Poetry as Research

Linguistic Approaches to Literature (LAL)

Linguistic Approaches to Literature (LAL) provides an international forum
for researchers who believe that the application of linguistic methods leads to
a deeper and more far-reaching understanding of many aspects of literature.
The emphasis will be on pragmatic approaches intersecting with areas such
as discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, ethnolinguistics, rhetoric, philosophy,
cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics and stylistics.

Editors
Willie van Peer Sonia Zyngier
University of Munich Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

Advisory Editorial Board

Douglas Biber Arthur C. Graesser Keith Oatley
Northern Arizona University University of Memphis University of Toronto
Marisa Bortolussi Frank Hakemulder Yeshayahu Shen
University of Alberta Utrecht University Tel Aviv University
Donald C. Freeman Geoff M. Hall Mick Short
University of Southern University of Wales, Swansea Lancaster University
California
David L. Hoover Michael Toolan
Harald Fricke New York University University of Birmingham
University of Fribourg
Don Kuiken Reuven Tsur
Richard Gerrig University of Alberta Tel Aviv University
Stony Brook University
Geoffrey N. Leech Peter Verdonk
Raymond W. Jr. Gibbs Lancaster University University of Amsterdam
University of California,
Paisley Livingston
Santa Cruz
University of Copenhagen
Rachel Giora
Max Louwerse
Tel Aviv University
University of Memphis

Volume 9
Poetry as Research. Exploring second language poetry writing
by David Ian Hanauer
Poetry as Research
Exploring second language poetry writing

David Ian Hanauer

Indiana University of Pennsylvania

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Amsterdam / Philadelphia
 TM
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8

American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of

Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hanauer, David Ian.

Poetry as research : exploring second language poetry writing / David Ian Hanauer.
p. cm. (Linguistic Approaches to Literature, issn 1569-3112 ; v. 9)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Poetry--Study and teaching. 2. Second language acquisition--Study and teaching. 3. So-
ciology--Research--Methodology. 4. Multicultural education. 5. Literacy. I. Title.
PN1042.H347   2010
808.1’071--dc22 2010004086
isbn 978 90 272 3341 7 (Hb ; alk. paper) / isbn 978 90 272 3342 4 (Pb ; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 8830 1 (Eb)

© 2010 – John Benjamins B.V.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
 I dedicate this book
to all my students who have so willingly shared their poetry with me
and to all who read and write poetry across the world
 Table of contents

Acknowledgements xi
List of figures and tables xiii

chapter 1
Crossing disciplinary boundaries 1
1.1 Arts-based research 1
1.2 Personal crossings of disciplinary boundaries 3
1.3 Facilitating the writing of second language poetry 7
1.4 The approach, scope, questions and design of this book 10

chapter 2
The process of writing poetry: A qualitative study of first language writers 13
2.1 Introduction 13
2.2 Research on writing poetry 13
2.2.1 The process of revision 14
2.2.2 The process of discovery 15
2.2.3 The poetry writing process 16
2.3 Methodology 17
2.4 Results 19
2.4.1 Activation 21
2.4.2 Discovery 23
2.4.3 Permutation 25
2.4.4 Finalization 27
2.5 Discussion 28
2.6 Poetry writing and qualitative research 30

chapter 3
Second language poetry writing: Textual and literary characteristics 33
3.1 Introduction 33
3.2 Poetry and the second language learner 33
3.3 Advanced, second language writers 36
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

3.4 Textual and literary characteristics of second language poetry 38

3.4.1 Corpus description 39
3.4.2 Data analysis 39
3.5 Results 42
3.6 Discussion: Characterizing the second language poem 51
3.7 Second language poetry and qualitative research 53

chapter 4
Poetic identity in a second language: Theoretical and methodological issues 55
4.1 Introduction 55
4.2 Second language identities 55
4.3 Poetic identity 59
4.4 Analysing poetic identity 62
4.5 A case study 64
4.5.1 Exploring parental divorce 65
4.6 Poetic identity and qualitative research 74

chapter 5
Philosophical and methodological guidelines 75
5.1 Introduction 75
5.2 Poetry writing as a research method 75
5.3 Methodological guidelines 83
5.3.1 Personal and cultural qualitative research questions 84
5.3.2 Facilitating poetry writing 85
5.3.3 The (lyric) poem 87
5.3.4 Analysis of poetry for qualitative research purposes 88
5.3.5 Organizing and presenting poetic data 89
5.4 Philosophical considerations 90

chapter 6
Exploring the study abroad experience 95
6.1 Introduction 95
6.2 Research on study abroad 96
6.3 Materials and method 98
6.4 Context 99
6.5 Results 100
6.5.1 Self positioning and the emotional experience of language 100
6.5.2 Emotional responses to academic classroom experiences 107
6.5.3 Experiencing American students 113
 Table of contents 

6.5.4 Negotiating American culture 118

6.5.5 Homesickness 126
6.6 A word of caution 128

chapter 7
Philosophical grounding 131
7.1 Introduction 131
7.2 Poetry as knowledge 131
7.3 Empiricism and the literary text 138

Bibliography 141

appendix A
The book of poetry assignment: Introduction to poetry writing 149

appendix B
Transcription conventions 157

Name index 159

Subject index 161
 Acknowledgements

In many ways, this book is the result of accumulated experiences and interactions
over my entire career as an applied linguist interested in poetry and accordingly
there are many people that really should be acknowledged for their contribution
to my understanding. I thank them all, but would like to mention a few who have
made a particular contribution. First of all, I would like to thank Will Van Peer and
Sonia Zyngier for the willingness, as series editors, to enter into this project, for
their careful feedback and support in writing this book and for many years of col-
legial dialogue and research. In conducting this project, I was helped by several
research assistants. I would like to thank Ana Maria Wetzl, Kevin Dvojak, Kyle
Nuske and Wei Wu for their help at various stages of analysis and to thank my in-
terns Pisarn Bee Chamcharatsri, Atsushi Iida, and Alex Lapidus for help in collect-
ing data. I also thank the many tutors who volunteered their time to work with me
and to my students for creating and sharing their poetry with me. My interest in
second language writing is the result of close interaction and discussion with a
series of my colleagues in my department at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I
thank the compositionists Claude Mark Hurlbert, Pat Bizarro and Gian Pagnucci
for making writing exciting again and introducing me to a different way of consid-
ering composition. Finally, I would like to thank Joel Walters, Elana Shohamy and
Johan Hoorn for teaching me the real meaning of conducting empirical research
so many years ago and to Ellen and Bernard Spolsky for explaining the dangers
and values of interdisciplinary work, a lesson still relevant today. While many peo-
ple have helped me, the responsibility for the positions, analyses, and conclusions
presented in this book rests with me alone.
 List of tables and figures

Table 2.1. Frequency of Graphic Forms, Additions, Deletions and 25

Exchanges for Draft Versions
Table 3.1. Categories, Analytical Method and Objective 39
Table 3.2. Average, Standard Deviation and Mode for Text Size 42
Table 3.3. Percentage of Words from Total Word Count According to 43
Linguistic Category and for L2 Poetry Writing
Table 3.4. Word Frequency Band and Percentage of L2 Poetry Writing 44
Corpus Coverage
Table 3.5. Frequency and Percentage of Poems that Included Poetic 45
Features by Category
Table 3.6. Frequency of Occurrence for Patterns of Thematic Organization 46
Table 3.7. High Frequency Words, Frequency of Usage and Example 46
Uses from L2 Poetry Corpus
Table 3.8. Percentage of Words from Total Word Count According to 51
Affective Processes and for L2 Poetry Writing, Baseline
Emotional Writing, Controlled Writing and Novels
Figure 2.1. Graphic Representation of the Poetry Writing Process 20
 chapter 1

Crossing disciplinary boundaries

1.1 Arts-based research

There is a quiet revolution going on at the outer margins of qualitative research.

This revolution involves the extension of qualitative research to include artistic
methods of inquiry and representation. Under the heading of arts-based research,
the genre and methods of artistic practice are being used to conduct research. The
sources of this approach can be traced back to educational inquiries since the
1970’s (Sinner, Leggo, Irwin, Gouzouasis, and Grauer, 2006) in work from re-
searchers such as (Eisner, 1976 and Grumet, 1978), and developments in art ther-
apy research during the 1990’s (see researchers such as McNiff, 1998). Recent de-
velopments suggest that this approach is reaching a degree of maturity within the
wider framework of qualitative research across various disciplines, as illustrated
by the production of handbooks (Leavy, 2009 and Knowles & Cole, 2007), of spe-
cial edited journal issues (Finley, 2003; Smith-Shank & Keifer-Boyd, 2007), over-
views of doctoral dissertations (Sinner, Leggo, Irwin, Gouzouasis, and Grauer,
2006) and conferences such as the Art-Based Educational Research or the Interna-
tional Symposium of Poetic Inquiry. Within a range of disciplines such as educa-
tion, psychology, counseling, expressive art therapy, social work, medicine, and
nursing forms of art-based research are being employed to explore disciplinary
research questions.
As a consequence of crossing disciplinary boundaries, art-based research may
integrate approaches that are thought by some to be antithetical. Art is sometimes
seen as lacking the ability to provide a basis upon which a rational and justified
construction of knowledge is possible and thus art and science are considered as
two conceptually different activities. In exploring the role of art, McNiff (2007), an
art-therapist and leading proponent of artistic inquiry, states that “Art-based re-
search can be defined as the systematic use of the artistic process, the actual mak-
ing of artistic expressions in all of the different forms of the arts, as a primary way
of understanding and examining experience by both researchers and the people
that they involve in their studies” (p. 29). In this characterization, McNiff (2007)
defines the two core features of an art-based approach: the positioning of artistic
expression as research and the primary use of artistic processes as a way of under-
standing human experience.
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

From this perspective, the usage of processes and creative practices of the arts
involves a very particular orientation towards the activity of conducting research.
As stated by Sinner, Leggo, Irwin, Gouzouasis, and Grauer (2006) “research is an
inquiry-laden process focused on opening up spaces to trouble and address differ-
ences through creative acts” in which researchers see their work as a “journey of
transformation” involving “creative ways of knowing” (p. 1237, my italics). This
metaphor of movement and change captures the open-ended nature of several of
the arts-based studies. McNiff (1998) states this in a slightly different way: “The
creative researcher avoids stock theories and rigid methods of inquiry and prefers
insights emerging from sustained reflections on phenomena” (p. 47). These formu-
lations sustain that creative art processes as inquiry emphasize the emergent and
creative nature of understanding. Rather than a process directed by a priori as-
sumptions, or in some cases even clearly formulated research questions, art-based
research develops through the entry into an artistic process of exploration resulting
slowly over time with the production of a series of artistic products that represent
the collected, personal understanding of the phenomenon under consideration.
A central aspect of this approach is the way the artwork is positioned as a re-
search object. The artwork is considered to integrate “practice, process and prod-
uct” (Sinner et. al, 2006, p. 1226). To understand this position, it is helpful to refer
to Alexander’s (2003) philosophical discussion of aesthetic inquiry. According to
him, arts-based inquiries utilize a “whole thinking-feeling person” to produce a
“virtual reality” that employs “metaphoric language, symbolic behavior, or virtual
shapes, sounds or movement” (p. 5). From this perspective, aesthetic inquiry is dif-
ferent from other qualitative approaches in that it does not describe another’s expe-
rience but rather recreates it for the reader/observer. This reconstruction of experi-
ence is actually the practice-process-product. Therefore, the actual experience of
the art work by the research recipient is the understanding of the phenomenon
under investigation without the need for subsequent analysis or explanation.
A distinction is generally made between using the arts in research and using
artistic processes as research. According to McNiff (2007), art-based inquiries “are
distinguished from research activities where the arts may play a significant role but
are essentially used as data for investigations that take place within academic dis-
ciplines that utilize more traditional scientific, verbal, and mathematic descrip-
tions and analyses of phenomena” (p. 29). According to this approach, the pres-
ence of art within an investigation does not necessarily mean that it is an arts-based
inquiry. It is the usage of the art process and the positioning of the experience of
the artwork as a research outcome that defines the core of arts-based research.
Some proponents position art-based research as a challenge to other forms of
research. For example, Finley (2007) states that at “the heart of arts-based inquiry
is a radical, politically grounded statement about social justice and control over
 Chapter 1. Crossing disciplinary boundaries 

the production and dissemination of knowledge” (p. 72). Smith-Shank and

Keifer-Boyd (2007) add that arts-based research “acknowledges the power of art to
interrogate, inform, and challenge more traditional systems of linear text-based
research” (p. 2). Indeed, this line of investigation does raise serious questions about
the assumptions of research practice and outcomes, the forms that knowledge can
take and how it is disseminated. Arts-based researchers recognize that this ap-
proach to research is considered to be deeply troubling and controversial for
many traditional qualitative researchers (Richardson, 1997; Smith-Shank and
Keifer-Boyd, 2007).
This book emerges from the belief that art-based research can contribute to
the wider endeavor of human inquiry and that it is necessary to carefully explore
how this actually can be done. The current book extends arts-based research into
the field of language studies and aims to explore whether poetry writing can be
used as a research method for the exploration of questions relating to second lan-
guage learners. This book develops an approach that uses poetry writing within a
broader framework of qualitative research. In rather conventional terms and using
a range of paradigms, it explores two different core research questions:
1. What are the characteristics of poetry writing?
2. In what ways can poetry writing be used as data in the study of research ques-
tions within the humanities and social sciences?
Broadly, the aim here is to investigate the characteristics of poetry writing by using
a range of methodologies and then use the insights derived from the knowledge
acquired to develop an approach to using poetry writing as an integral part of a
qualitative, arts-based, research method. I do not assume that this is the only way
to conduct arts-based investigations; but this may be valuable as it provides an
informed basis upon which poetry writing can be used for research and validates
the usage of arts-based inquiries within a qualitative framework for a variety of
disciplines, researchers and research questions.

1.2 Personal crossings of disciplinary boundaries

My own career as a researcher has been defined by the crossing of disciplinary

boundaries and the integration of methodologies across paradigms and fields.
Ironically, perhaps for the current book, my initial crossings in the mid 1990s con-
sisted of using quantitative research tools associated with cognitive psychology to
explore the processes of reading poetry (Hanauer, 1997; for a full review, see
Hanauer 2001a). In later work, I applied systematic qualitative methods to explore
how second language learners read poetry in the second language classroom
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

(Hanauer, 2001b). In this book, I will once again cross disciplinary boundaries to
bring poetry writing as a research method to bear on research questions within the
field of applied linguistics. This book integrates art-based research with approaches
to qualitative research, theories and research from applied linguistics and the em-
pirical study of literature. In particular, I am interested in developing ways in which
poetry writing can be brought to bear on issues of human experience with second
language speakers. However, it is my belief that the approach developed here may
be useful to a range of researchers who deal with a wide set of questions within the
humanities and social sciences that go beyond second language learners.
In 2003 I edited a special edition of the Canadian Modern Language Review
dedicated to the relationship between applied linguistics and literature where I
argued that the situation of disciplinary division and conceptual distancing be-
tween poetry and research was artificial and based on a mistaken understanding
of both poetry as a genre and research as an investigative practice (Hanauer, 2003).
The aim of this book is to rectify this situation and explore the nature of second
language poetry writing and the ways in which this form of writing can be used as
data for exploring specific research questions of interest specifically within the
disciplines of applied linguistics, empirical studies of literature and composition
and more broadly within the humanities and social sciences. In other words, here
I situate poetry writing as both a research question to be investigated and a re-
search methodology that can be used to explore subsequent questions within the
realm of social research.
The usage of poetry writing as a research method, however, is not unique
(see for example Richardson, 1990, 1997, 2003a, 2003b; Prendergast, 2009; Leggo.
2005; and Furman, Lietz and Langer, 2006) and has reached a certain initial ma-
turity as evidenced in a recent edited volume of poetic inquiries (Prendergast,
Leggo, & Sameshima, 2009). From a historical perspective, Butler-Kisber and
Stewart (2009) trace the development of poetic inquiry back to the 1980s in early
anthropological research. Prendergast (2009) gives an even earlier date describing
Muriel Rukeyser’s 1938 Book of the Dead, an ethnographic and poetic depiction of
West Virginian miners dying of lung cancer, as an early example of poetic inquiry.
Eliot Eisner’s initiation of American Educational Research Association’s Arts-
based Winter Institute on qualitative research as well as the inclusion of Laurel
Richardson’s poetic inquiries within the Handbook of Qualitative Research: An
Expanded Sourcebook (Miles and Huberman, 1994) are milestones that mark the
movement of poetry writing into the field of qualitative research (Butler-Kisber
and Stewart, 2009).
There are also different approaches to the understanding of what a poetic in-
quiry actually consists of. Using the concept of authorial voice, Monica Prender-
gast (2009) differentiates between Vox Theoria (literature voiced poems), Vox
 Chapter 1. Crossing disciplinary boundaries 

Autobiographia/Autoethnographia (researcher voiced poems), and Vox Participare

(participant voiced poems). The first group consists of poems written “in response
to works of literature/theory in a discipline or field” (idem, 2009, p .xxii). Re-
search-voiced poems “are written from field notes, journal entries, or reflective/
creative/autobiographical/autoethnographical writing as a data source” (idem,
p. xxii). The third group derives from “interview transcripts or solicited directly
from participants, sometimes in an action research model where the poems are
co-created with the researchers” (idem, p. xxii). This approach sees the production
of a poem as the essence of the poetic inquiry. It does not analyze the poem pro-
duced but presents it as the study itself. Furthermore, her approach, like that of
Piirto (2002), places a value on the need for anybody who conducts a poetic in-
quiry to first be a qualified and experienced poet. The suggestion is that poetic
inquiries be conducted by practicing (but not necessarily professional) poets.
Arguably the best known proponent of using poetry within qualitative re-
search is Laurel Richardson (1990, 1997, and 2003b). Her research method con-
sists of rewriting interview data in the form of poems and is premised on the
proposition that there is a crisis of representation that requires a range of different
forms of genre to be used in explaining and disseminating research findings. Her
approach is situated within the conceptual developments of postmodern philoso-
phy. In her own terms, the usage of poetry as a means of presenting interview data
challenges the assumed normalcy of presenting interviews in academic prose and
highlights the representational and interpretive shifts within other research writ-
ing and scientific knowledge dissemination. Instead of eliciting poetic data, this
researcher actually writes poems using elicited interview data.
A different direction has been enacted against the backdrop of a series of de-
velopments within qualitative health and social work research. At the forefront
stands Rich Furman and his collaborators, to whom poetry writing resides mainly
in relation to auto-ethnographic approaches to research. For example in Furman,
Lietz and Langer (2006), poems written by Furman himself concerning his experi-
ences working with psychological and physiologically disabled children are pre-
sented; or in a different paper, he explores his own understanding of existential
themes and therapeutic practice (Furman, 2007). The approach to poetry exempli-
fied in these papers consists of building upon the aspects of self-reflection and
personal understanding that poetry allows, creating a form of auto-ethnographic
self-inquiry. However, Furman has also elicited data from other participants. To-
gether with social work students during an international experience, he presents
their self-reflective poems (Furman, Coyne, & Junko Negi, 2008).
In sum, the emphasis within this body of research is on the writing of poetry
as process, practice and product. The emergent poem is considered the study itself
and research outcomes for the recipient of a poetic inquiry consist of participation
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

in the experience of the poem. This approach is very much within the guidelines
and conceptions of arts-based research and aesthetic inquiry as formulated by
Alexander (2003). This approach does, however, raise two important problems:
1) expertise in poetry writing would seem to be a requirement for a successful
poetic inquiry; 2) the process of analysis of poetry has not been theoretically ex-
plicated so far. Both of these issues limit the applicability of this method to a range
of questions of interest to qualitative researchers in different disciplines. I agree
with Furman (2007) that the strength of poetic inquiry is its reflective, auto-eth-
nographic qualities that address personal understandings of human experience
and that these qualities need to be used to explore how people (not only the po-
etic researcher) experience life. This means that poetry writing as a research meth-
od needs to be used by those who are not qualified as poets and that an approach
to the analysis of this type of data needs to be developed.
The current endeavor is situated within prior research that utilizes poetic in-
quiry but differs from the majority of these studies in two ways: 1) an acceptance
of the principles of qualitative research that elicited data needs to be analysed;
2) recognition that poetry writing as a research method can be used with inexpe-
rienced poetry writers. This approach builds upon the idea that poetry writing can
be elicited from a wide range of participants who may or may not have any prior
knowledge of poetry writing. Accordingly, for this to be possible poetry writing
needs to be facilitated. This involves integrating writing instruction with a research
process and the development of personal, self-reflective understandings with data
collection. This approach, which is fully explicated in Chapter 5, situates the data
collection process in an educational process of writing instruction. The poems that
emerge from this educational context are considered to be data for further analysis
as well as artworks that should be appreciated for the entry into another’s lived
experience. This approach combines qualitative and arts-based approaches to re-
search and may make poetic inquiry applicable to a wider range of populations. In
this sense, the educational context for the development of poetic writing is a cen-
tral issue. In the next section, a description of the way I facilitate poetry writing for
second language learners is described.
Some may object to the use of poetic inquiry with writers who are not quali-
fied or experienced with poetry writing and further claim that the suggestion that
poetic inquiry be used with second language learners is implausible. It is com-
monly perceived that second language writers who by definition have acquired
and learnt this second language do not and probably cannot write poetry [although
there is evidence that this is not the case – see for example Zyngier and Fialho
(in press) for a report on the outcomes of poetry writing in the ESL classroom]. In
any case, for those who do not believe, perhaps this can be seen as an extreme case
that if indeed poetry writing can be a used as a research method with second
 Chapter 1. Crossing disciplinary boundaries 

language learners, then first language writers of all types should definitely be with-
in the realm of possibility no matter what their prior literacy experience. The next
section describes how the poetry used as data in this book was actually written.

