The Lost Boys

Abstract

The following two poems were formed from transcribed interview text from an unpublished doctoral thesis (Lambert, 2006) which explores some of the ways in which identities and places could be considered mutually constitutive. Specifically, it examines the ways in which five “lesbian” identified women talk about their experiences and identities with, in and through “queer” places and events. The original words were spoken by two participants as part of their own narratives of self when asked to share critical moments in their lives when they noticed or felt themselves to be in some way “different” to and/or differentiated from “others.” There words are presented here as two thematically similar stand alone “found poems,” (see for example, Butler-Kisber, 2002; Glesne, 1997; Lahman et al., 2009) without theoretical analysis. This is done in order to both draw in and implicate the reader in the everyday social readings of nonnormatively gendered bodies. The poems thus raise critical questions about re-presentational issues in research as well as highlighting the imperative to do justice to the speakers of such words, and the complexities associated with such a task.