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Theorization of cultural and political issues of Northeast of India often creates a disengagement from the actual cultural performances produced in the region. This unique geo-cultural place is sometimes homogenized. In actuality, it is the home of diverse socio-cultural practices and performances. In the context of globalization, deforestation, Christianization, other internal clashes and external influences, material bodies, here, are continuously being rewritten in socio-cultural sphere. Non-representational theory considers poetry as an effective mode of exhibiting the virtual multiplicity of the nonrepresentational world. This paper will focus on exploring the corpus of Northeast Indian English poetry that focuses on social practices and bodily experiences to interpret the entire cultural flow of everyday life. As Non-representational Theory positions 'affect' as a central issue to individual and collective disposition in constituting the affective political discourse, this paper will also indicate some political imperatives by advancing a politics of hope in the realm of socio-political sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of a Spoken Word Education Programme (SWEP hereafter) on young people’s engagement with poetry in a group of schools in London, UK. It does so with reference to the secondary Discourses of school-based learning and the Spoken Word community, an artistic ‘community of practice’ into which they were being inducted. It focuses on what happened when secondary students, already enculturated into school Discourses about learning (in their English lessons especially), learned about new ways of being readers, writers, listeners, and performers through the SWEP Discourse. The paper draws on qualitative data collected during the first three years of programme development to consider how an introduction to the social practices of this artistic community appeared to influence 11–18 year old students’ attitudes to poetry study, discussion, writing, and performance both in school and beyond the parameters of traditional secondary school learning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper demonstrates how drama therapy assists incarcerated women in freeing themselves from internalized oppressive beliefs. In the context of a drug and alcohol treatment program for incarcerated women, the authors assist the women in building three distinct bridges to healing: a new relationship to one's self, to other women, and to the community. Writing exercises, performance techniques, and group drama therapy empower women to express their diverse voices. As the women risk sharing their personal stories and journeys of recovery, they begin to actively envision a different future for themselves. The participants discover talents that offer them an opportunity to experience themselves in a different light, no longer bound by the stigma of being in prison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The catalyst for this self-study research was the performance of a sequence of poems at a colloquium for South African deans of education. The poems portray my interpretation of my students' stories of physically and emotionally painful experiences at the hands of their former teachers. My intention was to show how the creative possibilities of poetic language and poetic modes could enrich teacher education practice and research. However, while reading the poems, I was conscious of a palpable sense of distress building in the room. I began to wonder if I had made an awful mistake. Later, I questioned what I could or should have done differently, and, in this article, I offer an account of my efforts to learn from this painful poetry performance. I draw on the literary arts to combine vignette, poetry, and dialogue to inquire into my lived experience. Overall, the article demonstrates how extending my reflection through conversation with others allowed me to clearly see that my task as a teacher educator and educational researcher is not to avoid communicating heartbreaking stories in an emotionally powerful poetic format. Instead, it is to try to do so in emotionally supportive and educative ways. I offer my inquiry as an exemplar of how the literary arts can enrich teacher education practice and self-study research in creative ways to engage self-critically with social responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a strand of findings from the Cambridge Poetry Teaching Project, a small-scale research study co-ordinated through the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, this article examines contemporary understandings of poetry performance in teaching contexts. Positioning these understandings in relation to past practices, we contend that within contemporary English teaching, the experience of performance is now largely separated from knowledge of poems developed through detailed analysis. Through an examination of theories of poetry and language more generally, we argue that performance should be more fully integrated into poetry teaching, and suggest ways in which a consideration of principles and choices relating to performance has the potential to cultivate the resources of the inner ear and to instantiate a kind of knowledge whose educational value should be given equal status with the analytical understanding of poems that currently drives the examination system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Performing Determinism" discusses the performance of disability through poetry: the instability of language, the ability of words to clasp both generic and specific meaning, and the gaps that surround the performances of self. Disability culture acts as a frame for the inquiry, as the essay discusses crip aesthetics, crip critical practice, and the embodiment of language. In the reading of poems by Jim Ferris and Stephen Kuusisto, disability culture emerges as an impossible horizon of desire, and as the ground for contemporary performances of criticism and writing. Citation becomes performative, and creates repetition in difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]