1.3 Facilitating the writing of second language poetry

White Paper
She stares at the paper
It stares blankly at her back
Without any traces of ink
All clean, white and smooth.
She picks up her pen
Gripping it tightly
Time is passing swiftly
She could not think of any
Whispers were heard from a distance
Chairs dragged from the floor above
Doors were slammed by the neighbors
She needs some peace and silence.
20 years of memories?
All to be reflected in a poem
Could that even be possible?
She begins to shed tears.
Hold on.
Her pen starts to move.
It was a piece of paper
But with words and scribbles of all kind
To her delight,
Now she got it
Her first poem!
The poem that appears at the beginning of this section was written in 2008 by a
second language English writer in a writing course designed for college-level
writers at a public university in Pennsylvania. This poem also starts another
book, a collection entitled Damsel in Distress written by the same student-poet
to explore and describe the pressures faced by her in growing up in Malaysia and
throughout her life. The poetry book was carefully produced in three copies with
hand-covered red velvet, decorated and cleverly designed page layouts and
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

original photography. The artistic and time-consuming production of this book

of poetry is a testimony to the value the poet assigns to her work. This student-
poet’s production was facilitated by the design of the course that she studied in;
but the book of poetry was very much hers. As she stated in a final reflective
piece of writing concerning her poetry book “Writing poetry and this class en-
able us to have our own voice and speak in English but with our own mother
tongue.” This statement reflects the central aim and tension of second language
poetry writing – the ability to express one’s own voice and experiences in a sec-
ond language.
I originally designed this course for second language writers in 2003 and have
been revising and teaching it for the last six years. In many ways I consider it to be
the high point of my educational endeavors as a second language literacy instruc-
tor since it allows me to give others a voice in a new language. On the first day, I
arrange the chairs in a wide circle around a central table upon which I place books
of poetry written by English as Second Language (ESL) writers who have taken
this course in previous years. I then announce that students will be required to
write and artistically produce a full book of poetry that explores the meaningful-
ness of their lives. The usual reaction is utter shock. Literally most of the students
look at me as if I were mad. They look at one another and some sigh. I then ask
them to stand up and come to the table and choose a book of poetry to read. Once
they have read one I ask them to read another and then another. I tell them that
these were written by students from previous years and that these students had as
much disbelief about second language poetry writing as they did. The experience
of seeing these books of poetry dissipates the myth that poetry cannot be written
by second language learners. The evidence, at least within the classroom, is on the
table in front of them.
The underpinning educational rationale for this ESL College Writing class is
described in the syllabus as a course that is “organized around the idea that literacy
develops as a result of the desire by the individual to express personally important
understandings.” In other words, emphasis is placed on the personal expression of
individual experiences, thoughts and feelings. This rationale is an important point
of departure for this course in that the core understanding is that writing is a form
of deeply personal communication and that it develops when an individual writer
actually has something deeply personal to say. Issues of form, while important, are
secondary to the actual role of writing as a way of expressing internal meanings.
The conventions of writing are dealt with as ways in which personal expression can
be formed so as to be both personally and socially communicative. Interestingly,
one of my main conclusions after having taught this course for 6 years is that most
students have not had much experience of exploring their own internal lives and
thoughts and expressing them in writing. Ironically, I have found that it is this
 Chapter 1. Crossing disciplinary boundaries 

aspect of poetry writing and not issues of language usage and control that are the
most difficult for students whether they are first or second language writers.
As any literacy teacher will tell you, writing does not start or end at the actual
moment of physical writing. This is especially true for poetry. The process of writ-
ing a poem in my ESL College Writing course is an extended project that is care-
fully scaffolded within a framework of classroom workshops that takes about
8 weeks to complete. The initial workshops explore two interrelated issues: the
consideration of personally important experiences and the development of an un-
derstanding of poetic genres. The first aim is achieved through exercises of per-
sonal reflection, brainstorming and discussion. Of particular importance is the
emphasis on detailed, multimodal recall and careful self-analysis. The aim is to
produce self-understandings of what is important to them as human beings in the
world and specifically and uniquely how they have experienced the world. The
second aim of developing an understanding of poetry is conducted through a
process of library research and exemplar analysis. The approach is constructivist
and is directed by the students themselves. As course instructor, I do not provide
a predefined definition of poetry that they need to work with. The students choose
their own sets of culturally specific poems (usually in their first language) to ana-
lyze for aspects of content and form. This process is accompanied by experimenta-
tion with poetry writing concerning their experiences.
The workshops during the central part of the course are directed at the actual
writing, reading, revision and presentation of their poetry. A fundamental aspect
of these workshops is the emphasis on using language to accurately express the
internal meanings and experiences of each writer. In other words, revision is di-
rected not by language correctness in normative terms but rather through the con-
sideration of accuracy of the expression to personally held understandings. Stu-
dents are asked to carefully think about their own experiences and their insights
concerning these experiences as a resource through which the quality of their own
writing can be evaluated. Students are asked to make sure that whatever poetry
they have produced actually says what they meant it to say. This process involves
reading and presenting their poems to other students in the class and graduate
level volunteer tutors. Responses are very much along the lines of personal under-
standings, which allow the student-poet to evaluate the different ways in which
other readers understand their poems. In many cases this leads to changes and
revisions. It is important to note that the student-poet makes all decisions and that
my role as instructor is not to edit these poems but rather to make sure that the
student is satisfied that the poem expresses what they want it to express.
The workshops at the end of this course deal with the process of producing a
full book of poetry. Concepts of aesthetics and thematic clarity are emphasized.
Students need to choose approximately 10 poems from the 20–30 that they have
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

written to include in their final book of poetry. Each book is considered to be a

thematic unit dealing with a significant aspect of the student’s life. They are free to
choose any theme that they wish to explore. A central criterion is that this is a
truly meaningful set of experiences. The final stages involve decisions on how to
produce the book. Questions of format, page size, art work, layout and font type
are all discussed and the authors make those decisions which, once again, best
serve the meanings and understandings of experience that they are trying to ex-
press. The final product is publicly presented and read.
Data collection in this sense lasted six years and consisted of 844 poems from
81 different students. The brief description that appears above of how the corpus
of second language poems used in this book was produced perhaps removes the
fears of those who believe that second language writers will have difficulty in writ-
ing poetry. It is not by chance that the method of data collection described here is
interactive, participatory and elongated. The type of data that poetry writing pro-
vides is the result of extensive self-exploration and careful presentation and it is
exactly this issue of self-understanding of experience that poetry as a research
method can provide information on.

1.4 The approach, scope, questions and design of this book

The proposal that poetry writing be used as a research method requires some
justification. Richardson (1997) in her description of her presentation of poetic
renditions of interview data makes it clear that her approach caused contention
within the field of sociology. More broadly, the increasing presence of arts-based
research in the field of education has elicited a negative response from estab-
lished researchers. In one of the predominant critiques, Shavelson and Towne
(2002) try to establish criteria that will allow them to differentiate research-
based, scientific knowledge from other forms of information. Specifically, they
critique in their report the development of what they term humanist approaches
to knowledge including through their descriptions (although not explicitly
named) arts-based research. They argue that it cannot provide replicable and
generalizable knowledge and as such is not to be considered scientific knowl-
edge. From this perspective, any form of arts-based research is going to be
delegitimized.
The response from proponents of poetic inquiry has been to present philo-
sophical and theoretical arguments supporting the usage of poetic inquiry and to
catalogue the ways in which it has been used. While both of these are worthy ways
of responding, there is a certain tautology involved in both approaches. They both
start and finish with their own self-justification. True to my experience of crossing
 Chapter 1. Crossing disciplinary boundaries 

disciplinary boundaries and utilizing a variety of approaches to address research

questions, in this book I would like to propose that using poetry writing as a re-
search method is a research question in itself that needs to be addressed and fully
explicated. Accordingly, each of the core research questions that direct this book
can be differentiated as seen in the following subset of questions:
1. What are the characteristics of poetry writing?
1.1. What characterizes the process of writing poetry?
1.2. What are the textual and literary characteristics of poems written by adult
second language learners?
1.3. What is poetic identity?
1.4. What are the ways in which these poetic identities are expressed?
1.5. What are the ways in which these poetic identities can be analysed?
2. In what ways can poetry writing be used as data in the study of research ques-
tions within the humanities and social sciences?
2.1. In what ways has poetry writing been used as a research method?
2.2. What research questions are appropriate for poetry writing as a research
method?
2.3. How is poetry writing facilitated as research data?
2.4. How is written poetry as research data analysed?
2.5. Is it possible to evaluate the quality of poetry writing as a research method?
2.6. Can poetry writing be considered a form of knowledge?
These questions and sub-questions direct the design of the first five chapters of this
book. Chapter 2 explores the question of the process of writing poetry and utilizes
a qualitative interview approach and document analysis and presents, as an out-
come, a set of general features that characterize poetry writing. Chapter 3 explores
the literary and linguistic characteristics of the corpus of second language poems
used as data in this book. A computational linguistic and descriptive approach to
the analysis of this corpus is used here. The outcome is a quantitative description
of second language poems. Chapter 4 looks into the issue of poetic identity as a
way of exploring ways in which poetic data can be analysed and positioned. Here,
a method for analysing subjective positioning in written poetry is proposed and a
case study is presented as illustration. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 build a basis upon which
the characteristics of poetry writing can be understood for the purposes of devel-
oping an inquiry method.
Chapter 5 addresses the question of the ways in which poetry writing can be
used as a research method. It offers literature review, philosophical argumentation
and theoretical discussion to support the approach. The proposed method inte-
grates the findings from the studies in the first section of this book. The outcome
of this chapter is the specification of poetry writing as a research method that is
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

situated within both arts-based and qualitative approaches and addresses previous
omissions of data analysis and collection.
Chapter 6 follows by presenting a study that uses poetry writing with second
language learners. Specifically, this method was used to investigate the question:
3. How is the study abroad experience characterized and understood in the poetry
written by second language study abroad students?
The chapter demonstrates the ability of poetry writing to provide insights into the
experiences of second language learners. This chapter utilizes poetry writing to
capture moments of the lived experience of individual poets undergoing the study
abroad experience. The chapter presents news ways of understanding this phe-
nomenon as well as exemplifying this approach to research.
The final chapter addresses the philosophical underpinnings of the approach
to research developed with this book. The chapter explicates and addresses the
core philosophical objections to poetry as scientific knowledge and considers the
relationship of literature and empirical methods. Overall, the aim of this book is to
develop an approach to the usage of poetry writing as a research method of rele-
vance to second language (and other) writers that is based upon an informed, re-
search-based understanding of the special characteristics of poetry writing.
 chapter 2

The process of writing poetry

A qualitative study of first language writers

2.1 Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to answer the question – What characterizes the process
of writing poetry? It sees first language poetry writers as a starting point for a
broader discussion of poetry writing with second language writers. In particular,
the studies reviewed here and the investigation conducted focus on professional or
semi-professional poets who write poetry as a regular and consistent literacy act
within their lives. The overall objective is to characterize the features of poetry
writing so that an informed discussion of poetry writing as a research method for
questions in the humanities and social sciences can evolve in later chapters. Ulti-
mately, this chapter proposes a set of general characteristics situated within the
broader literature addressing studies of poetry writing and based on the work of
young semi-professional poets finalizing a Masters in Fine Arts degree.

2.2 Research on writing poetry

The existing research on first language poetry writing falls into two broad catego-
ries: those related to its teaching and those involved in its process. This research
has been mainly constituted within the fields of composition or educational liter-
acy studies and addresses first language writers of various ages. The methodologi-
cal approaches that have been used are qualitative including interview, verbal pro-
tocols and document analysis. The major justification presented for conducting
these studies was to enhance educational processes involving poetry writing with-
in the language arts classroom.
While the number of studies on the topic is limited, two central characteristics
do emerge. First of all, there is quite a broad agreement that the process of revision
is central to the poetry writing process (Armstrong, 1984, 1985, 1986; Bizarro,
1990; Gerrish, 2004; Schwartz, 1983). Secondly there is agreement that poetry
writing involves a process of personal discovery (Bolton, 1999; Colley, 2005;
Hanauer, 2004; Phillips, 1997). Both these characteristics are explained below.
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

2.2.1 The process of revision

Revision seems to be a major characteristic of the process of poetry writing. In a

comparative study of novice and expert poets, Armstrong (1984) found that ex-
pert poetry writers spend far more time revising than novices. In this analysis, she
suggests that the latter have an underdeveloped sense of poetic critical judgment
and understanding of audience. Later, Armstrong (1985) used a case study ap-
proach to analyze the writing processes of professional poets, where she utilized
both document analysis of six poets’ commentary, letters, recorded conversations,
interviews, and essays as well as an investigation of a novice and an experienced
poet’s writing processes. As with her previous study, Armstrong defined a central
role for revision and proposed that it was directed by aesthetic considerations. In
order to explain the process of revision of expert poets, Amstrong (1985) devel-
oped the concept of ‘aesthetic revision’, which consisted of revisions that were di-
rected by sensitivity to artistic form. In a final study, Armstrong (1986) analysed
the working drafts and comments of professional poets. As in her previous works,
her conclusion was that poets are extensive revisers. This study does add an extra
dimension to this conclusion in that professional poets seem more involved in a
process of deletion of text than in one of elaboration. The revision process seems
to ‘tighten’ the text so that it functions poetically. In relation to free verse, the po-
etry writing process was characterized as an open, free process followed by a refin-
ing, tightening revision process. For more tightly controlled genre forms such as
the sonnet, the poetry writing process was characterized by writing and then in-
ternal substitution of poem sections.
In a series of in-depth interviews with six published poets, Gerrish (2004)
concludes that the process of revision is shared across poets and involves rearrang-
ing, reducing and refining. He defines rearranging as “moving thoughts and lines
around” (p. 106), which may subsequently lead to the deletion of adjacent lines.
Rearranging can also involve changes to line breaks. As to reducing, Gerrish (2004)
sees it as “the compressing and deleting of words, lines and ideas” (p. 112). Ac-
cordingly, reducing brings “focus”, “succinctness” and “honesty” to their poetry,
which the author defines as “polishing”. In particular, Gerrish (2004) specifies that
this process of refining utilizes the poets “aesthetic conscious” (p. 118) to refine the
artistic aspects of the written poem. As he specifies, this process of refining may
continue even after a poem has been published.
Another analysis of a collection of statements made by professional contempo-
rary poets on their writing processes was carried out by Bizarro (1990), who point-
ed out that “revision is a creative and crucial component of the writing process [...]
The intensity and duration of revision vary dramatically, though as the poem moves
from draft to draft, those who revise seem to see with increasing clarity what their
 Chapter 2. The process of writing poetry 

poems might become” (p. 56). The studies reviewed here indicate that the process
of poetry writing seems to situate revision as a centrally significant process.

2.2.2 The process of discovery

In a self-study of his own adolescent poetry writing, Hanauer (2004) suggests that
in the writing of poetry the writer discovers aspects of meaning in the real world
experience addressed by the poem that he had not been aware of prior to the writ-
ing itself. Within this study, poetry is defined according to its ability to provide
insight through linguistic negotiation: “as a literary text that presents the experi-
ences, thoughts and feelings of the writer through a self-referential use of language
that creates for the reader and writer a new understanding of the experience,
thought or feeling expressed in the text” (p. 10). Poetry writing in this sense is a
process of cognitive and emotional insight.
Phillips (1997) describes the development of a young poet over a series of
years from 5th to 8th grade. Like Hanauer (2004), she emphasizes the process of
personal insight as a central component of the writing process. Poetry places the
young poet in the position of witness in which she expresses and interprets her
inner and outer worlds. In Phillip’s (1997) description and analysis, the develop-
ment of the young poet followed in her article is characterized by the development
of the ability to craft and control the poetic form. The poet herself eloquently de-
scribes this process in metaphorical terms as the difference between writing with
a thick crayon in fifth grade and doing it with a thin crayon in 8th grade.
There seems to be a connection between the process of revision and the devel-
opment of cognitive insight in the sense that the process of revision for expert
poets relates to the written poetic text as an object that has been externalized and,
as such, revision is designed to uncover what the poem itself ‘knows’ (see Armstrong,
1986). In other words, the presence of an external text allows the writer to criti-
cally evaluate positions and understandings as if they came from someone else. A
think-aloud study of a single adolescent poet reaches a similar conclusion. Here,
McIntyre (2008) considers the presence of the text as an entity as a source for fo-
cusing the poets’ thoughts and ideas. Other researchers such as Bizarro (1990) and
Schwartz (1983) support a similar position when they describe revision and draft-
ing as a process through which clarity in relation to the meanings of the poem
emerge. During revision, several drafts are produced and carefully modified and,
as a consequence, the poem becomes denser. This process requires knowledge of
poetry and self-confidence characteristic of the seasoned poet’s drafting process
(Schwartz, 1983).
In another study, Colley (2005) presents a description of his usage of poetry
writing within a culturally diverse high-school setting. To this purpose, he utilizes
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

the concept of poetry writing as a process of discovery, connecting it to issues of

critical empowerment within the classroom and students’ lives. Arguing from the
position that current approaches to literacy education directed by processes of
standardization have led to a marginalization of student voice, he sees poetry writ-
ing as a way of constructing agency and directing a process of critical self-reflec-
tion. As described by Colley (2005), engaging students in poetry involves writing
it as well as reading each others’ poems, dialoging, and carrying out discussions
with the teacher. As he states, “poetry is more than words on a page, it is the inter-
action and experiences sparked by those words on the page written by a particular
human being. In this context, student writing becomes a complex process of un-
derstanding, accepting, redefining and loving self ” (p. 3). In his analysis, poetry
writing leads to agency through the process of a critical understanding of the forc-
es of oppression faced by students and their enhanced understanding of the world
they live in. His position echoes a previous study (Hanauer, 2003) that argued that
poetry allows multicultural moments of contact between human beings in which
personal experience is linguistically negotiated and expressed.
These positions concerning writing poetry as a process of discovery are the
basis for the development of the clinical field of poetry therapy. According to Bolton
(1999:118), “The writing of poetry profoundly alters the writer because the process
faces with oneself. Poetry is the exploration of the deepest and most intimate expe-
riences, thoughts, feelings, ideas: distilled, pared to succinctness, and made music
to the ear by lyricism”. As reported by Gerrish (2004), “there is evidence that strong
emotion is a factor that led several of the poets to immersion in poetry writing”
(p. 62). Therefore, poetry writing would seem to be a form of therapeutic self- dis-
covery that allows strong emotions to be explored, explicated and expressed.

2.2.3 The poetry writing process

The studies referred to in the previous section present two major characteristics:
the importance of revision and the focus on personal discovery. They suggest that
there is a relationship between these two characteristics with extensive revision
slowly leading to a discovery of the hidden meanings within the language of the
poem. The reports on poetry writing suggest that this form of creative writing
leads to insight and has potential as a critical tool of self-reflection. The emphasis
on revision also suggests that the process of poetry writing is directed by aware-
ness of language and explicit consideration of how language functions in creating
its meanings. These conclusions are reminiscent of the defined characteristics of
the process of reading poetry. As defined by Hanauer (2001a), poetry is a genre
that combines attention to meaning with attention to form. This conclusion seems
to hold true for both the reading and writing of poetry.
 Chapter 2. The process of writing poetry 

2.3 Methodology

In this section additional data will be offered so as to develop an understanding of

how poems are written. The overall methodological approach consisted of the
analysis of the gradual development of a series of poems through their drafts and
an interview process with the poets to explore their understandings of the specific
poems and the poetry writing process. The two research methods are conceptu-
ally integrated in that the analysis of the drafts provides evidence as to the histori-
cal development and the interview process provides reflective insight into the po-
ets’ thought processes in relation to this specific case of poetry writing.

2.3.1 Participants: Three participants took part in this research project. All three
were female students in their last year of studies in a Master of Fine Arts degree
specializing in poetry writing at an internationally known Midwestern University
in the United States. The three participants were chosen because they were in the
final stages of completing their poetic theses as a final graduation process and
because of their willingness to share their experiences of writing poetry and their
actual poems with the researcher. As a result of their preparation for the thesis
project, each of them had undergone a process of reflection on their poetic work
and the evaluation of their own poetry. The data collection and interviewing was
timed to coincide with the period just before theses presentation as this was con-
sidered by the researcher to be the optimal time for accessing these young semi-
professional poets’ understanding of their writing process. In this study the three
participants were given the pseudonyms Ellen, Karen, and Sally.

2.3.2 Data Collection: Two types of data were collected: poems and their histori-
cal drafts and interview data. The three participants provided the researcher with
all the drafts of 3 poems that they had written and completed. The complete data
set of poems and drafts consisted of 57 poems. The poems and their drafts were
presented to the researcher before the personal interview so that the researcher
could analyze them beforehand. The interview consisted of two sections: 1) gen-
eral understandings about poetry; 2) reflections on the process of writing the spe-
cific poems presented. The general questions were as follows:
1. What is a poem for you?
2. Why do you write poetry?
3. What is the importance of poetry?
4. What has influenced your poetry?
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

The second part of the interview consisted of following the development of each of
the poems through the series of drafts. The questions addressed the context of
writing and the procedures involved in it. The participants were asked to explain
why specific changes were made to the various drafts of each of the poems.

2.3.3 Procedure: The initial stages of this project consisted of gaining the trust of
the participants in this research project. The researcher approached the Chair of the
poetry-writing program and explained the nature of the project, requesting the op-
portunity to meet and discuss poetry writing with several students. The Chair was
skeptical of the relevance of the proposed plan. In a series of meetings and through
the exchange of articles written by the researcher on the process of poetry reading,
the Chair eventually changed her mind and suggested the names of several students
who were at a suitable stage of development for being potential participants. The
researcher provided a brief written description of the aims of the research project
and the types of procedure involved. These were given to the Chair and she passed
them on to the potential participants. Following initial agreement, students were
contacted by phone and the project explained verbally. Over the phone, the par-
ticipants were asked to choose three of their own poems that they appreciated and
that they had the prior drafts of. They were also asked if they were willing to share
these with the researcher. Upon agreement, these were brought to the researcher’s
office a few weeks before the interview process. The interviews were conducted
individually and in an on-campus office. Before starting the interview, the aims of
the study were once again explained and agreement to be audio-recorded was re-
quested. After consenting, the interview was started and recorded. The interviews
took about an hour and were conducted in an open, congenial atmosphere. All
three participants reported enjoying the opportunity to discuss their own poetry
and writing processes. Following the interview, the audiotapes were transcribed.

2.3.4 Data Analysis: At the outset of this research project it was assumed that the
process of writing poetry would be individual to each poet and potentially specific
for each of the poems presented for analysis to the researcher. The data analysis
consisted of the following stages:
1. A close literary reading of the collected poems and their drafts so as to iden-
tify changes among the different drafts of the poems. This close reading was
conducted before the interviews and was used to inform the preparation of
specific questions relating to the process of writing each of the poems.
2. After the interviews, the collected poems and their drafts were carefully ana-
lyzed for changes. This analysis had a quantitative as well as a qualitative
component. The number of words, lines and stanzas, and the word/line-ratios
 Chapter 2. The process of writing poetry 

were compiled. Changes to the graphic outline were noticed and recorded.
Any changes to the content of the poem across the various drafts were speci-
fied and quantified under the heading of Additions to the Text (new written
material); Deletions to the Text (material deleted) and Exchanges to the Text
(replacing text with new text in the same position in the poem). The number
of additions, deletions and changes were counted for each draft of each poem.
3. The audiotapes of the interviews were transcribed and then analyzed for state-
ments that had to do with the process of writing each of the poems and more
general comments relating to the participants’ understanding of the poetry
writing process. A written analysis of the process was generated for each poem
and poet.
4. During the analysis, it became clear that there were broad similarities in the
writing process. A cross-description comparison was then conducted in order
to arrive at a more general set of characteristics of the writing process. This set
of characteristics was both verbally and graphically defined. In order to vali-
date it, this set was applied to the description of each of the more specific po-
etry writing processes and any divergences evaluated. These were found to be
broad enough to incorporate the more specific descriptions without losing the
core description of poetry writing provided by the data.

