You Need to Find a Version of the World You Can Be In

Abstract

Working with the principles of poetic transcription and creative representation, this hybrid poem was constructed as a creative data set for my doctoral research into women’s experiences of the continuum of men’s intrusive practices in public space (commonly termed street harassment). Inspired by the works of poets/researchers, including Corrine Glesne, Monica Prendergast, and Rosemary Reilly, the poem is constructed solely from the words of 50 female participants. Sentences are taken directly as spoken within the research interviews, with every individual intrusive practice from men reported by participants interlaced with each mention made by women of their habitual embodied responses. It was designed to enable a method of data preparation retaining the phenomenological, the experiential, and evocative nature of women’s accounts while contrasting women’s responses against the particularity of individual men’s intrusive practices.