and movement in interview data. In S. N. Hesse-Biber & P. Leavy (Eds.), Handbook of emergent methods (pp. 495-515). New York: Guilford .
30.
Stronach, I., & MacLure, M. ( 1997). Educational research undone: The postmodern embrace. Bristol, PA: Open University Press.
31.
Todd, M. L. (Ed.). (2003). Letters of Emily Dickinson. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications.
32.
Wolf, M. ( 1992). A thrice-told tale: Feminism, postmodernism, and ethnographic responsibility. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