2.4 Results

As described above, the analysis for each poet was conducted individually under
the assumption that each poet would provide a different configuration of the po-
etry writing process that was individualized to the specific poet and potentially to
particular poems. However, the results revealed a similar set of characteristics of
poetry writing across poets and poems. Here, the overall characteristics will be
presented and grounded in the responses and poems of the different participants.
As described by the participants and validated by the analyses, the poetry writing
process takes place in four different stages, as presented graphically in Figure 2.1.
The first stage is that of ACTIVATION, in which an experiential and/or asso-
ciative process triggers the writing process. The second stage is DISCOVERY, in
which the writer finds new underlying meanings and gives new directions to the
emerging poem. During this stage the writer decides on the real meaning of the
poem, its subject and communicative and emotional insight. The third stage is
termed PERMUTATION, in which the poem develops through a series of rewrit-
ings. The last stage is FINALIZATION. Here the poet produces the last version of
the poem. It is important to note that the two middle stages are not presented as
linear by the participants. Discovery and permutation are recurrent and cyclical in
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

THE THE THE THE

ACTIVATION DISCOVERY PERMUTATION FINALIZATION
STAGE STAGE STAGE STAGE
− Real world − Discovery of − Rewriting and − Decision to view
events underlying redrafting of poem poem as a finished
− Generated ‘deeper’ meaning leading to a discovery object
ideas − Discovery of new − Adjusting drafted poem − Intuitive and
− Sensory images direction for to express new partial decision
and sounds poem direction and that can be
− Intertextual − Discovery of understanding changed after
influences internal and following discovery subsequent
− Poetry writing external world − Rewriting and consideration
intention redrafting relating to
aesthetic criteria.

Figure 2.1. Graphic Representation of the Poetry Writing Process

nature, as indicated by the arrows in Figure 2.1. What occurs during the process of
writing and rewriting is that discoveries and new insights concerning the meaning
of the poem are made. Once a new meaning has been assigned, a process of rewrit-
ing and linguistic experimentation may be enacted. One participant described this
overall process in the following way:
Sally: “A poem can have a tremendous number of triggers. In the process you end
up with a generated subject. So a poem (.) sort of (.) is that path from if you like
from your trigger to the generated subject through its various permutations it
sends spirals around. I suppose and you end up with a final version. The final ver-
sion for me (.) I suppose (.) is a thread that links the ideas that helped you come
to the final result”. (See Appendix B for transcription conventions).

Using the journey metaphor, this poet describes the writing process as a spiral
movement in which ideas are connected and form into a completed text. Rather
than a directed, planned process central to this description is the idea of meaning
emerging from the process of working on the poem. Another participant who
captured the cyclical nature of the discovery and permutation stages formulated
her experience in the following terms:
Karen: “I guess it is a process of discovery, mostly (.) but well (.) and also crafting
it and using language in an interesting way to express the discovery. So I guess first
 Chapter 2. The process of writing poetry 

it’s a discovery and language, but then going back and trying to make the language
match the discovery that happened in the process of writing it”.

As with the Sally’s description, here Karen focuses on the way in which meanings
emerge during the writing of a poem. For both these poets, this process of discov-
ery would seem central. In the next sections, each of these stages will be described
in greater detail.

2.4.1 Activation

As described by the participants, the activation stage is characterized by the initia-

tion of the poetry writing process. Five types of events were identified: real world
events, generated ideas, captivating sensory images or sounds, intertextual influ-
ences and the basic intention to write. These five options are not mutually exclu-
sive. For example, a real world event may generate an idea and an image, or an
image may activate the recollection of a real world event which is then used to start
a poem. As with descriptions of other writing processes, producing a poem seems
in most cases to start well before the writer sits down in front of the computer
screen (or sets pen to paper). Real world events were reported by the participants
to be the source of many of their poems. In this data set, participants reported that
they were aware during or immediately after a noticeable real world event that this
would appear in a poem. Consider the following description:
Karen: “My husband and I were driving to this birthday dinner and we hit a deer
and I didn’t write this until later (.) I mean it was probably about a month after it
happened. I first wrote a draft (.) but it’s the kind of thing you know you’re going
to write about when it happens (.) it’s just like (.) some day I’m going to write
about this (1.0) that night we kind of had the conversation, who gets to write the
poem. Because he’s a poet also so when something happens to both of us we kind
of have to battle it out over who (2.0) I was really upset when we hit the deer and
it was kind of this thing where we disagreed about it (.) well we didn’t disagree
about it but that I was really upset that we had hit this deer and he was really re-
lieved that we hadn’t hit the deer in a worse way (.) where we were in a big wreck
(.) so we had this kind of different perspective on it”.

Another participant resorts to past experience in the initiation stage as follows:

Ellen: “So I had this experience where we were in the funeral home (.) I was there
with family and friends who played music with me (.) well we had to go upstairs
and pack and everyone else had left and we came back down and it was kind of
strange and creepy and this guy I was with he was from a small town and started
talking with the funeral director and I was just standing there bewildered. So that
was one poem I wanted to write was being in the funeral home when no one else
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

was there like the behind the scenes things that you really think you are not sup-
posed to see (2.0) I don’t think while I was there I was thinking about writing it
but he did (.) the one thing he said the guy I was with sort of pointed to the direc-
tor and said ‘he’s an artist with the dead’ and that phrase stuck with me and I
thought ‘what a bizarre thing to say.’ So that was actually it used to be the title of
the poem (1.0) I wrote it down in my journal pretty close to that time and then
later when I was looking around for something to write about I probably came
across it. That’s how a lot of poems start.”

In the two statements presented above, the real world events addressed deal with
the issue of death. The majority of the events described in the poetry tended to
be distressing. It is possible that disturbing events require more of reflective proc-
ess and as such lend themselves to poetic writing or perhaps the negative is just
more salient in memory. However, in the wider data set not all the real world
events were traumatic. Less disturbing events such as eating a grilled cheese
sandwich, having a student fall asleep in class, and sitting behind a guy with a big
head were all mentioned as real world events that initiated poems. The main
criterion for an initiating event seemed to be the strangeness or unusualness of
the event as experienced by the poet. Only upon realization of this strangeness is
the process generated, culminating in the writing of a poem. This perhaps re-
flects the type of aesthetic perception captured by the Russian Formalist concept
of defamiliarization in which the familiar is estranged and as such is open for
new consideration.
Intertextuality is another source for the initiation of poetry writing. In the cur-
rent data set two types of intertextuality were described: the reading of other works
of literature and the reading of one’s own journal entries. Here is how one partici-
pant verbalized it:
Ellen: “I sort of got the idea for this poem from one by Billie Collins called ‘My
Heart”. It describes a sword I think (.) some kind of artifact it talks about the han-
dle being all decorated and it’s a really interesting poem (.) so I really tried to do
that but I wasn’t able to do it so I ended up with a few of those ideas”.

As described, the movement from reading to writing a new poem is not direct.
Rather the text was analyzed for what it aimed to do as a poem (describe an arti-
fact) and then utilized for the creation of a new poem. However, in some cases, the
intertextual relationship is more direct. Consider the following statement:
Sally: “...you need something to begin a poem (.) you need an image or I mean
some poems I wrote that just started with a color. You need something to start and
it’s kind of useful to have a collection of books poetry books (.) so that if you sat
there not knowing what to do you can look in the books and find something that
appeals to you (1.0) so I started with a line from Brigit Pegeen Kelly and the poem
 Chapter 2. The process of writing poetry 

evolved from the line and when I wrote this poem I considered it as a kind of ex-
periment because I think it is more motivated by sound than by image”.

In this statement, a specific line of poetry from another poet is used as a starting
point for a more extended exploration, which is not motivated by the content of
the line but rather by the sounds that it evokes. It is these that are explored in the
poetry writing process. The same participant also describes how she utilizes her
own journal writing in a similar way.
Sally: “Well I looked through the notebook and I found the quote and then I have
a few photographs here of my grandparents and the last one was at a wedding
their wedding so I thought Oh I’ll write about that”.

In this example, a quote from a journal combined with the image in a family pho-
tograph functioned as the starting point of a poem. As seen in the statement of
another participant presented above, the journal functions as a way of storing
memories, experiences and, most importantly, quotes that can be read as a source
of poetic material and as a way of initiating a poem.
Finally, the writing process can be triggered by a sensory perception or an
idea. Consider the following two statements:
Karen: “50% of the time I think I’ll have a line in my head or I’ll just have an idea
and I’ll sit down to write and sometimes I’ll just sit down to write and I’ll just
stream of consciousness write until I hit something interesting.”
Ellen: “Sometimes I don’t have an intention I have an image and I’ll start writing
about it and go somewhere from there.”

In these quotes, a poetry writing sequence is initiated through a multi-sensory

experience. It is not clear to the writer at the point of activation how this poem will
develop but there is an imagistic or ideational thought that starts an associative
process. The written poem emerges through an associative written and reflective
response to this activating image, line or thought.

2.4.2 Discovery

This stage consists of a process in which a new, unexpected meaning or direction

is found for the poem that has already been initiated and may exist in draft form.
This discovery seems to go beyond what the poet already knows about the poem,
as illustrated in following statement:
Sally: “The discovery can be a discovery that is sort of driven by image that you’re
writing through an associative process you start to investigate another subject and
through that you investigate something else and something else and I think that
the discovery can be the final sort of revelation of the poem that comes at the end
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

or it can come sooner than that. You know you are sort of in the middle of the
poem can open up into a completely different area and you realize that that is
probably what you were writing about. And usually that’s something deeper”.

This description suggests that writing a poem develops through an associative

process without the poet having a clear understanding of the subject of the written
text. Finding out what the poem is about comes as a ‘revelation’ that changes the
direction of the poem. Thus, although every poem has an initiating event, the dis-
covery stage reveals a deeper meaning or understanding of the text itself and of the
writer’s own internal world and thoughts. Another participant in discussing
changes to one of her poems extends this point:
Karen: “It’s the key it’s kind of the key moment of the poem and in the poem it only
took a few lines and so I felt like it needed to be that moment needed to be slowed
down in the poem since it’s an important moment (.) and then the main thing I
added is the story about the father and the deer when my husband was a kid (.)
which is strange that I hadn’t put in there before because that (.) that (.) hearing
that story after we hit the deer really haunted (.) the story really haunted me be-
cause I thought how awful to put a deer in the back seat with the kids (.) and just
how horrific and (.) but I didn’t even ever think to put it in until, until this point
and so that’s the big discovery (.) like (.) realizing that the poem’s about that.”

Here Karen explains why she added a new section to a draft version of her poem.
She is surprised that she had not added it before as it really struck her emotionally
in the real world event. The specific section deals with a childhood memory of her
husband, in essence someone else’s narrative. But in a poetic way this memory and
narrative encapsulates the lived-through experience of horror at hitting a deer.
Accordingly, it was this component that was missing from the draft version of the
poem. The addition is a discovery that allows the poet to understand the direction
of the poem and the actual experience described in the text. Another participant
reinforces this point in the following words:
Ellen: “I learn so much about my own experiences and my own feelings just by
writing it down as poetry (.) even if sometimes I change so fast so it’s not neces-
sarily a recording of what’s happened (.) but it allows me to discover things that I
wouldn’t have known if I had just sat and thought about it.”

Here the participant connects the discovery process with learning about her own
experiences and feelings. The actual writing helps her to realize the meaning of the
experience or feeling that she is writing about. It is in this sense that writing po-
etry involves a refocusing of both the poetic content and the internal world that
the poem refers to. As such and as directly stated in this next quote, the stage of
discovery is in some ways the heart and core of poetic writing.
 Chapter 2. The process of writing poetry 

Karen: “The whole attraction of it is that you are discovering something in your-
self (2.0) if you don’t discover something in the process of writing it’s almost guar-
anteed to be a bad poem (.) because you’re not learning (.) you’re just spitting out
what you already knew.”

In this sense the poetry writing process is a form of inquiry in which meanings of
personal experience are discovered during the process of writing. As opposed to
other forms of academic writing in which what is known is stated and writing is
point driven, the process of writing a poem as reflected in these young poets’ state-
ments suggests a process of self discovery through the writing itself.

2.4.3 Permutation

Rewriting and redrafting during which the poem is carefully considered and
changed characterize this stage. In some cases these changes are radical and involve
the deletion or exchange of large sections. In other cases, they can be minor. In the
current data set, the number of drafts per poem ranged from 4 to 12. Table 2.1 be-
low presents the frequencies of addition, deletion and exchange for each poem
through its variety of drafts and the frequency of changes of the graphic form.
The categories in this table capture in broad terms the changes made to the
poems through their various drafts. Most but not all the poems underwent serious
rewriting during the permutation stage. Only one had minor revisions (Sally,
Poem 1) with four undergoing extensive revision (Sally, Poem 3; Ellen Poems 2 &
3; Karen, Poem 2). As the totals indicate, exchange was preferred by these poets
followed by deletion and addition. This result suggests that permutation mainly
consists of reworking within the framework of the existing text – either by deleting

Table 2.1. Frequency of Graphic Forms, Additions, Deletions and Exchanges of Draft Versions

Poet Poem # Additions Deletions Exchanges Graphic form

Sally 1 0 3    0 2
Sally 2 2 13 11 3
Sally 3 29 38 24 4
Ellen 1 6 2    5 3
Ellen 2 3 8 23 2
Ellen 3 7 12 28 2
Karen 1 0 8    7 2
Karen 2 14 11 24 3
Karen 3 3 2    5 2
Total 64 97 127 23
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

or by exchanging the components. It is interesting to notice that all the poems

underwent at least two changes in graphic form. This suggests attention to layout.
Overall, Table 2.1 indicates permutation as a stage in which the draft versions un-
dergo a series of changes in form and content.
These numbers, however, do not capture the type of changes nor the reasons
why they occurred. Explanations presented by the participants during the inter-
view suggested two reasons for changing their poems: a) a discovery of the real
subject; and b) an aesthetic evaluation. In relation to the first category, one par-
ticipant stated:
Ellen: “I think a lot of times something will kinda have like a lot of the poems I
worked on for my thesis (.) I was working really hard and they didn’t seem to work
and then finally I had a breakthrough of some kind and then I was able to put
things in a different order and add something new (.) something that would make
it seem to just click into place.”

As described by this participant, the process of permutation and discovery are

intertwined. She starts with experimentation, which leads to a discovery of the
underlying issue that she wishes to address, after which the poem can be reordered
and reworked. The discovery directs the need for new material and a new order.
Another participant addressed this issue in a slightly different way:
Karen: “Poetry I write a lot more slowly (.) poetry is much more condensed. I’m
more careful about the language. There’s something psychological with poetry
where you’re (1.0) it’s kind of, you’re trying to be as precise as you can”

In this statement, precision is based on the connection between the internal world
that desires to be expressed (but may not be fully comprehended) and the linguis-
tic manifestation of this world in the emerging poem. Precision, in the sense ex-
pressed here, refers to the idea of concisely constructing language that reflects and
recreates internal meanings while being aware of the constant inaccuracy of lan-
guage to succeed in this task. Hence, permutation results in the constant search for
the precise statement that captures an internal thought.
As for aesthetic quality, participants provided a series of different criteria.
Some were more general comments related to the concept of “poetic language”,
such as in:
Karen: “there’s poetic in a good way and poetic in a bad way (.) poetic in a bad way
is, you can feel the writer saying I need to sound like a poet here, here I go (.)
rather than just writing in a real voice”.

The participant here holds that poetry can sometimes sound too contrived and
thus too distancing for the audience. Paradoxically, this criterion directed the ex-
change of large sections of her second poem, in order to make it sound more real
 Chapter 2. The process of writing poetry 

and less contrived. In contrast, most of the comments were very specific and ad-
dressed particular issues in their aesthetic tastes, such as the issues of lining,
graphic form, sound patterns, emotional impact, spacing, order of information,
word association, density of information and stanza structure.
In this data set there was one additional component to the permutation stage.
The participants were all members of a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program di-
rected specifically at writing poetry. Part of this educational context consists in
sharing poems with the other poets and instructors in the course. They reported
that this had influenced some of their decisions. For example, consider the follow-
ing comment:
Karen: “well in an MFA program we have to workshop and so we get responses
and Mary’s ((the poet/instructor)) an influence so she’s certainly critiqued (.) I
think this draft to this draft it’s my husband who read it (.) and I think he sug-
gested to cut the beginning”.

This participant points out that the workshop created a situation in which various
aspects of her poems were questioned and different ways of writing were suggest-
ed. This workshop dialogue promotes a process of permutation and change in the
poems themselves.
What these comments indicate is that the permutation and discovery stages
are intertwined. The discovery of the underlying meaning and specific form of the
poem results from the rewriting and redrafting of the poem. It is essentially the
connection between these two processes that generates the poem and its special
relationship with the internal world of the poet. The following comment reinforc-
es this notion:
Karen: “poetry can sometimes express something that you didn’t know you felt (.)
like you read it and realize (.) I mean partly you discover something from reading
it but you sort of (.) it’s like you discover something that you already knew but you
didn’t know you knew it or it’s just like something makes sense in a new way”.

This process of self-discovery is experienced as a form of surprise. The process

of rewriting and working on the poem, the careful rereading of externalized, lin-
guistically negotiated thought, allows the poet to find new meanings in old experi-
ences. It seems to be a process of defamiliarization of internal thought that allows
a new appraisal of what is actually known by the writer.

2.4.4 Finalization

This stage is characterized by a decision to finish the rewriting and redrafting and
to view the text as a finished object. To be more exact, the participants in this study
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

describe this decision as being more intuitive and partial rather than clear-cut and
final. It is in a way final- until- the- next-reading, in which potentially there may
be more changes that need to be made. But at some point, a sense of balance is
reached in which the poem is considered to be final and ready for other readers
and listeners. This is how one of the participants described it:
Karen: “When I wrote the ending I completely thought I had it (.) I mean (.) I
thought the ending was right on and the poem was done which is what always
happens and (.) I mean now (.) when I look back I don’t think so (.) but you know
(.) at that time I thought, okay.”

In this statement both the original sense of ending and the potential for more re-
writing are addressed. As in the discussion of the permutation stage, poets function
with a set of aesthetic criteria for the evaluation of poetry. This implies that during
a rereading, poets become an audience for their own poem and new things can be
observed leading to additional changes. This potential for future change is enhanced
by the nature of the finalization process. Consider the following two quotes:
Ellen: “I usually can diagnose that feeling of ending when I read a poem cause I
always read them out loud when I think I have a draft that is readable and I read
it out loud and I think that nothing is horrible wrong then I think it may be
okay”.
Sally: “The resolution which is maybe what I meant in the first place is kind of the
ending of the poem and you feel that the poem has not come full circle but is
something kind of shaped like a letter c you sort of come partly the way around
but you don’t want to make everything totally full circle”.

In both these quotes, it is the intuitive sense of ending that directs the decision that
the poem is finished. This decision is described as being holistic and to a certain
extent interpretive. When the poem feels right and has the right balance among its
various components and provides the appropriate emotional impact, then it is felt
to be finished.

2.5 Discussion

All empirical research is sensitive to the context of its own data collection. The
current study presents a series of characteristics of poetry writing that are shared
by three young poets who, at the time of data collection, were finishing their MFA
degrees in the same programme. These poets all knew each other and had taken
poetry workshops together. However, it is noticeable that the ways in which they
describe the process of poetry writing replicates many of the findings of previous
studies, which allows more general statements. In other words, the fact that similar
 Chapter 2. The process of writing poetry 

descriptions were developed independently in several different studies offers

greater strength to the current description of the process of writing poetry. For
instance, the relationship between the discovery and permutation stages presented
in this chapter is parallel to the findings in the investigations reviewed above which
see revision as a major characteristic of poetry writing and as related to the process
of discovery (Armstrong, 1984, 1985, 1986; Bizarro, 1990; Gerrish, 2004; Schwartz,
1983). The findings reported by Armstrong (1986), that expert poets delete more
often than they elaborate, are also supported by the current study. As seen here, the
participants did delete more than they added new material and were involved in a
process of exchange (deleting and adding different material) more than just delet-
ing. This process involved aesthetic evaluation (Armstrong, 1986) as well as new
insight. Revision moved the poems towards a more succinct, focused and accurate
expression of the poet’s meaning (Gerrish, 2004). In addition, both previous re-
search and the present study indicate that poetry writing involves a movement
towards personal discovery (Bolton, 1999; Colley, 2005; Hanauer, 2004; Phillips,
1997). It actually triggers a process of learning and understanding personal experi-
ence, a revisiting and interpretation of personal events and experiences.
A further finding is that poetry writing is partly recursive and not linear, which
is not surprising (see, for instance, McIntyre, 2008). Previous research has posited
that there are a series of initiating events for poetry writing. Gerrish (2004) presents
several writing routines (such as journals and notebooks) and poem triggers (such
as strong emotions, images and textual influences) that initiate the process. This
chapter has shown a similar concept of an activation stage in which real world
events, ideas, images and intertextual influences initiate the process of writing a
poem. Noticeably, the internal and external worlds of the individual play a role in
the initiating process. There is also agreement that in the first stages poets may not
have a clear understanding of the content of their poem. There seems to be an ini-
tiating event that is then explored through a series of literacy experiments (or games),
which ultimately lead to an internal discovery about what the real subject of the
poem is (Armstrong, 1984, 1985, 1986; Gerrish, 2004). Through several textual re-
finements and adjustments, the poem moves in a new direction and an understand-
ing of the text and its issues is developed. This process leads to greater awareness on
the part of the poet of their own internal world and the world that is around them
(Colley, 2005; Hanauer, 2004). As presented by Gerrish (2004), the poem has a
provisional ending. A decision is made that the poem is finished, albeit provision-
ally, as even after the poem is published the poet may continue to revise and change
it. Once a discovery has been made and the language and form of the poem ex-
plored, the poet reaches a sense of balance in relation to the components and it is at
this stage that the poem is provisionally considered to be finished.
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

Of all the studies of poetry writing so far, the most developed model has been
that of Gerrish (2004), who analysed the processes involved in the writing of six
specific poems by professional poets, allowing her to propose seven categories of
action: the original impetus to write, writing routines, triggers for writing, draft-
ing, revising, ending and external influences. There are striking similarities be-
tween her findings and the current study. The activation stage described in this
chapter incorporates the impetus, routines and triggers presented by Gerrish
(2004). The permutation stage includes what Gerrish called the drafting and revis-
ing stages. The finalization stage parallels her ending category. As in the previous
study, the one described here also takes into account that discussion with other
poets and the reading of poetry influence the writing of the poem. However,
Gerrish sees discovery as part of the revision stage, whereas it is here seen as a
separate and central component of the poetry writing process, but also situated
within the context of the working and reworking of the poem in conjunction with
the permutation stage.
Contrary to the tendency to assume a plurality of writing processes individu-
alized for each poet, the evidence of the studies reviewed here suggests that a more
general set of characteristics may be proposed. In this sense, poetry writing would
start as a response to a series of potential triggers such as real world events, strong
emotions, and sensory images. The poem is initiated without a clear, formed un-
derstanding of its content and meaning or the described experience, thought or
feeling. It evolves through processes of drafting and revision leading to a sense of
discovery, in which insights into the original event, experience, thought or feeling
are revealed to the writer. Through the permutation stage, the poet tries to make
the poem as succinct, focused, honest and accurate as possible. Once the insight is
obtained and a balance between the aesthetic and cognitive components is reached,
the poem is considered to be provisionally finished.

