Found Poetry

This theoretical position article inquires into poetic methodologies in literacy research and argues for the inclusion of poetry in social science research writing. The unconventional use of poetry in research writing challenges the traditionally accepted role prose plays in academic writing. Research poetry is written from and about research subjects and data; more specifically, research found poetry is written from the words of study participants. I identify as a research poet. In particular, I am a writer of found poetry composed from my qualitative research data. The data presented in this article are from a larger study where I investigated what happened when prospective teachers wrote found poetry using young adult literature. I used the words of my study participants to write found data poems in order to analyze and represent data, seeking congruence across multiple forms of data analysis and representation. Crafting poetry from qualitative data holds implications for research methodologies. Research poetry provides academic poets with an alternative means for both analyzing and representing qualitative data. As well, research poetry may impact how scholarly texts are received by research audiences. Although research poetry holds promise for qualitative researchers, the inclusion of poetry in scholarly writing not without risk; the choice to include poetry is contested. Creating space for the poetic arts within the academy confronts conventionally accepted modes of research writing and provides access to the creative and imaginative discourse of poetry.