2.6 Poetry writing and qualitative research

Before this chapter concludes, some assumptions concerning the characteristics of

poetry writing as a research method should be made clear. In a widely referenced
book on qualitative research design, Maxwell (1996) states the first purpose of
qualitative research is:
“Understanding the meaning, for participants in the study, of the events, situations
and actions they are involved with and of the accounts that they give of their lives
and experiences. I am using ‘meaning’ here in a broad sense to include cognition,
affect, intentions, and anything else that can be included in what qualitative re-
searchers often refer to as the ‘participants’ perspective ... ... In a qualitative study,
 Chapter 2. The process of writing poetry 

you are interested not only in the physical events and behavior that is taking place,
but also in how your participants in your study make sense of this and how their
understandings influence their behavior” (p. 17)

As seen in this chapter, the process of writing a poem is also one of reflection,
discovery and expression of personal experience, thoughts and feelings. In other
words, poetry writing is a process in which participants attempt to make sense of
their own experiences and express them in a way that other readers may have an
insight into their own subjective interpretation of personally meaningful events.
Powerful emotions and real world events form an impetus for poetry writing and,
through the different revisions of the poem, its meaning and the meaning of the
events addressed slowly emerge. As such, a poem is qualitative data which presents
personal events and the specific ways in which the writer understands and feels
their significance. It is this aspect of poetry writing that makes it a valuable tool for
qualitative research. The poem is not an immediate response, but rather a delib-
erative, personally meaningful interpretation of the portrayed events.
 chapter 3

Second language poetry writing

Textual and literary characteristics

3.1 Introduction

In the previous chapter the characteristics of the process of writing poetry as re-
vealed through a qualitative study were addressed and presented. In addition,
some initial conceptions about the relationship between the process of writing
poetry and qualitative research were proposed. The current chapter widens this
discussion. More specifically, here it is discussed whether writing poetry in a sec-
ond language is a dauntingly difficult (perhaps even impossible) task for most sec-
ond language learners. In order to evaluate this concern, the literature on second
language learners and poetry is reviewed and the characteristics of advanced sec-
ond language writers are explored. The aim is to try and establish what we cur-
rently know about the abilities of second language learners in dealing with poetic
text and writing. This study is designed to answer the research question: What are
the textual and literary characteristics of poems written by adult second language
learners? The answer should allow us to define what characterizes the type of po-
etry written by second language learners in a context of this kind and whether this
has value as a research method. It must be pointed out that, as there is only limited
research which addresses the issue at hand, this chapter will present a detailed
analysis of the textual and literary characteristics of the corpus of second language
poetry described in Chapter One. This is the same data that will be used in subse-
quent chapters in this book for other research questions.

3.2 Poetry and the second language learner

There is relatively little research on literature and second language learners and
only a small subset deals with poetry. In addition, this research has, on the whole,
focused on reading and not writing. This is the reason why the data in this book
will provide some relevant initial groundwork. As seen in Chapter 2, writing po-
etry involves reading and revising one’s written text. In fact, one of the main as-
pects addressed involves discovering personal meanings within the written poem.
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

Accordingly, previous research on how second language learners read poetry is of

interest. In relation to this body of research, it is a logical conclusion that there is a
threshold level of language proficiency that is needed in order to read literature
(Hall, 2005). This conclusion is an extrapolation from existing research on reading
in a second language that shows that while reading in a second language involves
both bottom up (decoding) and top down (meaning construction processes), a
threshold of decoding processes and word level semantic activation has to be
achieved in order for the meaning construction process to be initiated. As pointed
out by Bernhardt (1991), second language reading requires more effort than first
language reading because basic decoding and word level semantic activation proc-
esses are slower even for advanced level, proficient second language learners. The
outcome of this situation is that in second language reading, the automaticity with
an exclusive focus on the meaning construction of content knowledge so charac-
teristic of advanced first language reading is never fully manifested. The relatively
slow decoding and semantic activation processes of second language readers leads
to a situation in which the L2 reader always has some cognizance of the actual
surface features of the text that they are reading (Hall, 2005; Krusche, 1995; Van
Peer & Theodoridou, 2007).
Against this backdrop of lessened automaticity and heightened awareness of
surface level textual features, poetry reading poses a rather interesting situation.
The basic characteristics of poetry are its foregrounded language and difficulties in
automatic meaning construction (Hall, 2005; Hanauer, 2001a; Paran, 2008). In a
series of studies, first language poetry reading has been shown to direct readers’
attention to the surface features of the text (Hanauer, 1998a; Hoorn, 1996; van
Peer, 1990) and that this added degree of attention enhanced surface information
recall of poetically manipulated texts (Hanauer, 1997a, 1998a, 1998b).
The importance of formal textual features in a first language poetry reading
has been explored in empirical, theoretical and linguistic research which indicates
that readers direct their attention to formal features and use them as an informa-
tion source for the interpretation of the poem (Hanauer 1995, 1996a, 1996b, 1998,
2001b; Miall & Kuiken 1998; van Peer 1986, 1990, 2007). Much before these em-
pirical studies, Culler (1975) had described poetry reading as a convention-driven
activity in which readers search for veiled meanings in the text and expect all lev-
els of linguistic information to function in unison in establishing meaning. From
a linguistic perspective, Jakobson (1960) and Mukarovsky (1964) determined that
poetry reading was a linguistically directed process in which the specific patterns
of language found in the poem would cause the reader to focus attention on the
formal features. In fact, as early as the beginning of the 20th century, Russian For-
malists argued that poetry reading involved texts that were linguistically con-
structed so as to specifically overcome the automaticity of first language reading.
 Chapter 3. Second language poetry writing 

Ironically, perhaps, these statements seem to suggest that poetry reading turns
first language readers into second language readers; or to put this in a different
way, poetry reading for first and second language readers may be a similar process
(Hall, 2005).
A major aspect of the previous chapter consisted in showing how poetry writ-
ing involves a process of discovering the meaning of experiences. In the same line,
it is important to explore how second language readers construct meaning while
reading poetry in a second language. Using a dyadic protocol method in which
pairs of advanced second language students were required to verbalize their
thoughts to one another as they constructed meaning while reading the poem
‘Suzanne’ by Leonard Cohen, Hanauer (2001b) characterized poetry reading as a
“meaning construction task that involves high levels of close consideration, analy-
sis and elaboration of textual meanings” (p. 320). The participants of this study
were extensively involved in noticing specific elements of the poem (a function
termed collecting data) and used these elements for the construction and then
elaboration of an interpretation of the poem. They spent most of their time under-
standing particular sections of the poem and looking closely for specific lines,
unusual grammatical usage and patterns of repetition. The construction of mean-
ing itself was complex and included their use of linguistic and schematic knowl-
edge. This process involved resorting to world knowledge and to a form of cul-
tural negotiation in which readers explored new potential cultural meanings,
which indicated a process of personal discovery.
An aspect of this process that is worth noting is that the second language read-
ers studied were not experts in literary analysis and in completing the poetry read-
ing task focused on linguistic rather than literary concepts in order to construct an
understanding of the poem. However, in their discussion they did use some liter-
ary concepts and in particular in their noticing of specific elements of the poem,
they responded and commented on repetition. In other words, they demonstrated
ability to recognize aspects of aesthetic textual manipulation (such as rhyme) and
used it in the actual meaning construction process.
The issue of whether advanced second language learners who read literature
use literary features was raised by Fecteau (1999), who explored whether the prod-
uct of literary reading included literary categories. In particular, he looked at the
categories of narrator, tone, themes and authorial aim, and concluded that the
participants were “inconsistent” in their ability to define and use literary concepts.
Both Hanauer (2001b) and Fecteau (1999) concluded that the ability to actually
use literary components is to a certain extent an open question.
A different aspect of poetry reading in a second language is the ability of litera-
ture to elicit emotional responses. Looking at a classroom context utilizing the lit-
erary teaching method of reading circles, Kim (2004) found evidence for emotional
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

engagement during the process of reading and discussing second language litera-
ture. She suggests that second language readers are capable of responding person-
ally and emotionally to literary texts as, in her analysis, the processes of literal com-
prehension, personal connections, cross-cultural themes, interpretation and
evaluation were all integrated within the process of discussing second language
literature. There is no additional empirical data to support Kim’s (2004) conclusion;
however, Paran (2008) in an extended overview of the literary reading in a second
language, states that literature is “motivating and engaging” (p. 490). A more con-
servative evaluation of this data would suggest that there is initial evidence to sug-
gest that literature may elicit emotional responses in second language readers.
In sum, these studies hold that advanced second language readers are capable
of reading and interpreting poetry and are oriented by the processes of directing
attention to meaning construction and linguistic form. As shown in Hanauer
(2001b), the second language learner seems first to notice and analyze linguistic
form and from this enter into a process of interpretation and elaboration in rela-
tion to the understanding of the poem. A similar conclusion and was found in
work on literary awareness conducted by Zyngier (1994). According to Fecteau
(1999), it is not clear how literary categories are used in this process and, as argued
by Hall (2005), it may be that the poetry interpretation process for second lan-
guage readers is directed initially by the requirement to understand and only at a
later stage by the need to evaluate aesthetic qualities. The studies reviewed suggest
that advanced second language writers can contend with the process of reading
and interpreting their own poetry, are aware of the ways linguistic information can
be manipulated in order to construct meaning, and that this process may involve
personal and emotional engagement.

3.3 Advanced, second language writers

The section above presented some studies that present an initial discussion of
whether second language writers can write poetry. Here, the literature on second
language writing will be addressed directly. Referring to the “second language
writer” as a unitary concept, however, is misleading in that it covers a wide range
of individuals with very different characteristics. A second language writer could
vary in relation to age, educational background, literacy experiences, ethnicity,
nationality, profession, motivation, language exposure, linguistic aptitude, person-
ality, etc. In other words, the phrase second language writer is actually a collective
term that covers extensive internal diversity. The particular population that the
current study explores consists of adult, undergraduate students from a variety of
ethnicities and nationalities all studying in an American university. The university
 Chapter 3. Second language poetry writing 

that the participants of the study described here were enrolled in required a mini-
mum score of 500 on the TOEFL. In relation to the literature on undergraduate
students in the US such scores usually indicate advanced language learners.
The research on advanced L2, undergraduate writers within an academic setting
has tended to focus on the writing of academic texts. A central trend is to compare
second language to first language writers. This direction has been critiqued under the
heading of what is known as the ‘comparative fallacy’, defined by Bley-Vroman (1983)
as “the mistake of studying the systematic character of one language by comparing it
to another”. The core problem is in the assumption that the language target is defined
by the language used by first language speakers. The outcome of most of these studies
is the definition of a series of deficits or errors that second language writers ‘suffer’
from. Probably the best known of these studies is the work conducted by Hinkel
(2002) in which 1,457 essays from both first language English speakers (termed Na-
tive English Speakers- NES) and second language writers (termed Non-Native Speak-
ers – NNS) were compared. Her conclusion was that a series of areas need further
work. For example, Hinkel (2002) states that “NNS’s need to learn more contextual-
ized and advanced academic vocabulary, as well as idioms and collocations to develop
a substantial arsenal to improve their writing in English” (p. 247). Or “NNS’s overuse
exemplification to a point where example giving and recounts of past-time events
represent the main content of their academic text” (p. 248). These examples show that
defining first language writing as the target of second writers detracts from the value
of second language writing by consistently seeing it in terms of absence of features
found in first language writing.
A better avenue for exploring second language writing which avoids the ‘com-
parative fallacy’ consists of comparing advanced and novice L2 writers, in which
the central finding seems to be that the former have a more discourse level per-
spective of their writing and written texts (Leki, Cumming & Silva, 2008). In an
early study of six university ESL learners, Zamel (1983) found that more advanced
writers focused on larger sections and grammatical components than less skilled
writers. This wider perspective has direct ramifications on the way these students
conduct the writing process. Utilizing verbal reports, Cumming (1990) found that
more advanced writers spent more time thinking about language use and gist
while they composed than less skilled writers. Advanced L2 writers were seen to
be more strategic and meta-cognitive in their writing resorting to a range of plan-
ning procedures (Sasaki, 2000; Skibniewski, 1988; Victori, 1999). In addition, they
were found to do more revision than novice students and to direct their revisions
processes towards global and high level revision (Sasaki, 2000; Skibniewski, 1988).
They were also more likely to address the organizational pattern of their writing
before and during their writing process than their novice counterparts (Hirose &
Sasaki, 1994; Sasaki & Hirose, 1996; Victori, 1999).
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

Advanced L2 writers discourse perspective was also reflected in the greater

attendance to content, consideration of audience and the exploration of different
rhetorical options (Hirose & Sasaki, 1994; Sasaki, 2000; Victori, 1999). Academic
texts written by advanced L2 writers involve higher frequencies of appropriately
used meta-discourse and organizational complexity (Intaraprawat & Steffensen,
1995; Sasaki, 2000). Their texts exhibit more enhanced linguistic richness when
compared to novice L2 writers. This richness includes increased usage of a wider
range of parts of speech and grammatical features (Grant & Ginther, 2000). They
produce more text than novice L2 writers (Grant & Ginther, 2000; Intaraprawat &
Stevenson, 1995; Sasaki, 2000) and use a wider range of vocabulary items, longer
words, and demonstrate more originality in usage than novice writers (Grant &
Ginther, 2000; Linnarud, 1983). The research concerning the textual characteris-
tics of advanced L2 writers suggests that these writers are concerned with the ap-
propriate expression of their ideas and have the linguistic knowledge and abilities
through which to produce complex, extended written text in a second language.
This brief review suggests that advanced L2 writers are capable of writing poetry
although this is a task that they are not usually exposed to and a hypothesis that
still needs to be investigated.

3.4 Textual and literary characteristics of second language poetry

The studies reviewed above, although quite solid, are indirect in relation to the
nature of second language poetry. To a certain extent, they support the position
that writing poetry in a second language should be possible; but they do not pro-
vide direct evidence. If poetry writing with second language learners is going to be
used as a research method, it is important to explore their textual and literary
characteristics, a topic which this section will address. Subsequent chapters look in
detail at individual poems, their expressed content and the associated writers’ con-
cerns and identities.
The corpus of 844 poems used for analysis here was produced by 81second lan-
guage poets over the years 2003–2009. The actual existence of these poems answers
the general question: can advanced second language learners write poetry? Since I
have 81 books of poetry written by 81second language poets, the answer to the ques-
tion whether they can write poetry is an obvious yes. However, the mere existence
of these poems does not tell us anything about their value or textual or literary char-
acteristics. What needs to be addressed at this point is the description of the textual
features of this collection, which the study described below tries to do.
 Chapter 3. Second language poetry writing 

3.4.1 Corpus description

The poems in this corpus were originally organized as books of poetry with adja-
cent artwork and photography. The poems were written by students from China,
Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Korea, Israel, Jordan,
Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Poland, Russia, Cyprus, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Kenya, and Burkina Faso. All the writers were ESL
undergraduate students enrolled in a course on College Writing.

3.4.2 Data analysis

From an operative perspective, describing the features of a corpus of second lan-

guage poems involves the definition of patterns of frequencies in relation to both
linguistic and literary categories of relevance. In the present case, the corpus was
comprised of poems written by advanced second language learners and an array of
different descriptive measures were used to analyze it. As summarized in Table 3.1
below, seven categories were discriminated: text size, lexical category, Lexical Fre-
quency Profile (Laufer & Nation, 1995; Laufer, 2005), poetic features, thematic
organization, lexical content, and expressed emotion.

Table 3.1. Categories, Analytical Method and Objective

Categories Analytical method Objective

1. Text Size Statistics on word, line and stanza. Establish size and length
2. Lexical Frequency of: pronouns, articles, Establish use of lexical category
Category verbs, adverbs, prepositions,
conjunctions, negations, and
quantifiers using LWIC2007.
3. Lexical Use of the Range software program. Establish the Lexical Frequency
Frequency Profile of vocabulary.
Profile (LFP)
4. Poetic Statistics on frequency of usage of Establish frequency of different
Features sound patterns, imagery, and micro-features
figurative language.
5. Thematic Statistics on different macro-level Establish how texts were organized
Organization patterns of thematic poetic text on thematic macro-level.
organization.
6. Lexical Use of Concordance software Establish frequency of content
Content programs to chart word frequency. words in their immediate verbal
context.
7. Expressed Use of LWIC2007 emotive word Establish the presence and extent of
Emotion frequencies. vocabulary that expresses emotion
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

The data analysis was conducted according to the following stages:

1. Poetry Transcription: each book of poetry was transcribed and transformed
into word documents. Each poem was given a single page and was typed using
exactly the same page layout, font, and spelling as the original. The attempt
was to reproduce the poems ipsis litteris.
2. Analysis of Text Size: A random subset of the corpus consisting of 216 po-
ems were analysed for basic statistics on text size characteristics. These po-
ems were read and word, lines and stanza counts conducted independently
by the researcher and an assistant in order to assure accuracy. The results
were tabulated and the following statistics were obtained: mode and aver-
age number of words per poem; mode and average words per line; mode
and average number of lines per poem; mode and average number of stan-
zas per poem.
3. Linguistic Category Analysis: The corpus of 844 poems was analysed for stand-
ard lexical word categories. The transcribed poems were prepared for analysis
in appropriate formats and analysed using the LIWC 2007 software program
(Pennebaker, Booth and Francis, 2007). This computational linguistic tool in-
dicates the frequency of words and words stems in relation to linguistic, psy-
chological and content categories. During this stage of analysis only the lin-
guistic categories of percentage of function words, pronouns (personal
pronouns, 1st person singular/plural, 2nd person, 3rd person singular/plural,
and impersonal pronouns), articles, common verbs, auxiliary verb tenses
(past, present and future), adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, negations and
quantifiers were used.
4. Lexical Frequency Profile: Using the Range software program, a Lexical Fre-
quency Profile (LFP) (Laufer & Nation, 1995; Laufer, 2005) was calculated.
The Range program conducts a lexical text analysis in which the words of the
collected poems in the corpus were divided into four different categories of
word frequencies levels. The program compares the word and word stems in
relation to three 1,000 word and word stem lists. The three word lists consist
of the most 3,000 frequent words in English. The first word list consists of the
1,000 most frequent words, the second list consists of the next 1,000 most
frequent words and the third list consists of the next three words. The pro-
gram’s output provides the percentage of words from the whole corpus that is
found in each of the 3 word frequency lists and also specifies a fourth list of
words not found in any of the three frequency lists. As specified by Nation
(2001), the 2,000 word mark is considered to be the dividing line between high
and low frequency vocabulary. Typically, these 2,000 words constitute 81.3%
of the total vocabulary of a written text in English.
 Chapter 3. Second language poetry writing 

5. Poetic Features: The whole corpus of 844 poems was analysed for the poetic
features of the second language written poetry. A category system based on
the features of poetic texts was developed. The category system addressed the
basic poetic micro-features of sound patterns (rhyme, consonance and asso-
nance), imagery (visual, tactile, olfactory, auditory, gustatory and kinesthetic)
and figurative speech (metaphor and simile). A simple category system using
accepted literary definitions was used for each of these categories. Two inde-
pendent readers using this category system read the 844 poems. After reading
20% of the poems, an inter-rater agreement score was calculated. The readers
agreed on 91% of the items. A meeting was held between the readers to assure
comparative results and disagreements in rating were discussed. Following
this meeting, the full set of poems was reanalyzed. The statistical analysis was
a simple percentage of all poems in which a specific item appeared. In other
words, if a poem had only one metaphor, it still counted as a poem that used
figurative language. The internal density of category usage in a single poem
was not calculated. Accordingly the output from this analysis was the number
and percentage of poems in which a specific category of micro-poetic features
was found.
6. Thematic Organization: The corpus was analysed for characteristic patterns of
macro-level thematic organization. As a first stage in this analysis the poems
were read and analysed using patterns of thematic organization identified in
the conventional description of poetry. The initial coding system was used by
two independent readers on the whole corpus. Inter-rater agreement using this
system was relatively low at 77%. Upon analysis the problem was found to be
overlap between categories of thematic organization. Accordingly a reduced
system of thematic organization of categories was used. This system consisted
of narrative organization (focus on the presentations of a sequence of events
with a character and some reference to chronological order), descriptive or-
ganization (focus on images and details without a narrative context) and ana-
lytical organization (focus the development of an idea rather than an event).
The poems were reanalyzed and inter-rater agreement calculated. For this sec-
ond reading, inter-rater agreement was 89%. Disagreements in analysis were
resolved through discussion. The outcome of this analysis is the definition of
the percentage of poems that follow a specific thematic pattern of organiza-
tion.
7. Lexical Content Analysis: The corpus was subjected to the Frequency software
program which produces a ranked list of all the word types in the corpus, the
frequency of occurrence and cumulative percentage. This frequency list was
visually analysed for the high frequency content words. High frequency was
defined as usage above 50 times. Using the Concordance software program,
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

each of these identified high frequency content words were analysed in relation
to their immediate verbal context. The list of high frequency words in con-
junction with the concordance of usage provide a description of the high fre-
quency contents and concerns of this corpus of poems.
8. Expressed Emotion Analysis: The 844 poems were analysed using the Linguistic
Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) 2007 software program (Pennebaker, Booth
and Francis, 2007). This computational linguistic tool counts the frequency of
words and words stems in relation to specific content categories. One of the
content areas consists of affective processes that includes positive (love, joy)
and negative emotions (anxiety, anger and sadness). The LIWC has been used
to analyze the presence of emotion in both poetry and other textual settings
(Stirman & Pennebaker, 2001). The output from this program consists of the
percentage of words from different affective categories. To make these findings
meaningful, outputs were compared to baseline data line from Pennebaker,
Chung, Ireland, Gonzales and Booth (2007).

3.5 Results

In relation to text size and length, Table 3.2 shows the average poem is relatively
short, consisting of an average of 52.73 words organized into an average of 10.38
lines made up of an average of 5.05 words per line. The standard deviation for av-
erage word length and lines per poem suggests that there is some diversity in rela-
tion to the size of a poem. However, even within this range, poems are short: 1
stanza, 9 lines, 48 words and 4 words per line are the most frequent.
A linguistic description of the corpus was conducted using the LIWC2007
software program. Table 3.3 presents the results of the analysis of the percentages
of words in the total corpus of second language poetry for standard linguistic cat-
egories. As can be seen in Table 3.3, a range of standard linguistic categories is
represented in the L2 poetry corpus. Several of the linguistic categories are of in-
terest in defining the characteristics of this corpus. Firstly, as can be seen in
Table 3.3, 1st person pronouns are the most frequent category of pronouns. This

Table 3.2. Average, Standard Deviation and Mode for Text Size

Statistic Words per Lines per Stanzas per Words per

Poem Poem Poem Line

Average 52.73 10.38 2.38 5.051

Standard Deviation 23.72 3.38 1.61 1.40
Mode    48     9    1    4
 Chapter 3. Second language poetry writing 

Table 3.3. Percentage of Words from Total Word Count According to Linguistic Category
and for L2 Poetry Writing

Linguistic Category Percentage of Total Words in

L2 Poetry Corpus

Total function words 47.10

Total pronouns 15.01
   Personal pronouns 12.17
    1st person singular 7.73
    1st person plural 0.87
    2nd person 2.00
    3rd person singular 1.17
    3rd pers plural 0.40
   Impersonal pronouns 2.84
Articles 6.68
Common verbs a 10.57
   Auxiliary verbs 5.53
   Past tense a 2.83
   Present tense a 6.55
   Future tense a 0.48
   Adverbs 3.36
   Prepositions 11.00
   Conjunctions 3.89
   Negations 1.15
   Quantifiers 1.61

suggests that the poetry is written mainly from a personal perspective and we can
assume that this usage of first person results from the presentation of a personal
perspective on the thoughts, feelings or ideas presented in the poem. In relation to
tense, present tense is used more than either past or future tenses. The future tense
represents only present 0.48% of the total number of words and is used to a limited
extent. In addition, this corpus has a limited number of conjunctions, negations
and quantifiers. This might be expected, as this is a corpus of poems and not aca-
demic argumentative writing. The low frequencies of conjunctions, negations and
quantifiers suggest that the L2 poetry writing corpus is characterized by a direct
descriptive style without extensive meta-discursive qualification or argumenta-
tion. The overall analysis of the linguistic category data suggests a specific style of
writing that is personal, direct and descriptive.
To further extend the characterization of this corpus of written poetry a Lexi-
cal Frequency Profile (LFP) was calculated using the Range software program
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

Table 3.4. Word Frequency Band and Percentage of L2 Poetry Writing Corpus Coverage

Word Frequency Band Number of Words Cumulative Coverage Individual Band

(%) of Whole Corpus Coverage (%)

1st 1000 41249 71.33 71.33

2nd 1000 7360 84.06 12.73
3rd 1000 3596 90.28 6.22
not in the lists 5622 100 9.72
Total 57827 – –

(Laufer & Nation, 1995; Laufer, 2005). The Range program compares the total cor-
pus in relation to baseword lists organized according to frequency of usage.
Table 3.4 presents the word counts and percentage of coverage in relation to three
frequency levels of words. As can be seen in Table 3.4, 71.33% of the words used in
the whole corpus of L2 poetry were found in the 1,000 most frequent words in the
English language list. 84.06% of the words in the L2 poetry writing corpus con-
sisted of the 2,000 most frequent words in English. Laufer and Nation (1999) spec-
ify that the 2,000 word mark can be used to differentiate high and low frequency
words. Further, as reported by Laufer and Nation (1999), comparisons to the Brown
corpus (Francis and Kucera, 1982), which contains a range of text types and regis-
ters, the first 2,000 words usually covers 79.7% of the text. The finding that 84.06%
of the current L2 poetry corpus falls within the first 2,000 most frequent words,
suggests that high frequency vocabulary is being used in the writing of these L2
poems. This perhaps is not surprising as these are second language poets; the char-
acterization of this corpus of poetry is that it is comprised of highly frequent words.
In relation to the words not in the 3,000 most frequent words lists, a consideration
of the word frequency outputs revealed that 880 words (1.52%) were in the poet’s
first language and consisted of names of people, places, foods, festivals and objects
from specific countries. Thus overall, the vocabulary level of this poetry can be
characterized as simple and well within the range of advanced L2 writers.
So far the analysis has addressed the linguistic features of the corpus of second
language poetry. The current analysis addresses the literary characteristics of this
corpus of poems. Specifically, an analysis was conducted to assess the presence and
frequency of usage of different micro-features of written poetry. Table 3.5 sum-
marizes the number and percentage of poems in which a specific category of mi-
cro-poetic features were found. As can be seen in Table 3.5, the second language
poets who produced this corpus of poetry used a wide range of poetic features in
writing their poetry. Of all the micro-poetic features measured, imagery was the
most frequently used appearing in 78.9% of all poems in the corpus. Within this
category, visual imagery was by far the most prevalent category appearing in
 Chapter 3. Second language poetry writing 

Table 3.5. Frequency and Percentage of Poems that Included Poetic Features by Category

Poetic Feature Poem Frequency Percentage of Total

Sound Patterns 624 73.93

Rhyme 381 45.14
Consonance 263 31.16
Alliteration 358 42.41
Assonance 173 20.49
Imagery 666 78.90
Visual 551 65.28
Tactile 171 20.26
Olfactory 37 4.38
Auditory 189 22.39
Gustatory 65 7.70
Kinesthetic 74 8.76
Figurative Speech 330 39.09
Metaphor 254 30.09
Simile 131 15.52

65.28% of the poems in the corpus. Usage of sound patterns was also prevalent
appearing in 73.93% of all poems. Within this category rhyme and alliteration
were the most prevalent appearing in 45.14% and 42.41% percent of poems re-
spectively. However, it should be noted that the use of both rhyme and other sound
patterns was not consistent throughout the specific poems. Rather the usage of
sound patterns seemed to be limited to one or two lines in each poem. Thus the
use of rhyme for example did not organize the structure of the poem and did not
form a rhyme pattern characteristic of known poetic forms in English such as the
sonnet. Figurative speech was used in 39.09% of the total corpus. Within this cat-
egory, metaphor was found to be used more frequently than simile. These findings
demonstrate that these second language poets were aware of and used poetic fea-
tures in their writing. As seen in the frequencies of usage, visual imagery, rhyme
and alliteration were the most frequently used poetic features.
The analysis presented below deals with the thematic organization of the po-
ems within this corpus. As described above, a category system consisting of narra-
tive organization, descriptive organization and analytical organization was used in
this analysis. Table 3.6 summarizes the frequencies occurrence of each of these
categories of thematic organization. As can be seen in Table 3.6, the two categories
of narrative and descriptive patterns of organization covered 98.3% of all the po-
ems. An analytical pattern of organization that focused on the development of an
idea was used to a very limited extent. The high frequency of narrative and
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

Table 3.6. Frequency of Occurrence for Patterns of Thematic Organization

Thematic Organization Frequency of Poems Percentage of Total Corpus

Narrative 387 45.8%

Descriptive 443 52.5%
Analytical 14 1.6%

descriptive patterns of organization suggests that this corpus of poetry was written
to describe personal images and stories.
As reported above, a lexical content analysis of the whole corpus of 844 second
language poems was conducted using the Frequency software program. The Fre-
quency program ranks all the words in the corpus according to frequency of the
occurrence. This list was analysed and all content words that had a frequency of
above 50 were listed. As seen in Table 3.7, this analysis yielded 23 content words.

Table 3.7. High Frequency Words, Frequency of Usage and Example Uses from L2 Po-
etry Corpus

Word Frequency Example Contexts of Usage

of Usage

Life 172 What’s left of the essence of life?

Pain is my life
We celebrate a new cycle in my life
The lesson of life, was good, I guess.
My life is changing, I’m hesitating.
You gave life to my life.
Love 172 The power of love?
I will love you
Symbols of her love
Ordeal is my love.
I love to hear her speak when she just wakes up.
I’m the last who receive your love.
Eyes 143 But I can see her teasing eyes
Eyes tearing like hell
Your eyes like bottomless ocean.
Whenever I see your sparkling brown eyes
62 eyes looked at me in Spanish
Overwhelming sadness swam out of my eyes
Her eyes like guardian
Tears welled up in my eyes
Day 123 First day of school in the USA
 Chapter 3. Second language poetry writing 

Word Frequency Example Contexts of Usage

of Usage
It was a dark day, in the beginning of September
God helped us that day, we felt blessed ourselves
Today is the day of celebration of Eid
Last day of high school
Friend 120 Because you are my friend
My friend fell in water; it was so cold as the death
My first international friend, Kana
And loose my best friend
Angel friend
Heart 118 I heard my heart beat loudly
My heart was like a burning coal
I’m injured that you split my heart without feeling sorry
Shortness of breath and my beating heart is all I can hear
Volcano’s heat in my heart
People 113 People in the street peeking at me. Never mind
People who stand so close to me
Another people, another culture
People sometimes become really helpless
there is inequality among people
People stop at the junction
Mother 99 My mother has gone
A tired Mother at a distanced watched
Mother, I can see your worried face
Mother with an angry face
Mother burst out crying
Face 97 My face turned red
Face twisted and looked like gray ash
Tears of passion rolled down my face
Her face is red and her voice shocks my ear drums
Innocent smile hang on our face
Memories 93 Memories live on
The smell of memories
My childhood is filled with memories of you
The people in college give me so many memories
Past memories keep recalling day by day
Home 93 Miss my home country
My head down, dreaming of going home soon
It feels good to be back home
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

Word Frequency Example Contexts of Usage

of Usage
On my way home I cried!
For me, with my family, every where is home.
Night 92 One night in Newark
And walking in the moonlight night
My last night here for you
I stand at the beach in the middle of the night
It is a cold snowy night
I often see him sitting alone late in the dark night
Feel 74 It was the first time, I feel homesick
I feel very low
I feel breathing near my temple
I can almost feel your breath
I feel the thin line between love and hate
Sky 68 The sky becomes dark
Bleeding trees and weeping sky
Would sooth your soul, but in such a sky there is no depth
Twigs and branches reach for the sky
The sky is covered by the darkness
Mind 67 Heavy burden on my mind
My mind became like a leaf in winter
When I have deep scar in my mind
You are lost to my mind, this reflection of me
Snow white blank – my mind
Dream 66 We called ourselves dream weavers
Coffee-poisoned dream
Confined in the inner depths of my boundless dream realm
My dream another new life
American Dream
Moment 64 And turn into a darkness in the moment
It’s a painful moment
Cuddling each other is the best moment
The moment I touched down in Pittsburgh
The happy moment we spend together
Smile 64 With a smile upon my face
Her smile struck me like a lightning
Your expression made me smile in my dream
The students’ eyes are cold, no regard, and no smile
the heart with love, smile, and the smile with caressing
Way 63 “No matter which way, we’re behind you.”
 Chapter 3. Second language poetry writing 

Word Frequency Example Contexts of Usage

of Usage
The way of the Japanese
All the way from the tropical island, Taiwan
Once one door’s open, one way could be passed through
By the way, of course, do you know who I am?
Tears 62 When in tears I drown my weeping
My tears could not help falling...
Tears of passion rolled down my face
I want you to wipe those tears out of your eyes
Silence hiding tears
World 62 The world does not have limits
The world was once black and white
The hospital shows the cold world in the world
I saw the rainbow world
I’m the only myself in this world
Family 60 my family home
It’s been a while since I haven’t thought of my family
My family, my friends, everything in Taiwan
My heart pounding when I saw my family
Packing, meeting with my friend, talking with my family
Alone 59 I am alone in this land
Left alone in the room
Lone and alone
Standing alone and waiting for her
Thinking back of being alone
Cold 53 Lips become purple and cold
Shy, cold, distant...
cold cloudy morning
Cool, cold, freeze, blizzard,
I feel I am in a cave, a cold, dark cave

Using the Concordance software program, the 23 high frequency content words
were analysed in relation to their immediate verbal context. Table 3.7 provides
some indication of the way these words were used in their poetic context. The list
of high frequency words is revealing in that several core themes and concerns
seem to be repeated across writers and poems in this corpus. A lot of these words
and their context deal with the issue of close relationships to family, friends and
home. This sense of social closeness is expressed through the usage of the words
love, friend, mother and family. In addition, as seen in the examples from the
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

concordance, there is a strong emotional component to this collection of poems.

The expression of close relationships is often expressed in emotional terms. As
seen in the examples from the concordance, the words love, eyes, heart, mother,
face, feel, smile, tears and cold are parts of expressions of emotion. As seen in the
examples from high frequency words in the concordance here is also a theme of
self-reflection. This reflection on the meaning of life is seen in the usage of the
words life, day, people, memories, mind and way. This collection of high frequency
words and the examples of their usage suggests a direction for understanding the
content of this corpus of poetry. The poetry seems to deal with personal relation-
ships and memories in an emotional and self-reflective manner.
The final analysis conducted consisted of an analysis of the emotional content
of this corpus using a computational linguistics approach. In order to analyze the
emotional content of this corpus the LIWC2007 software program was used. As
reported above this program compares word frequencies within the corpus to pre-
defined categories of words. One of the categories found within the LIWC2007
program is that of Affective Processes. The analysis yields a frequency which rep-
resents the percentage of words from the total corpus that are on the list of affec-
tive words as predefined and validated by the software developers (Pennebaker,
Chung, Ireland, Gonzales & Booth, 2007). The LIWC2007 has been successfully
used in a series of studies exploring the presence of emotion within texts (Lightman,
McCarthy, Duffy & McNamara, 2007; Pennebaker, 1997; Stirman & Pennebaker,
2001). Table 3.8 presents those affective processes frequencies for the L2 poetry
corpus as well as the analysis of three additional baseline comparison groups pub-
lished in Pennebaker, Chung, Ireland, Gonzales and Booth (2007). The baseline
categories were compiled and analysed by the authors of the LIWC2007 program
and are presented here only as a way of providing a baseline to help with the inter-
pretation of the L2 poetry data. The LIWC2007 baselines relate to different genres
of first language writing. The corpus for the emotional writing and controlled writ-
ing was generated by asking participants to “write either about deeply emotional
topics (emotional writing) or about relatively trivial topics such as the plans for the
day (control writing)” (Pennebaker, Chung, Ireland, Gonzales and Booth, 2007,
p. 9). The third baseline consisted of a sample of 209 novels from 1700 till 2004
that the LIWC2007 team constructed a corpus from and calculated word frequen-
cies for. A direct statistical comparison of these three baseline sets of frequency is
inappropriate, both because the data was collected by other researchers and be-
cause it is a corpus of first language writing. However, it is presented here to allow
some interpretation of the frequencies and what they may mean.
As can be seen in Table 3.8 the frequencies of the second language poetry col-
umn suggest that there is a significant amount of emotion laden word usage in the
corpus. For overall affective processes, the corpus of L2 poetry was analysed to
 Chapter 3. Second language poetry writing 

Table 3.8. Percentage of Words from Total Word Count According to Affective Processes
and for L2 Poetry Writing, Baseline Emotional Writing, Controlled Writing and Novels

Word Category Percentage of Baseline Baseline Baseline

Total Words Comparison: Comparison: Comparison:
in L2 Poetry Emotional Controlled Novels
Corpus Writing Writing

Affective processes 7.17 6.02 2.57 4.89

Positive emotion 4.39 3.28 1.83 2.86
Negative emotion 2.76 2.67 0.71 1.98
Anxiety 0.54 0.68 0.21 0.44
Anger 0.50 0.66 0.14 0.55
Sadness 1.23 0.63 0.14 0.57

have a 7.17 percentage of total words that deal with emotion. This percentage was
higher than any of the baseline measures including the corpus of texts written
specifically with the purpose of eliciting emotional responses (Emotional Writing).
The breakdown of the Affective category into its components reveals that for the
corpus of L2 poetry there are more positive emotion words (4.39%) than negative
emotion words (2.76%) and that both of these percentages are higher than the
baseline comparisons. It is notable that within the negative emotion words, words
designating sadness had the highest percentage (1.23%) and were more present
than anger or anxiety as well as being higher than any of the baseline measures.
The data from this analysis combined with the previous analysis of high frequency
words and their context, demonstrate that the writers of this corpus of poetry were
involved in expressing their emotions.

3.6 Discussion: Characterizing the second language poem

As stated in the introduction to this chapter there is only limited data that ad-
dresses second language learners and poetry. There is no systematic data on sec-
ond language poetry writing. Against this backdrop of a dearth of research on
second language poetry writing, the aim of the current chapter was to provide a
global analysis of a corpus of second language poetry. The analysis presented above
allows the characterization of second language poetry writing as represented in
the present corpus. As seen in the data above the second language poem is a short
text that uses simple, high frequency vocabulary. The average length of this text is
10 lines with an average of 5 words per line and consisting of 2 stanzas. 84.6% of
the vocabulary used in the poems comes from the 2,000 most frequent words in
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

the English language. There is some usage of first language vocabulary but this is
limited to 1.5% of the total word usage. The word length of the poems and the use
of vocabulary suggest that poetry writing in this corpus is well within the capa-
bilities of advanced second language learners.
The analysis of this corpus presented above suggests a very specific style for
these short second language poems. The use of 1st person pronouns, limited usage
of conjunctions, negations and quantifiers, the presence of imagery in 78.9% of all
poems, presence of emotional word categories and the predominance of descrip-
tive and narrative patterns of poem organization all suggest that this corpus of
poetry involves the direct description of personal events and experiences. The
analysis of high frequency words and their concordances further supports this
characterization of this corpus of poems. The high frequency words suggest that
the writers of these poems are exploring close personal relationships (with family
and friends) and reflecting on their lives. It is important to note that the analysis of
the high frequency words and their concordances and the analysis of emotional
word categories both provide evidence of the presence and usage of emotional
language. This result offers some support to previous findings from Kim (2004)
that second language learners can be personally and emotionally involved in lit-
erature. As for the characterization of this corpus of second language poetry writ-
ing, it would seem that the style of writing is descriptive, that it deals with per-
sonal events and experiences and most importantly it addresses the emotionality
of these described events and experiences.
This process of description and reflection in poetry is conducted using the
characteristic micro-features of poetry. As evidenced in the analysis presented
above, second language poetry writers are fully capable of using sound patterns,
figurative language and imagery in their poetry writing. As referenced in the lit-
erature review presented above both Hanauer (2001b) and Fecteau (1999) raised
questions concerning the ability of L2 learners in utilizing literary categories. The
data presented here suggests that at least within the present corpus of second lan-
guage poetry these advanced writers were capable and did indeed use poetic-liter-
ary categories to express and explore their personal experiences.
Taken together the features of a second language poem in this corpus would
seem to consist of a short text compiled of high frequency vocabulary that de-
scribes personal experiences in a self reflective and emotional manner using the
characteristic micro-features of poetry. The shortness of poem and easiness of the
vocabulary does not inhibit the presence of poetic features, personally significant
topics or the presence of expressed emotion.
 Chapter 3. Second language poetry writing 

3.7 Second language poetry and qualitative research

The analysis presented in this chapter moves us forward in that it provides a global
description of the features of a second language poem within this corpus. The fea-
tures presented so far suggest that a second language poem would be able to pro-
vide useful evidence on the individual perspective on particular events and experi-
ences and that this perspective could include data on the emotional states of the
writer. The analysis above also provides evidence that this body of poetry involves
a process of self-reflection. Most importantly as seen in the analysis above this
process of writing poetry is well within the capabilities of an advanced second
language writer. At the end of the last chapter, I stated that the value of poetry writ-
ing as a research tool resulted from the ability of poems to convey personally
meaningful, linguistically negotiated understanding of significant individual ex-
periences. The analysis of the global features of the corpus of second language
poems suggests that these poems could provide the type of evidence that would be
relevant for research purposes.
 chapter 4

Poetic identity in a second language

Theoretical and methodological issues

4.1 Introduction
.

In the previous chapter, textual and literary features of second language poetry
were addressed and it was suggested that this genre of writing could provide the
type of evidence that would be relevant for research purposes. The approach taken
was to analyse a corpus of second language poems and to describe its broad char-
acteristics. This analysis does answer the question of whether second language
writers can indeed write poetry. However, to substantiate the claim that their texts
can be a source of data for questions of interest to researchers in the humanities
and social sciences, an additional type of evidence is required. As argued at the
end of Chapter 2, the potential value of poetry writing as a research method lies in
its ability to provide reflective and linguistically negotiated understandings of per-
sonally meaningful events. As explicated, the poem supposedly provides evidence
on the poet-participant’s understanding, interpretation and presentation of sig-
nificant life experiences in a way which would allow readers` access and insight
into the self-positioning of the writer. In other words, there is an assumption that
personal poetic identities are expressed in written poetry. To explore the potential
role of second language poetry writing as a research method, the question of po-
etic identity needs to be explicated. Thus, the aim of this chapter is to investigate
the following questions: What is poetic identity? What are the ways in which these
poetic identities are expressed? What are the ways in which these poetic identities
can be analysed?

4.2 Second language identities

The concept of identity is difficult to define. Like voice in writing, it seems a self-
evident aspect of communication and a central component of the communicative
setting; but it poses significant problems when definitional and operational crite-
ria are applied. Part of the problem resides in the fact that historically this concept
has undergone a series of redefinitions. As specified by Benwell & Stokoe (2006) in
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

a historical overview, the concept of identity has moved from “a self fashioning,
agentive, internal project of the self, through more recent understandings of social
and collective identity, to postmodern accounts which treat identity as fluid, frag-
mentary, contingent and, crucially, constructed in discourse” (p. 17 italics in origi-
nal). This historical movement manifests a shift from the conceptualization of
identity as a stable fixed entity characterized by integrative unity to a multi-faceted
construct performed in discourse.
Within the humanities some current positions are conceptualized on the theo-
retical basis that the concept of identity as an entity is situated and constructed in
discourse. Researchers and theorists such as Gramsci (1971), Foucault (1972) and
Bourdieu (1977) all, in their own ways, see identities as constituted within much
broader social frames of reference. For example, Bourdieu’s (1977) concept of ha-
bitus is based on the idea of the internalization and normalization of external dis-
cursive positions that construct the status quo of social hierarchy and the appro-
priate ways of being associated with any given social identity. Foucault (1972)
holds that the individual is seen as constructed by the specific discourses to which
he is and has been exposed to. In these formulations identity as a discursive entity
reflects and manifests the identity positions allowed and specified within the so-
cial discursive context. Identity is not personal but rather representational and
present within discourse itself.
The critique of positions such as these is that when taken to an extreme social
discourse becomes a form of determinism. The constitution of identity within so-
cial discourse limits individual agency to environmental influences determined
through the frames of social discourse. A different way of understanding identity
as discursive is to position it as performance in discourse (Butler, 1990). In this
formulation, rather than being essential or an outcome of preexisting discourse,
identity is rather produced in interaction and through discourse. It is an active
process that is present in the on-going production of discourse. This approach
opens new avenues for understanding agency and critical interaction within social
discourse. Narrative approaches to identity argue that the narratives we tell con-
struct our identities (Denzin, 2000) and that these narratives are characterized by
particular choices on what to highlight and specify in any given telling
(Georgakopoulou, 2002). In this formulation, identity as narrative is authorial,
tied to the context of performance and reflective of broader cultural, ‘master’ nar-
ratives. Agency exists in the option of negotiating, countering, and modifying so-
cial discursive positions in the actual performance of identity. This allows some
critical agency for identity formation but does not deny the presence of structur-
ing social discourse. As argued by May (2001), there is some agency to perform a
range of potential identities in discourse; but this range is not unlimited as social
 Chapter 4. Poetic identity in a second language 

discursive structures are present. In his extended analysis of second language

identities, Block (2007b) presents the following summary:
“social scientists frame identities as socially constructed, self-conscious, on-going
narratives that individuals perform, interpret and project in dress, bodily move-
ments, actions and language. Identity work occurs in the company of others – ei-
ther face-to-face or in an electronically mediated mode – with whom to varying
degrees individuals share beliefs, values, activities and practices. Identities are
about negotiating new subject positions at the crossroads of past, present and fu-
ture. Individuals are often shaped by their sociohistories but they also shape their
sociohistories as life goes on. The entire process is conflictive as opposed to har-
monious and individuals often feel ambivalent” (p. 27).

In this formulation, identity is an active discursive process influenced by social

structures but not determined by them. The actual performance of identity in re-
sponse to different historical and social contingencies constructs multiple and
conflicting aspects of self.
Block (2007a) notes that the experience of learning a second language and in
particular the process of migration leads to a “destabilization” of the individual’s
sense of identity as the accepted givens of the socio-cultural discourse of the home
environment are questioned in the new environment. One way of exploring the
types of identity present within the second language learning and migration expe-
rience is through the collection and analysis of narratives. As argued by Pavlenko
(2001a and quoted in Block 2007a), personal narratives offer “unique and rich
sources of information about the relationship between language and identity in
second language socialization” (p. 167). As noted above, narratives allow an explo-
ration of the ways in which individuals construct, emphasize, present and high-
light specific aspects of their life histories exposing their own position in relation
to events. Narratives are cultural artifacts that reflect both personal and cultural
events and cross temporal lines by “bringing the past events (i.e., occurrences in-
volving other people) into the present and for projecting the present into the fu-
ture” (Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000, p. 171), thus allowing meaning to be made, ob-
served and analysed. The writing (or speaking) of these language learner stories is
part of the process of directly negotiating the way individuals understand the
world they live in and provides insight into their first person positioning.
A series of specific types of identity have been proposed in order to explore
second language identity. In a study of literary autobiographies, Pavlenko (2001b)
states that “identity and subject position will be used to signify socially recognizable
categories of membership which individuals occupy at different points in their
lives” and that these identities and subject positions are “lived experiences of
participation in specific communities, where meanings of particular positions,
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

narratives and categories must be worked out in practice” (p. 319). Taking a similar
position, Block (2007b) notes that “identities are related to different traditionally
demographic categories of identity” (p. 27). He specifies seven prevalent identity
categories: ethnic (associated with a cultural group); racial (associated with so-
cially constructed racial groups); national (associated with the nation state); mi-
grant (related to ways of living in a new country); gender (related to the socially
constructed understandings of male and female and sexual orientation); social
class (related to different levels of economic status, education and occupation); and
language (related to the usage of language). This list is not assumed to be exhaus-
tive. In addition, these different options are not assumed to be discrete or exclusive
but rather they function in tandem and are co-constructing. Thus each individual
is a complex network of different co-constructing identities resulting from partici-
patory lived experiences that allow and limit actions within the world.
A particularly useful theory for situating and explicating the concept of iden-
tity in writing has been offered by Ivanic (1997), who conceptualizes the issue of
the discursive performance of identity within the context of structuring social dis-
course. She proposes that writer identity is constructed from four different levels
or categories: autobiographic self, discoursal self, self as author and possibilities
for self-hood in the socio-cultural and institutional context. The autobiographic
self is “the identity people bring with them to any act of writing” (Ivanic, 1997,
p. 24) and consists of the life-history, memories, events, ways of representing and
being in the world. The autobiographic self is not considered a fixed, essentialist
entity but rather a developing, changing entity responsive to context. The autobio-
graphic self is responsible for producing the written discourse through which
identity is manifest. A writer’s discoursal self is “the impression – often multiple,
sometimes contradictory – which they consciously or unconsciously convey of
themselves in a particular written text” (Ivanic, 1997, p. 25). It is constructed in
and through the written text itself. It is the textual information as presented in the
written text that allows the discoursal self to be seen and interpreted. As such, the
written text is a moment of identity performance and captures the nature of the
writer’s identity at the moment of writing. This discoursal self does not reflect an
essentialist autobiographical self but rather is the manifestation and performance
of identity of the autobiographical self at the time of writing. The self as author
concerns the degree of authority that writers feel and present in relation to the
writing that they have conducted. According to Ivanic (1997), “writers differ con-
siderably in how far they claim authority as the source of the content of the text,
and in how far they establish an authorial presence in their writing” (p. 26). As
argued by Ivanic (1997), the self as author is related to both the autobiographic
and discoursal self in that the writers` life history and way of presenting them-
selves in written text influence the degree of authoritativeness found in the writing.
 Chapter 4. Poetic identity in a second language 

The last category concerns the “prototypical possibilities of self-hood which are
available to the writers in the social context of writing” (Ivanic, 1997, p. 27). With-
in any given context there are a range of possible identities that the writer can as-
sume. These identities allow (and also prohibit) a range of subjective positions that
can be taken by the writer. At any given time a writer may assume several different
subject positions and express these positions through the written text. The four
identities presented by Ivanic (1997) offer a frame through which the analysis of
writer identity can be approached and analysed. The proposed framework fore-
grounds the discoursal self as the most evident manifestation of identity and dif-
ferentiates this specific performance of identity from the autobiographical self
thus allowing the exploration of positioning in a given act of writing. The positions
taken within the text and manifest in the analysis of the discoursal self may reflect
the options for self-hood present within social discourse and may allow differing
degrees of a sense of ownership and authority.

4.3 Poetic identity

Having discussed the research on identity, in this section the notion of poetic
identity will be developed. In simple terms, it is the identity (or identities) that can
be found within a poetic text. In this sense, poetic identity is parallel to what Ivanic
(1997) has termed discoursal self. The poem, as a written text, reflects the choices
consciously or unconsciously made concerning the subject positions, community
affiliations, and meaning making activities of self understanding, represented in
written language. Poetic identity is the identity (or range of identities) that can be
interpreted in the writing and reading of a poem. In this sense, the written poetic
text forms the primary source of data for discussing and exploring poetic identity.
As with Ivanic’s (1997) elicitation of writer’s identity, it is assumed that discoursal
poetic identity reflects and is a moment of the performance of the writer’s autobio-
graphical self. This includes the life-history, memories, events, and ways of being
in the world of the writer that are presented, situated and interpreted through the
medium of the poetic text in an act of poetic identity performance. This activation
and usage of the autobiographical self in the act of writing a poem produces the
poetic identity interpretable in the specific poetic text. Thus, as with Ivanic’s (1997)
description of discoursal self, poetic identity consists of a specific textual perform-
ance of autobiographical self and is thus related to but different from the autobio-
graphical self. Most importantly for our current discussion, the poetic self is seen
as a reflective and linguistically negotiated interpretation of autobiographical in-
formation and experiences. The theoretical differentiation between poetic identity
and autobiographical self is necessary for understanding the role of poetry writing
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

as a research method in that it situates every poem as an interpretive entity, a per-

formance of identity.
A core issue with discoursal identity is the genre of writing within which it is
found. As discussed in previous chapters in this book, poetry as a genre has some
special characteristics. Most importantly, the poem involves a reflective, linguistic
negotiation of personal thoughts, feelings and experiences (Hanauer, 2004). As
discussed previously, the imagistic, emotional and linguistic expression of this
personal information is a process of discovery for the writer as much as for the
reader. It is a writing process in which the text evolves until it reaches a state of
expression and discovery that reveals to the writer and reader meanings within the
described experiences themselves. As such, the poem presents a reflective, delib-
erative personal perspective on the events described rather than an immediate
response. In this sense, poetic identity as manifest in the written poem is also a
reflective and deliberative construction. Poetic identity is the result of deliberate
choices concerning what to include and how to present the written poem. The fact
that reflective and deliberate choices were made in the writing of the poem does
not mean that every aspect of meaning in the poem is conscious. As seen in
Chapter 2, the process of self discovery as a central feature of poetry writing dem-
onstrates the way in which the written poem can reveal to the writer aspects of self
that may be veiled from conscious thought.
A poem is not an academic essay. It does not present its meanings as a series
of arguments or theoretical propositions but rather through mediated literary, lin-
guistic description. The power of poetry is that it “situates the reader in the impos-
sible situation of experiencing another’s linguistically mediated experience”
(Hanauer, 2003, p. 70) and the “core epistemological understanding of poetic dis-
course is that of unique, multileveled, experiential activation” (Hanauer, 2003,
p. 77). What a poem does is to reconstruct through literary, linguistic mediation
the remembered experience of the writer. Therefore, poetic identity is not only the
discussion of identity; it is rather the experience of the writer’s subject position
expressed through the actual poetic description. This is the performance of iden-
tity recreated for the reader. To understand poetic identity means to enter into an
interpretive reading process and explore the situated and expressed meaning of
the poem and in particular the ways in which specific autobiographical events,
experiences, thoughts and ways of being are presented and focused through the
medium of the written poem. The poem utilizes sensory memory and recreates
situations through the lens of the writer in an act of poetic identity performance.
Thus the reader recreates the writer’s perspective on the experience and construct-
ed poetic identity at the point of writing.
One of the basic characteristics of a poem is the foregrounded nature of lan-
guage in the written poem (Hanauer, 2001a, 1998b; van Peer 1986, 1990, 2007).
 Chapter 4. Poetic identity in a second language 

Poetry foregrounds language choices in both reading and writing, and thus creates
an intrinsic link on the semantic-interpretive level as to the meaning potential of
the text. As a basic principle, content and form cannot be easily differentiated in
the written poetic text. In his philosophical development of the social function of
poetry, Gordon (1996) argues that the defining quality of poetry is that it cannot
be paraphrased without losing some aspect of meaning. Under the heading of aes-
thetic cognitivism, the function of poetry is to direct the reader’s experiential un-
derstanding through the use of the artistic medium (Gordon, 1996). In this for-
mulation, literary devices do not embellish the meaning of a poem but rather
actually direct its meaning. For the analysis of poetic identity, this position has
ramifications. As argued by Pavlenko (2007) in relation to autobiographic narra-
tives when addressing a literary text, form and linguistic choice cannot be ignored
and require specific attention in discussing assigned meanings to the text. Thus,
poetic identity as an aspect of the poetic text is manifest through the linguistic
choices, literary devices as well as autobiographical content and all these compo-
nents need to be part of the analysis of poetic identity.
As with the performance of identity in other genre, poetic identity also ad-
dresses what Pavlenko (2001b) has described as “socially recognizable categories
of membership” (p. 317). Thus while a poem may be an act of poetic identity and
linguistically negotiate autobiographical experiences, thoughts and ways of being,
it often does so by referencing and negotiating traditional categories of identity.
Thus identity categories such as gender, social class, nationality, ethnic affiliation,
race, migration, and language are involved in the exploration of the meaning of
experiences and as a way of examining self-understanding. In this sense these op-
tions of category of membership provide accessible meaning construction schema
for studying experience and thus appear within poetic writing. Poetic identity can
utilize recognizable subject positions and community affiliations in the process of
trying to explore and express personal experience. Using available identity options
for constructing subjective positioning does not mean that these identities cannot
be questioned. Reference to an identity position does not mean that this position
is accepted; poetry can and often does question and confront identities. In fact the
questioning of personal identity is often an impetus for actually writing poetry to
explore the meaning of experiences and events. In this sense, the poetic identity, as
a central aspect of poetry writing, is the working out of the subject position that
most closely suits the understanding of the writer at the moment of writing. This
working out of identity in relation to events, the construction of written, expressed
and linguistically negotiated experiences from a particular subject position is to a
large extent the point of writing poetry. It is the moment at which reflective self-
understanding is communicated and offers evidence of a particular configuration
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

of the self that connects events, experiences and thoughts through the use of spe-
cific language and a focused way of seeing.
The overall theoretical position taken in this book towards the issue of poetic
identity can be summarized by proposing that it:
1. is discoursal and can be interpreted through a reading of the written text.
2. involves a performance of autobiographical self; but is different from autobio-
graphical self.
3. is a reflective, deliberative construction.
4. involves the reconstruction of the experience of the writer’s subject position in
relation to events, experiences, thoughts and feelings.
5. is an aspect of the poetic text that is manifest through linguistic choices, liter-
ary devices and autobiographical content.
6. utilizes and negotiates socially accepted subject positions such as gender, so-
cial class, nationality, ethnic affiliation, race, migration, and language.
7. may involve the representation of multiple identities and may include shades
of and reference to additional options for identity.
8. is the result of a literary, self reflective process and as such manifest poetic
identities reflect the ways in which the writer wishes to present their perspec-
tive and understanding of the world.
9. encompasses the events, dispositions, presented memories, ideas, experiences,
thoughts and feelings of the autobiographical self presented and linguistically
negotiated within the poetic text; it is the specific configuration of these ele-
ments of the poetic text.

4.4 Analysing poetic identity

In order to conduct an actual analysis of poetic identity, the theoretical discussion

presented above needs to be transformed into a format that can direct an analyti-
cal procedure. The equation below defines it in a way that is useful as a guideline
for analysis:
– Poetic Identity = Participant’s subject position on autobiographical events and
experiences expressed through the focusing potential of literary language result-
ing from a specific physical and discursive context of writing.
This definition positions three sources of information as central to the analysis of
poetic identity: subject position (as presented through linguistic and literary
choices), autobiographical knowledge, and physical and discursive context of writ-
ing. In the terms more commonly used for the analysis of written text, these three
levels are the analysis of context, content, and stylistic choice. It is important to
 Chapter 4. Poetic identity in a second language 

note that for our present purposes, stylistic analysis of literary and linguistic choic-
es is the point at which the subject position of the writer is expressed. In other
words, from the writer’s perspective autobiographical information is focused
through stylistic choices constructing a particular poetic identity. From the read-
er’s perspective, the analysis of the language and literacy devices found in the poem
allows access into the participant’s poetic identity. The three categories of analysis
for the exploration of poetic identity can be defined as follows:
1. Analysis of Context of Writing: The context of writing influences the forma-
tion and comprehension of the written text and accordingly knowledge of the
context allows enhanced interpretation of the written text and its meanings.
Context in writing involves both micro and macro levels. Micro-level context
influences include the reason for writing, the community, workplace and edu-
cational environments of writing, the definition and understanding of the po-
etry writing task, the inter-personal communication surrounding this writ-
ing, the physical setting and other direct contextual influences on the writer.
The macro-level includes the historical, ideological discursive setting within
which the writer functions. This macro-level discursive context provides a set
of parameters and resources that are utilized by writers in negotiating their
understandings of the world. These resources include what Pavlenko (2001b)
has defined as socially recognizable categories of membership (identity op-
tions) or what Ivanic (1997) defines as possibilities for self-hood in the socio-
cultural and institutional context. The micro and macro levels of context in-
teract with each other creating the interplay of contextualizing forces. The
macro level discursive context presents acceptable and expected identity op-
tions that are negotiated at a specific time, place and immediate environment
of writing.
2. Content Analysis: As described above, a poem involves the performance of
autobiographical self and as such all the knowledge stored within the writer’s
autobiographical self is information that can be utilized. Thus, an analysis of
poetic identity involves an investigation of the content presented within the
poem concerning the events, dispositions, presented memories, ideas, experi-
ences, thoughts and feelings of the autobiographical self. Content analysis in
poetry is underpinned by the assumption that a process of careful and deliber-
ate editing has taken place in the actual choice of what to present. Poems are
often short texts that include only limited amounts of explicit information.
Accordingly, if specific events, experiences, thoughts, feelings or ideas are pre-
sented, this results from a particular choice to use this limited amount of in-
formation to represent a much longer and more detailed experience. This is
the principle of metonymy in which an attribute of something is used to stand
for the thing itself. For this reason, the analysis of the content of a poem
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

consists of considering why this particular content was presented and what
this choice would mean. This also directs a process of inference in which what
has not been presented may be as important as what actually is. Poetic iden-
tity resides also in the choice of what to focus on and what to present in the
poem. It is an editorial decision from within the much wider set of options
that autobiographical memory affords.
3. Stylistic Analysis of Literary and Linguistic Choices: A poem is a carefully
written, edited and revised written text. In the construction of this text, careful
consideration is directed at the specific linguistic and literary choices that are
made. The poem is designed to carefully reflect and reconstruct the subject
position of the writer in relation to autobiographical information. Accord-
ingly, the analysis of the poetic identity is directed by the stylistic convention
that the linguistic and literary choices of the poem are deliberate and designed
to direct the reader to particular ways of seeing and understanding the phe-
nomenon being described. Poetic identity is the decision concerning how to
use linguistic and literary resources in order to focus and direct the reader’s
attention to particular ways of experiencing the described events. This ap-
proach closely follows Gordon’s (1996) concept of aesthetic cognitivism that
defines a cognitive, directive function for art in allowing its viewers to see the
world through the artist’s artistry.
These three categories of analysis are closely integrated within the poem itself and
cannot be easily disentangled. The context provides a reason for writing and con-
ceptual resources and parameters for the construction of identity; utilizing stored
autobiographical information, the poet makes a series of choices as to what to
present from the wealth of potential information; the poet makes stylistic deci-
sions as what linguistic and literary choices will create a text that directs the reader
to see, feel, and understand the described experiences from the poet’s perspective.
Each category of analysis by itself and all three together construct the poetic iden-
tity expressed in the written poetic text.

4.5 A case study

In this section, a specific case study of poetic identity will be presented as a way
of exemplifying the analytical method proposed and to explicate the nature of
poetic identity as it is manifest within actual second language poems. The case
chosen relates to an issue of family life and involves the analysis of a whole
book of poetry.
 Chapter 4. Poetic identity in a second language 

4.5.1 Exploring parental divorce

Mika Yoshida (pseudonym), a Japanese female student in her early twenties, wrote
a book of poetry consisting of ten poems entitled “Family”, dealing with the di-
vorce of her parents when she was 17. She introduced her book of poetry with the
following set of statements:
“What is family? How many times did I think about it seriously? – None. I had
never thought about my family seriously until I faced a big incident in my life. My
parents got divorced when I was seventeen and mom left home. Since I believed
we were the happiest family in the world and I was proud of being born a member
of my family, I could not believe it. I was totally devastated”.

As clearly expressed in these introductory words, Mika decided to write her book
of poetry about this major incident. The context for writing this book of poetry
was the ESL College Writing class described in Chapter 2 and 3. The course en-
couraged personal reflection on important incidents in participants’ lives, detailed,
multimodal recall, self-analysis and accurate and deliberate expression in poetic
form of personal understandings. This book of poetry on this topic and in this
form results from the context, experiences and directions of this writing class
(see Appendix A for a full course outline).
In this case, the analysis of poetic identity involves explicating the poet’s sub-
ject position in relation to the meaning of the experience of divorce, her relation-
ship to each of the persons involved and her perception of self as expressed through
her negotiation of discursive possibilities of self hood, specific choices of content
and stylistic choices of linguistic and literary elements that direct her understand-
ing. The specific choices of content made by the poet offer a way of introducing the
central aspects of divorce that Mika focuses on. The content outline and order of
poems in Mika’s book of poetry are as follows:
1. Divorce of Parents – on the moment of her father signing the divorce papers.
2. The Last Supper – on the scene of the final dinner of the whole family on the
day before her mother left the family home.
3. The Morning Mom Left – on the last morning before her mother left the house.
4. Conflict – on Mika’s ambiguous feelings following the divorce.
5. The Day After Divorce – on Mika’s feelings on being asked to choose whether
to live with her mother or father.
6. Housework – on the roles that Mika took on in her father’s house following her
mother’s leaving and her feelings towards these new roles.
7. Mom’s Boyfriend – on meeting her mother’s new boyfriend.
8. Mom? – on Mika’s perception that her mother had changed from being just a
mother into being a woman.
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

9. The First and Last Letter from Dad – on a letter written by her father and given
to her on the day she moved away from home to go to university.
10. Living Apart – on Mika’s feelings as she starts her life away from her family at
university and in a new city.
As can be seen from this outline, the poems are organized as a historical progres-
sion with each poem marking a significant moment in Mika’s understanding of her
process of living through family divorce. This progression offers a series of devel-
oping and changing subject positions described in relation to specific moments of
autobiographical information. She describes this process in the following way:
Divorce of Parents
It happened for a split second
Cracked tie
I was left behind
And totally lost
Dad finally signed the formal paper
Mountains of frustration
I was stunned
Such a thin piece of paper
Relationship was completely different
From 1 minute before
Such an automatic task
Horrible
This poem clearly signifies a meaningful moment of change presented through the
juxtaposition of the thinness of the paper, the automaticity of the task of writing,
the minute of writing and the totality of the loss, the mountains of frustration, the
cracked tie, and the complete change in the relationship. These juxtapositions are
emphasized through the use of lining, stanza design and specific word choice. The
concreteness of the final signing of the formal papers is understood by the speaker
for what it is – a moment of complete upheaval. The speaker describes her state as
being left behind, stunned and lost. This is a difficult situation. Her father’s signing
is centered in the poem, marks the final break from the past, and the need for the
writer to adjust to a new way of seeing herself and her relationship to her family.
Previous perceptions of herself, her life, and her family have now been questioned.
This theme of questioning who she is and how she should now relate to other
members of her family is continued in her next poem – The Last Supper – which
describes the final dinner of her whole family before her mother left home.
 Chapter 4. Poetic identity in a second language 

The Last Supper

I didn’t know
Should I smile?
Should I cry?
Everyone knew tacitly
Well never sit around the table
Happy table
Continuous laughter
Usual arrangement of family
But I felt
Tense atmosphere
Not to break the conversation
Fear of silence
I felt awkward
Trying to look smiling
I can’t remember the flavor of the last supper
This poem starts with the statements – “I didn’t know/Should I smile?/Should I
cry?” indicating the confusion felt by the speaker at this final family supper. Once
again using lining, stanza structure and specific word choice, the poem juxtaposes
the routine of eating supper together and the fact that this will be the last time that
this happens. The ambiguity of the speaker’s described feelings connects memo-
ries of the “usual arrangement of family” with its laughter and happiness with the
“tense atmosphere” and “fear of silence” of the last supper. The speaker literally
does not know what to do. She feels awkward and tries to “look smiling”. The poem
questions the normalcy of this final supper and all its inherent assumptions about
identity positions. A central part of this supper is the unmentioned, tacit knowl-
edge that the supper is not a normal one and that while everyone is playing their
assigned role it is just that – an assigned role. This poem clearly marks a change in
the speaker’s subject position as she struggles with the critical moment of under-
standing that previous schema that directed her ways of being and action tied to
unquestioned identity positions are now questioned and it is unclear how she
should behave and feel. This questioning of identity and its related definitions of
ways of being is continued in her next poem.
The Morning Mom Left
Cold morning
I slowly went downstairs
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

Is she sad?
Or upset?
She was still there
But she was like a stranger
She kept cooking
Facing a window sadly
She didn’t turn around
Hiding tears
I felt
Her back told me something
About our past life
I couldn’t blink
Increasing heartbeat
Kept my eyes on her
To print her on my mind
I whispered at the top of my voice
“Thank you.........”
In this poem, the speaker explores her mother’s feelings and her own relationship
to her mother. As with the poem concerning the last supper, it juxtaposes the rou-
tine of finding her mother present and cooking in the kitchen and the knowledge
that this will be the last time that this happens. This is a critical moment of change
for the speaker, with the present moving quickly into the past. Facing this last mo-
ment of her mother’s presence at home, the speaker tries to capture the past by
looking intensely at her mother and making a “print on her mind”. This is an at-
tempt to overcome the fluidity of life changes experienced by the speaker. Impor-
tantly, the morning is described as “cold” and the speaker is looking at her mother’s
back. Her mother is described as “Facing a window sadly” and “Hiding tears”. At
first, the speaker cannot determine her mother’s feelings and senses her as a
stranger and distant. But once the speaker turns to her own feelings, her sense of
closeness to her mother returns and her memories of past life with her mother are
present. She ends the poem with the oxymoronic construction “I whispered at the
top of my voice/Thank you...”. This line reveals the complexity of the daughter-
mother relationship at this moment. The strangeness of her mother and the emo-
tional distance combined with the ordinariness of her cooking in the kitchen and
fact that she will leave that morning, create a situation in which the speaker shouts
silently offering thanks for the past. What does one feel at a moment like this? The
poem shows the feelings of sadness and loss mixed with the desire to fix a memory
of her mother, to hold on to the relationship between mother and daughter. It is a
 Chapter 4. Poetic identity in a second language 

moment of mixed emotions and recognition of the inevitability of the change to

come. The final “thank you” that ends the poem is also a moment of parting.
The next two poems describe the speaker’s sense of confusion over a lost world
and explore the ramifications of this on her sense of identity. In the first one, she
explores her own maturity and ability to face the new situation:
Conflict
I acted
As if nothing happened
As if I were an adult
Biting my lips
To hinder tears
I was neither a child
Nor adult
too little to accept
too little to sob
Here, the poet recognizes the ambiguity of her identity and the ramifications of
this on her own self-perception. She wishes to cry but identifies this role with that
of a child. She identifies an adult role as that of being able to accept the reality of
her parents’ divorce. She situates herself as between these two identity options
wishing both but unable to fulfill either. Outwardly, she denies the internal ambi-
guity, exhibiting what she considers to be the ways of an adult, ignoring the di-
vorce; but inwardly she actively questions her own maturity and feels all the sad-
ness associated with the loss of family and mother that she has just undergone. She
clearly recognizes her external presentation as a performance using the dual mean-
ings of the word act as theatrical performance and as action.
The next poem further strengthens this sense of the ambiguity of her identity:
The Day After Divorce
Nothing changed in the world
But I was blind
Where am I heading for?
My life
Blind direction
Eyes staring at empty space
Full of anxiety
Who should I live with?
I just left it to nature
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

This poem is motivated by a particular decision that the poet needed to make –
should she live with her mother or with her father? But the poem itself takes on
wider meanings explicating the ramifications of changes to self-identity and per-
sonal situation following a divorce. The speaker states “where am I heading for”
and expresses feelings of blindness and anxiety. She recognizes that the changes
are internal and not external. The world has stayed the same; but she has lost the
assurance of her future direction. Faced with the unknown and having no basis
upon which to make a decision, she does not decide, leaving it to others (nature?)
to work itself out for her. This poem situates the poet at a low point of indecision
and fear of the future.
In the next poem, the ambiguity of self-positioning of the previous poem is re-
placed with anger over the imposition of her mother’s role upon her by her father.
Housework
It made me depressed
I hated it
It took much time
Routine work
Boring sink
Waiting for dad to serve warm dinner
As if I were his wife
It was already prepared for him
“I’m coming home late tonight”
Dad called me
How many times did we repeat this?
This poem expresses the poet’s emotional response to replacing her mother. She
specifies two specific chores (cooking and cleaning) and states that she is acting as
if she “were his wife”. In this poem, the speaker recognizes that she has been as-
signed an identity that is not of her choosing and not of her liking. This is not ac-
cepted by her and involves a shift in the daughter-father relationship to a ‘father-
wife’ relationship with all the inappropriate ramifications that this holds. The poem
expresses the poet’s anger over the whole situation and the lack of communication
between her and her father. The last line of the poem focuses the reader’s attention
on the repetitive nature of the work, the lack of communication and the anger and
disappointment in her father. There is an implicit accusation against the way her
father is behaving and the way he is defining their relationship.
 Chapter 4. Poetic identity in a second language 

This exploration of male identities and roles is continued in the next poem:
Mom’s Boyfriend
He is short
And skinny
Looks like a boy
My dad is tough
And tall
Looks strong
Can he care for my mom?
And protect her?
In this poem, the poet juxtaposes the physical characteristics of her mother’s new
boyfriend and her father. The connection between toughness, maleness and the
ability to protect is based on a classic gender stereotype for men. To a certain ex-
tent this poem extends the disappointment concerning men in the previous poem.
There is also a question here concerning the choice made by her mother concern-
ing a male partner and what this could mean. Her mother’s boyfriend seems to be
very different from her father and once again brings her to question gender iden-
tity categories.
Her next poem brings together several themes used in previous poems. The poet
returns to the last moments of her mother’s leaving and to the last poem that dealt
with the nature of the choice her mother has made for a new boyfriend and life.
Mom?
Domestic mom disappeared
That morning
I was lonely for her
After a while
She came back to me
Became a new woman
Vivid and fresh
I can’t believe my eyes
She is smiling
Like a little girl
Next to her boyfriend
Is it my mom.......?
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

I am upset
At that scene
But get relieved
She is actually walking a new life
Full of happiness
Welcome back my beautiful woman.
In this poem, the speaker recognizes a change in her mother, who has taken on a
new identity. The first and last words of the poem clearly designate the nature of
the change that has occurred. From the sad back of her mother looking out of a
window in an earlier poem, her mother is now a “new woman”. The poet is upset
but by the end of the poem recognizes that the change in her mother is a good
thing and her mother’s new life is full of happiness. Her new role as a “beautiful
woman” is welcomed back. This poem marks a change in the mother/daughter
relationship. Rather than a domestic mother who serves her daughter; the poet
sees her in a new light. The change in relationship to her parents is carried through
to the next poem, when the speaker addresses her relationship with her father.
The First and Last Letter from Dad
“I have never written to you”
The letter said ashamedly
We well know the loneliness of being left
“It was totally my fault.”
Whose words?
Cast a question into darkness
My heart squeezed
How could I blame him?
Wandering around my mind
Coming and going
Hatred and impatience
Through mercy
Settled at our snug life
At last
He was just my dad
My only dad.
Here the poet revisits the role of father in the divorce and the nature of her rela-
tionship with him. The autobiographical memory presented concerns a letter that
was given to the poet by her father on the day that she moved away from home and
went to college. The poem describes her father’s perspective on the divorce and his
 Chapter 4. Poetic identity in a second language 

self blame. As stated in the first few lines, her father feels loneliness, guilt, and
shame. The poet first provides her father’s position and questions her own position
of blaming her father and her feelings of “hatred and impatience” towards him.
The poem ends with the acceptance of the humanity of her father and his flaws.
She understands that he is still her father and this final line is a moment of matu-
rity in which the stereotypes of parenthood are replaced with the recognition of
realities of her father as a person. This poem marks a change in her relationship
and can be seen as a movement towards a more mature attitude. The final poem in
this collection marks the moment of living apart from her parents.
Living Apart
I can do whatever I want
I can eat whatever I want
Don’t have to wait for someone
Don’t have to cook for someone
I can enjoy my time
But nobody welcomes me
When I come back home
I turn on the light
I eat by myself
I am the only person
At home
The poem that ends this book of poetry explores the feelings of living alone at
university. The two stanzas of the poem represent two different positions: freedom
of choice and being by oneself. The first stanza repeats the phrases of what can be
done and what does not have to be done for another; the second stanza empha-
sizes the lack of a partner to welcome her home and the loneliness of this situation.
The poem ends by marking her new status as an individual beyond the relation-
ships with her parents that had so dominated previous poems. This is the final
identity development within this set of poems.
As a book dealing with family divorce, several discursive identities are directly
referenced and negotiated. Specifically, the discursive, social construction of the
family, the nature of being a mother, a father and daughter, the accepted and ex-
pected roles of being a man and a woman and issues of identity related to age are
being negotiated through this book of poetry. The collection can be seen as a his-
tory of developing subject positions designed to explore, understand and negotiate
different ways of being in the world.
This book of poetry documents a process of self-development through a series
of moments that are linguistically negotiated and focused. The specific linguistic
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

choices in each of these selected poetic moments create a form of explanatory nar-
rative. For the presented self positioning and poetic identity, this book of poetry
marks a history of change in which the writer moves from shock and confusion in
relation to divorce to a position of parental acceptance, a more mature under-
standing of gender roles, and the ability to be alone.

4.6 Poetic identity and qualitative research

The discussion of poetic identity that appears in this chapter is crucial for the de-
velopment of an understanding of how poetry writing functions as a research
method. Poetic identity consists of the subject position, interpreted through the
written poem, in relation to described events, experiences, thoughts and feelings
from the autobiographical history of the writer. For qualitative research the inter-
preted poetic identity is primary data on the participant’s constructed perspective
on events. An analysis of poetic identity is the analysis of participant perspective,
a principal reason for using qualitative research data. In this sense, the poetic iden-
tity as a central aspect of poetry writing is the working out of the subject position
that most closely suits the understanding of the writer at the moment of writing.
This working out of identity in relation to events, the construction of written, ex-
pressed and linguistically negotiated experiences from a particular subject posi-
tion is to a large extent the point of writing poetry. It is the moment at which re-
flective, self understanding is communicated and offers evidence of a particular
configuration of the self that connects events, experiences and thoughts with spe-
cific, linguistically negotiated, focused ways of seeing. This moment of personal
expression allows the reader/researcher the option of understanding the partici-
pants’ perspective, their ways of being in the world, the way they construct their
own autobiographical histories, and self-understanding of their processes of de-
velopment. An exploration of poetic identity provides data that is central to the
questions at the heart of qualitative research.
 chapter 5

Philosophical and methodological guidelines

5.1 Introduction

In the last three chapters the characteristics of poetry writing were explored in
relation to the process of poetry writing, the textual and literary features of second
language poetry and the nature and analysis of poetic identity. The aim of this
chapter is to offer a methodological and philosophical position on how poetry
writing can be used as a research method. To this purpose, the studies that have
been done so far with poetry writing as a research method will be reviewed and a
proposal will be offered on how poetry writing can be used as a method for col-
lecting data for questions within the humanities and the social sciences.

5.2 Poetry writing as a research method

In order to explore the existing knowledge on poetry writing as a research method

an extensive search in the fields of education, psychology, sociology, medicine,
nursing and linguistics was conducted. The focus was on published peer-reviewed,
academic journal articles, book chapters and books. The search was not limited to
any specific language but produced only materials published in English perhaps as
a result of a linguistic bias in the search engines themselves. All in all, 66 sources
were found consisting of 35 book chapters, one book and 30 journal articles.
Poetry corners that appear in a range of journals were excluded as they did not
offer explicit discussions of how poetry could be used as a research method. This
relatively small production suggests that this direction for research is not fre-
quently used or discussed. Poetry as a research method has been applied mainly in
the fields of social work, nursing education, and sociology. More specifically, it has
been used to explore nurse field and educational experiences, to understand per-
sonal and field experiences of social work and to explore psychological phenom-
ena. In addition, it was used as a way of presenting data in an engaging manner
within the field of sociology.
A detailed analysis of this literature reveals three main categories of usage:
1) to represent and reinterpret existing data; 2) to collect data; and 3) to collect field
notes. Of these three approaches, the first one is the best known and most widely
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

referenced. This approach consists of taking existing verbal data and rewriting or
rearranging it by means of poetic forms. The most prominent proponent of this
approach and its cited originator is Laurel Richardson (1990), who has explored,
employed and described it quite extensively in a series of publications (Richardson,
1992a, 1992b, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2003). As she retrospectively explains (Richardson,
1997), her method derives from epistemological and ontological concerns with
the nature of knowledge in the field of sociology. She argues from a feminist-
postmodern-interpretivist position that the rewriting of sociological interviews
as poetry expose the “unexamined but foundational assumptions regarding the
nature of ‘theory,’ ‘data,’ ‘findings,’ ‘authority,’ and ‘authorship’” (Richardson, 1997,
p. 233). In this sense, the poetic rewriting of sociological interviews is a critical
action with the intention of raising awareness of the artificiality and intervention
of all forms of rewriting interviews including the unmarked, widely accepted
prose rewriting of interview data and findings in academic fields. In her words,
“framing the ‘findings’ as though they were independent of the method in which
they were produced is falsifying, although a standard claims-making procedure”
(p. 233). To her, interview data results from a dialogic interaction and should be
kept as such.
However, Richardson’s usage and justification of poetic representation of data
goes beyond the poststructuralist argument and into the need of recognizing the
constitutive functions of literacy. She also provides a series of arguments dealing
with the value of conducting this poetic rewriting of data for research purposes.
Richardson (2003a) argues that the rewriting of interview data “can deepen the
researcher’s attachment to the interviewee and help the researcher see through
preconceptions and biases” (p. 191). In addition, the rearrangement of the inter-
viewee data “offers the researcher the possibility of exploring other unexamined
assumptions of interview representation” and thus facilitates “alternative expres-
sions of people’s lives” (Richardson, 2003a, pp. 191–192). Finally, as held by
Richardson (1997), the poetic rearrangement of findings has “a greater likelihood
of engaging readers in reflective analyses of their own interpretive labors of the
researcher’s interpretive labors of the speaker’s interpretive labors” (p. 233). Thus
for her, the poetic rearrangement of interview data has a role in data analysis and
presentation. As an analysis procedure and mode of presentation, the poetic re-
writing of findings provides the option of insight and emotional engagement with
the lived experience of the interviewee for both the researcher and the audience of
academic research. The poem that results from this rewriting of interview data has
the status of a co-interpretive production by the participant and the researcher and
is a more open interpretive entity than the prose presentation of findings.
Richardson (1997) states that this poetic representation of findings is “positioned
as joint, prismatic, open and partial” (p. 233).
 Chapter 5. Philosophical and methodological guidelines 

Richardson (1997) proposes two forms of poetic rearrangement: narrative po-

etry and lyric poetry. The first one presents the interview data in the form of a
story in the participants’ own words, which utilizes the poetic “conventions of line
breaks, spaces between lines and between stanzas and sections” and relies on “po-
etic devices such as repetition, off-rhyme, meter, and pauses to convey her narra-
tive” (Richardson, 1997, p. 233). The narrative poem uses the words of the inter-
viewee but interprets them through the construction of a poetic representation.
The aim is to capture the “essence” of the narrative and to present it in a format
that is both interpretive, insightful and emotionally engaging for the reader, re-
searcher and research audience. This is a form of dramatic storytelling within the
tradition of oral narrative poetry. The presentation of interviewee data as lyric po-
etry also utilizes the conventions of poetic presentation, but the aim of each poem
is to present a single “emotionally and morally charged experience” (Richardson,
1997, p. 236) and not a whole life story. This position is close to Hanauer’s (2003)
understanding that poetry presents a linguistically negotiated moment of unique
human experience. Richardson (1997) claims that lyric poems “concretize emo-
tions, feelings and moods – the most private kind of feelings – in order to recreate
an experience in another person” (p. 237). As such, a collection of lyric poems
captures lived moments of experience and may imply a narrative but is not an ex-
plicated, coherent narrative structure. In fact, a collection of lyric poems rewritten
from interview data could be sequenced into several different narratives and may
imply a series of meta-narrative constructs as well (Richardson, 1997). It is impor-
tant to note that lived experience is a collection of moments that may or may not
be integrated into a coherent narrative. There is the possibility that for many peo-
ple, their memories consist of a collection of specific moments and not an expli-
cated unified narrative. As argued by Richardson (1997), this would imply that the
lyric poem is the closest form of writing that captures and represents actual lived
experience of self.
Richardson is not alone in using poetic rearrangements of collected data; sev-
eral other researchers have built upon a similar set of assumptions concerning the
value of poetically rearranging elicited interview data. Langer and Furman (2004)
conducted a study of a Native American woman exploring her bi-racial identity
and experiences of assimilation that utilized what they term as research and inter-
pretive poems. The research poem is very similar to Richardson’s (1997) presenta-
tion of the narrative poem. As described by Langer and Furman (2004), the re-
search poem was created from the words of the participant as part of an interview
process. The research poem emerged by creating “breaks” in the collected oral nar-
rative while being attentive to “keeping discrete units of meaning together”, the
“sound of the newly forming poem” and the “accuracy and emotional integrity of
the presentation” (p. 4). As argued by Langer and Furman (2004), the benefits of
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

this approach were a “more powerful presentation of data” and the enhancement
of the “emotional intensity and the poignancy of the respondent’s comments”
(p. 5). Langer and Furman’s (2004) article also involved the usage of what they
term an interpretive poem. Following the creation of the research poem from the
rearrangement of the oral data, both authors wrote new poems as a response to the
research poem. The aim of the interpretive poems was to “utilize poetic device to
create an evocative and moving document which allows for the subjective response
of the researchers” (p. 6). These interpretive poems allowed the researchers to ex-
press their own impressions and emotional interactions during and as a response
to the collected interview data.
Exploring sexuality, relationship and identity, Leavy (2009), Poindexter (2002)
and Faulkner (2006) all present data that result from the poetic rearrangement of
interviews. Leavy (2009) collected data on sexual identity and body image from
college females and males but for her poetic rearrangement focused on a group of
18 female participants who self identified as bisexual, heterosexual and homosex-
ual. Her approach consisted of a full categorical analysis of the interview data fol-
lowed by an editorial process involving highlighting specific sections of the origi-
nal interview, selection of specific words and phrases of the interviewee and careful
crafting and weaving of the chosen elements into a poem that was emotional and
represented “very personal experiences” (p. 81). Poindexter (2002) explored the
emotional difficulties of an African American heterosexual couple after the news
that one of them had been infected with the HIV virus. She turned to poetry as a
result of her concern that she “would not be able to sufficiently give voice to the
respondent’s stories and not be able to translate their experiences in a way that
would be useful and meaningful to readers” (2002, p. 707). In creating her research
poetry, Poindexter first coded her interview data, then “copied phrases, sentences
or paragraphs that seemed to highlight the unique personality or perspective of
the respondent” (2002, p. 708), transferred them into a new document and ar-
ranged them into stanzas. This process of poetry creation used the interviewee’s
words but was also based on the “gut feeling” and “literary hunches” of the re-
searcher. Faulkner (2006) used the poetic rearrangement and rewriting of inter-
view data to explore lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer (LGBTQ) Jewish
American identity. Her approach involved the poetic rearrangement of interview
data but was done in a collaborative manner which allowed participants to revise
final poetic transcripts in accordance with their understandings.
Additional instances of poetic transcription of interview data include Finley’s
(2003) recording and performance of conversations with homeless street youths,
Glesne’s (1997) transcription of interview data with an elderly Puerto Rican re-
searcher and educator and Ohlen’s (2003) poetic transcription of interviewee data
of an elderly woman diagnosed with cancer. As seen in the review presented here,
 Chapter 5. Philosophical and methodological guidelines 

this poetic approach to interview data is based on the principle that poetry is a
good representational vehicle for presenting concise, focused, emotion-laden un-
derstandings of human experience. The method employed by the different re-
searchers has three basic elements: 1) collection of data through an interview
process; 2) constructing a poem from the exact words of the interviewee; and
3) using knowledge of poetic conventions and devices to construct poems that
capture the essence of the interview in a condensed, emotional text that engages
both the researcher and the research audience. The final poetic text is designed to
be both a poem and an expression of research data.
A different usage of poetry writing as a research method consists of using it as
a form of data collection. In this case, poetry is not formed out of the words of in-
terview data but rather is the original format of the data itself. As seen in previous
chapters, it involves a process of self discovery and insight into past experiences.
The prevalent use of poetry as a method of data collection builds upon this process
of self discovery and utilizes poetry within the framework of auto-ethnographic
research. In other words, poetry writing is used as part of a research project that
explores the understandings and experiences of the researcher. As argued by
Furman, Langer, Davis, Gallardo & Kulkarni (2007) auto-ethnographic poetry
writing for qualitative researchers helps the poet/researcher to “develop new in-
sights” and can be an important part of the qualitative researchers’ “constant proc-
ess of self reflection as a means of exposing their biases” (p. 304). For psychologi-
cally demanding therapeutic and clinical fields such as social work, psychology,
nursing and medical practice, auto-ethnographic poetry writing has the value of
helping the clinician/researcher/poet “reflect concisely and accurately what they
see, hear, think and feel while they grapple with the demand to listen to their cli-
ents’ needs and concerns” as well as to help them to “develop empathy and under-
standing of their clients” (Furman, Lietz, and Langer, 2006). In addition to the
value of enhanced self understanding by the researcher, the written poetry can
also serve as research data for other readers offering insights into the experiences
and understandings of these researchers in a range of settings. As stated by Furman,
Lietz and Langer (2006), this auto-ethnographic poetry is “qualitative data” and
“an exploration of the lived experience of the research subject/participant” (p. 4).
Thus, auto-ethnographic poetry writing serves the double purpose of enhancing
self understanding of the researcher and providing insights for others in relation
to the world phenomenon and lived experiences researched.
In the Furman, Lietz and Langer (2006) study, poetic auto-ethnography was
used to explore Rich Furman’s experiences in working as a volunteer with two
abandoned psychiatrically and psychologically disabled children in Antiqua,
Guatemala. The aim of the poetry writing was to “represent faithfully the salient
affective and psychosocial issues that he encountered in his interactions with the
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

children” and “as a means for the author of exploring his perceptions and feelings
about the complex, personal issues implicated in cross-cultural and international
helping” (Furman, Lietz and Langer, 2006, p. 4). The poems were treated as quali-
tative data and analysed using emergent, grounding theory approaches to open
and axial thematic coding. This process of coding was conducted in several cycles
and was designed to “ensure accurate and adequate representation of the themes”
(Furman, Lietz and Langer, 2006, p. 4) found in the original poetry. Having com-
pleted a thematic analysis, a new series of poems was written based on the ana-
lysed themes and utilizing different poetic forms including the American form of
the original Japanese tanka and the pantoum, a French poetic form based on
Malaysian poetry. The outcome was the construction of three poems dealing with
the same thematic material – the original poem, a thematic tanka form and a the-
matic pantoum form as responses to the original poem. As argued by Furman,
Lietz and Langer (2006) these poems exemplify Richardson’s (1997, 2003b) femi-
nist-postmodern-interpretivist position that the form of data presentation influ-
ences the ways in which data is understood and the meanings that are emphasized
and extracted.
In a different poetry writing study, Furman (2007) explores his own under-
standing of existential themes that are relevant to his therapeutic practice. In this
case, Furman utilized two different genres for his auto-ethnographic inquiry – po-
etry and narrative. Furman had a collection of poems that he had written about
the issues of death, meaning, identity, and nothingness that examined his experi-
ences as a therapist. His method in relation to these written poems was to write
personal narrative reflections in response to his written poetry designed to “focus
on the specific existential theme explored” in each poem and to contextualize
“personal insights into broader cultural issues” (Furman, 2007, p. 3). The aim of
this study was primarily for self-understanding and as part of the process of en-
hancing personal clinical practice.
Auto-ethnographic poetry writing as a research method has also been used
within the field of nursing education. Holmes and Gregory (1998) argue that po-
etry writing should be part of the repertoire of literacy skills used by nurses as a
“way in which nurses can reveal the perceptions in their work and how these new
found perceptions can add depth and meaning to their practice” (p. 1194). Holmes
and Gregory (1998) find the poetry writing experience important in that it allows
“mundane daily events or complex experiences” to be “transformed into expres-
sions with clarity, freshness and new significance” and thus allows new under-
standings to emerge and be stored over time. The poetic approach taken in this
study consists of focusing on the emotive and explanatory power of the image.
The image is considered to capture “deeply meaningful perceptive experiences
(Holmes and Gregory, 1998, p. 1191) and as such is valuable to the practicing
 Chapter 5. Philosophical and methodological guidelines 

nurse who is trying to reflect and understand the experiences she is exposed to in
her professional life.
A different way of using poetry writing as a form of data collection is to com-
bine the auto-ethnographic value of poetry writing as a process of enhanced self
understanding with research questions concerning experiences that are of interest
to the wider academic community. In other words, a researcher can initiate a po-
etry writing process that is designed to allow the participants involved personal
insight through their poetry writing and at the same time utilize this written po-
etry as qualitative data that gives insight to the understanding and perspective of
these participants by the researcher. The basic principle here is the development of
a context and process that facilitates the writing of self reflective, auto-ethnograph-
ic poetry that is then used as data for qualitative research.
As mental health nurse educators, Kidd and Tusaie (2004) used the same proc-
ess. In their study, writing a poem was integrated within the framework of an on-
going reflective journaling process. A single poem was requested on the last week
of a course for trainee nurses conducting clinical practice in acute/chronic psychi-
atric units in hospitals. The instruction given to the students was that the poetry
should “reflect either the voice of a client or the student’s personal response to the
mental health experience” (Kidd and Tusaie, 2004, p. 406). The submitted poems
were treated as data and a thematic, qualitative analysis was conducted, which
identified five core themes and one overriding meta-theme. The authors described
the situation as one in which “students’ initial beliefs were challenged and fre-
quently altered” (Kidd and Tusaie, 2004, p. 406) through the process of clinical
practice. As described by Kidd and Tusaie (2004), the poetry writing process “pro-
vided a rich and diverse medium for the expression of thoughts, feelings and
knowledge attained” (p. 412) by mental health trainee nurses. As reported in this
study, the experience was beneficial to the trainee nurses as well as to the teaching
faculty in understanding the specific experiences of their students (and by exten-
sion other students like them). Similar usages of poetry within nursing education
have been described by Olson (2001), Peck (2001) and Schuster (1994), all focus-
ing on the ability of poetry to elicit auto-ethnographic understandings that assist
trainee nurses in seeing their experiences and clients in new ways and allowing
teaching faculty to understand the experiences of their students.
A different context which utilizes poetry as a data collection method and as a
form of auto-ethnography was described by Bjorklund (1999). In this study, a po-
etry therapy group was initiated within an in-patient psychiatric ward to help pa-
tients explore and expand their understanding of their diagnostic identity. The
poetry writing was part of the therapeutic process and was designed to help pa-
tients express and explore their identities, feelings and experiences in psychiatric
hospitals. The poems were facilitated through an expressive arts process that
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

included the presentation of pictures, verbal expression of emotions, sketchpad

drawing and poetry writing. The product of this process was a series of poems that
touched upon shared commonalities among members of the poetry therapy group.
The expressed themes were changes they felt in the way they were treated follow-
ing diagnosis, the experience of not being listened to, the sense of violation at be-
ing hospitalized, and the desire to leave hospital and “live like everybody else”
(Bjorklund, 2003, p. 214). While the aim was to help the participants to express
and explore their own identities and feelings, the outcome of the presentation and
analysis of this poetry is an enhanced understanding of the perspective and expe-
riences of this group of patients. Thus, as with other uses of auto-ethnographic
poetry writing, it serves a double aim of providing personal insight to the poet
while providing other readers and researchers insight into the poet’s perspective
and understanding of their own experiences.
The third way of using poetry writing as a research method consists of using
poetry writing as a method of collecting field notes. In two papers, Sherry and
Schouten (2002) and Cahnmann (2003) propose collecting observations and field
notes in the early stages of qualitative research. This proposal is based on the idea
that poetry involves a sensitive, careful, image directed and emotionally-laden ob-
servation of the world and as such may provide the researcher with insight into
their own understanding of experiences and observed phenomenon. As opposed
to previously discussed propositions on the use of poetry as a research method, the
assumption here is that poetry will directly serve the understanding of the re-
searcher and may not be accessible to the research audience. Poetry writing in this
context serves a mediatory role in allowing the researchers to further their own
understanding of the phenomenon under observation. Sherry and Schouten (2002)
describe this process as a form of reflective journal designed to “record personal
reactions, thoughts, biases and observations that emerge in fieldwork” (p. 224).
The type of poetry writing they utilize derives from “very specific sensory images”
from “memory, objects and artifacts, ambient environment, photographs, com-
mercial media, other texts, interpersonal interactions, and conversations” (p. 226).
Cahnmann (2003) specifies that poetic field notes offer “researchers the possibility
to write down images, metaphors, and overheard phrases” (p. 226). For both
Cahnmann (2003) and Sherry and Schouten (2002), these poetic field notes are
recorded in an on-going manner within a notebook. For Cahnmann (2003), the
value of a poetic approach to field notes resides in the fact that poetry writing “re-
quires the practice of noticing” and a “fresh way of seeing” (p. 32). As with other
uses of poetry writing for research purposes, the aim of these poetic field notes is
to “tap intuitions and explore unthought known” and to seek “better understand-
ing” (Sherry and Schouten, 2002, p. 224). In a similar vein, Cahnmann (2003) sees
this process as a way “to reimagine ways of understanding the familiar” (p. 32).
 Chapter 5. Philosophical and methodological guidelines 

All three methods reviewed above utilize the special characteristics of poetry
writing in order to enhance personal understanding, explore personal biases, gen-
erate emotional responses and engagement and demonstrate that poetry writing
can be a useful genre for research purposes. This direction is developed in the next
section as we explore the specific proposal for using poetry writing as a research
method developed in this book.

5.3 Methodological guidelines

The approach to using poetry writing as a research method that is suitable for an-
swering questions in the humanities and the social sciences builds upon the re-
search that has already been done concerning poetry as a research method and the
special characteristics of poetry writing presented in this book. In particular, my
own interests concern second language learners and as such this section will de-
velop an approach to using poetry writing as a research method that is directly
attuned to this group. However, the basic principles and methodological aspects of
this approach should be useful for a wide range of research projects that go beyond
the specific population addressed here.
The approach to poetry writing as a research method developed in this book
builds upon the concept of combining data collection with a process of self discov-
ery. This is an inherently ethical approach to research in that participants gain
value and insight into themselves as part of the process of data elicitation and they
are not treated as an objectified information source. The development of self
knowledge is a basic aspect of the process of data generation and is valued for the
knowledge of participant perspective that it produces. This approach involves cre-
ating a writing context in which, through an extended, reflective, deliberative con-
sideration of autobiographical information, a series of (lyric) poems capturing
specific, significant moments of life are produced. Data collection is a facilitated
writing process that involves extensive self consideration and analysis and careful
writing and revision of personal, autobiographical memories. The writers are
helped during this process and allowed time to really construct texts that reflect
their understandings of past experiences at the time of writing. The poem as a
source of data is deliberative and reflective and offers the qualitative researcher
insight into the presented, thoughtful and crafted perspective of the writer on per-
sonal experiences, thoughts and feelings. The ability of poetry to capture and re-
construct the reader’s impressions of moments of life with their embedded emo-
tional and sensory perceptions offers the qualitative researcher a rich source of
information with which to closely explore the writer’s position and understanding
while emotionally engaging with the experience itself. Data analysis is directed by
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

a concern for both the content and the stylistic aspects of the poem and is in ac-
cordance with the nature of the text as a poem. Stylistic analysis of the way artistic
decisions direct the reader to certain foci, feelings, images and understandings is
important in that the poem uses these textual features to construct its meaning
and to reveal the writer’s subjective positioning in relation to the experience,
thought or feeling that is being presented.
As with any description of a method, several different traditional aspects of
research need to be addressed, which consist of types of research questions that
can be addressed (the why), methods of data collection and analysis (the how), the
data that is elicited (the what), and ways of organizing and presenting data
(the “what for” and “to whom”). In the sections below, each of these aspects is de-
scribed in relation to the usage of poetry writing as a research method.

5.3.1 Personal and cultural qualitative research questions

Poetry writing is particularly suited for the exploration of research questions that
address experiences with emotional content and where the issue under considera-
tion includes understanding the specific ways in which something was experienced
by the participant. Broadly speaking, it is useful for understanding the personal
perspective of the writers in relation to their lived experiences. As defined by Max-
well (1996), this includes cognition, affect and intention. Poetry writing allows the
exploration of questions that concern the influence of context on individual expe-
riences and potentially through a series of poems the subjective experience of a life
process (such as divorce as exemplified in Chapter 4). Thus, poetry writing can
address a broad spectrum of core research concerns of qualitative research.
But poetry writing is not just another mode of collecting qualitative data. As
explicated in this book, it has special characteristics. Central to these is the im-
portance of personal discovery as part of the process. In a discussion of scientific
inquiry and utilizing Zachos, Hick, Doanne, and Sargents’ (2000) definitions,
Hanauer, Hatfull and Jacobs-Sera (2009) differentiate between personal and cul-
tural knowledge defining the former as a moment of personal discovery and the
latter as a move towards the scientific community. In many cases of educational
usage of inquiry processes, only personal knowledge is developed; in others, pro-
fessional usage of inquiry processes only involves the cultural development of
knowledge. The process of poetry writing as a research method relies on both as
it is based on the development of personal knowledge to generate data that is
valuable to the wider research community. In this sense, poetry writing as a re-
search method integrates the aims of personal discovery with the development of
scientific, culturally valuable knowledge. Therefore, it raises questions which are
of both personal and cultural importance. There are many questions of this type
 Chapter 5. Philosophical and methodological guidelines 

(see Prendergast, 2009, p. xxii for an extensive list), but what is common to all of
them is that participants are motivated into understanding their own experienc-
es, thoughts and feelings and that their perspective relates to experiences that are
of interest to a wider research community. For example, understanding one’s own
experiences of migration is often personally significant as well as being of interest
to researchers in fields of applied linguistics, sociology, psychology and educa-
tion.
A final issue relates to the type of data that is actually elicited through poetry
writing. A poem of the sort developed here (see Section 5.3.3 below) involves con-
cise, image-driven and emotionally-laden language that is produced through a
reflective process and cycles of revision. The poem is a deliberative, reflective and
carefully crafted text. As such, research questions requiring immediate, intuitive
responses or addressing explicit belief or opinion are not suited to this form of
data. Poetry writing is a carefully worked out position that reflects personal and
subjective ways of understanding that experience.

5.3.2 Facilitating poetry writing

It is a core assumption of the approach developed here that the participants do not
need to have any prior experience in writing poetry and that the language of the
poetry which they are using does not necessarily need to be their first language.
However, it is an assumption of the approach developed here that the potential
participants have literacy skills and advanced levels of second language acquisi-
tion. Therefore, the data collection process consists of the careful facilitation of
poetry writing. The role of the researcher is to function as a writing instructor who
promotes the writing of personally significant poetry. Thus data collection results
from a supportive process that allows participants to develop written poetry. While
there can be several different ways of constructing a context for poetry writing,
three core stages are crucial for the type of data that is of use to poetry writing as a
research project to emerge. These stages are as follows:
1. Generating Personal Motivation for Self Exploration: A starting point of any
research project using poetry writing needs to be an explanation of the rele-
vance of the project to the participant. The aim is that the participant be inter-
ested in the self exploration of their own lives (or perhaps specific aspects of
their lives). It is an ethical imperative as well as a requirement for quality data
that the poets be motivated to really understand and express as accurately as
they can their own experiences. In one sense the motivation for participation
in a project of this kind is always the promise of self discovery and self under-
standing (see Chapter 2).
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

2. Constructing a Process of Autobiographical Exploration: A central part of the

process of facilitating poetry writing is directing a process of exploration of
autobiographical memories. This process can be as simple as asking partici-
pants to close their eyes and think back about a particular period in their lives
or a particular type of experience; or asking participants to bring in photo-
graphs and explore the experiences and memories of the people in the pic-
tures. There are many methods of this sort, but what is crucial from the per-
spective of using autobiographical information for poetry writing is that the
memory be relived and re-experienced by the participant in a multisensory
manner. This requires using the facilities of the imagination to actually recre-
ate in the mind of the participants the experience as they remember it. This
emphasis on multisensory memory and internal reconstruction of lived expe-
riences helps to avoid the rehearsed, ideological retelling of events. A focus on
the actual experience in a multisensory manner makes the participant really
address the experience itself rather than jumping to the rehearsed meaning of
the event. Often the nature of self discovery is the movement beyond the re-
hearsed understanding of past events to the new understanding of things that
have happened based on the reconstruction and re-seeing of the event and
how it was experienced. In my own facilitation of autobiographical memory
and poetry writing, I require participants to make a list of meaningful life ex-
periences and then to try and relive each of the experiences that they have
listed. This relived memory is then filtered into a focus on a central moment
and feeling within this event. Extensive notes are written by the participant
concerning this moment. Ultimately these notes and the relived memory itself
are the source of the written poem.
3. Poetic Expression of Autobiographical Memory: Writing a poem is much easier
than most inexperienced writers of poetry think it is. However, it does require
some direction and writing experimentation and is a process of learning a new
way of expressing personally held meanings. Central to this learning process
is the concept that poetry is useful for the expression and reconstruction of
multisensory experiences. As a simple guideline, I tell participants that poetry
is about ‘showing’ the experience and not ‘telling about’ it; the former creates
the experience for the reader, the later explains the experience but avoids actu-
ally describing it. I also explain that the forms of poetry such as graphic or-
ganization, sound patterns and figurative language are designed to direct
readers in particular ways and that as poets they can use all or any of these
methods to reconstruct their lived experiences. I direct them to explore any
forms of poetry that they are culturally familiar with and to experiment with
various different types of poetry writing. At various stages in this process, I ask
them to read their poems to themselves and to others and to check if the poem
 Chapter 5. Philosophical and methodological guidelines 

accurately recreates the experience that they have in their memories. Multiple
times in this process, I ask participants to close their eyes and relive the de-
scribed experience and then look at their written poem and to evaluate if it is
an accurate reconstruction of their feelings and understandings. Poems are
rewritten, revised, edited, changed, and reorganized many times until the poet
feels that it accurately recreates their sense, feeling and understanding of the
experience they are describing. While the description provided here is rather
technical, it is important to remember that the expression, evaluation and ex-
ploration of expressed memories in poetry is a process through which self
discovery often takes place. By reconsidering, reliving in imagination and ex-
pressing in poetic form a reflective process of self insight is enacted. It is as if
by reconsidering these memories through imagination and the attempt to un-
derstand them and direct the reader to see and experience what is relevant, the
writer sees them from a fresh perspective. This renewal of memory and new
understanding is the process of self discovery.
As discussed in Chapter 2, the processes of self discovery and permutation are
central to the poetry writing process. There are many different ways of construct-
ing writing contexts and writing processes such as these. As discussed in the litera-
ture review above, Bjorklund (1999) created an in-patient poetry therapy group
and facilitated poetry writing through a variety of visual aids; Furman, Coyne and
Junko Negi (2008) created poetry writing workshops for social work students in-
volved in an overseas aid experience. What is shared by these projects and my own
work is that the creation of poetry as a process of self reflection and discovery is
facilitated through the development of a contextually appropriate writing context.

5.3.3 The (lyric) poem

The method described here requires a poetic text that can provide useful informa-
tion for qualitative research. There are several characteristics that would seem cen-
tral to fulfilling this purpose. The poem needs to result from a process of self ex-
ploration and careful consideration of the accuracy of poem to lived experience. It
needs to address autobiographical information and find its source in personal
multisensory and emotionally laden memories of lived experiences. In this sense,
the text can utilize a wide range of linguistic and literary conventions to direct the
reader to the feelings and meanings hidden within the experience itself. As seen in
the analysis presented in Chapter Three, the poems written by second language
learners were short, used high frequency vocabulary, had emotional content
words, were written using first person pronouns and utilized a range of literary
micro-features including extensive usage of imagery. In other words, this corpus
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

of poetry provided the type of text that is useful for the exploration of qualitative
research questions.
In her differentiation between narrative and lyric poetry, Richardson (1997)
offers one way of characterizing the types of poetry that are useful for qualitative
research. The advantage of aiming for lyric poetry as a source of poetic data is that
it does not require a coherent, unified narrative description but rather only the
inference of a potential narrative (or series of narratives). The lyric poem offers the
option of exploring situations in which life experiences are not fully coherent and
well-integrated into narrative frames and allows flexibility in exploring personal
lived experience.
In fact, a poem presents a carefully crafted and directed moment of recon-
structed experience from the perspective of the writer. In other words, the written
research poem should capture a moment of self understanding of past experience
through the performance of poetic identity at the moment of writing. This per-
formance of identity – the directed, subjective linguistically and literarily negoti-
ated expression of personal experience – should involve emotional information as
well as aspects of cognition and intent. It is the ability of the poem to recreate the
experience with the sensory and emotional information that makes the poem a
unique source of personal data that is both engaging and informative at the same
time. The poetic text allows deeper understanding of the ‘other’ as it engages the
reader on an emotional level in relation to the events portrayed. The written poem
that manages to capture moments of life with the associated emotional and sen-
sory feelings offers the qualitative researcher a rich source of information with
which to closely explore the writer’s position and understanding while emotion-
ally engaging with the experience itself.

5.3.4 Analysis of poetry for qualitative research purposes

As discussed in Chapter 4, poetic identity is central to the qualitative research

project as it is the point at which participant perspective is expressed. This implies
the understanding of how the participant experienced the described events, what
experiences construct the event itself and what feelings and cognitions are inher-
ent in the experience. It can also include the understanding of how contextual
factors influenced the participant and the process of life involved. A successful
process of poetry writing and poetic identity analysis should therefore explicate
the subjective position, emotional content and understanding of the participant.
Analysis in this sense is in accordance with the guidelines explicated in Chapter 4
and focuses on explicating poetic identity.
For some poetic inquiry approaches there is a question concerning the desir-
ability of any subsequent analysis. For Richardson (1997, 2003b) and Poindexter
 Chapter 5. Philosophical and methodological guidelines 

(2002) the creation of poetry from collected interview data is already a process of
analysis and a presentable outcome of research activity. In other words, the poem
does not need any subsequent analysis. This is also the core position of an arts-
based approach to research in which the entry into the reconstructed experience
of the art work is the exposure to the outcomes of the inquiry process. For other
researchers, such as Furman, Lietz and Langer (2006) and Kidd and Tusaie (2004),
subsequent qualitative, thematic analysis is desirable. For the purposes developed
here, the analysis of poetic identity is seen as a central aspect of conducting quali-
tative research. It is the point at which arts-based research becomes a qualitative
study. However, in accordance with arts-based approaches, it is also important to
present the poetry itself and the awareness that poetry can have (like other sorts of
linguistic data) multiple potential meanings. This approach has the advantage of
giving voice and presence to the original poet/research participant thus allowing
the reader to engage emotionally with the writer. In addition, the presentation of
the full poem with its analysis by the researcher allows the recipients of research to
make their own decisions concerning the participant’s perspective while still offer-
ing the investigator’s comprehension of the participant’s understandings.

5.3.5 Organizing and presenting poetic data

The presentation and organization of poetry in a study that utilizes poetry writing
as a research method involves artistic as well as research criteria. The research cri-
teria aim for a valid presentation of the poet’s position. The artistic criteria relate to
a consideration of the aesthetic and emotional effects of different combinations of
poems. Different combinations of poems will change the ways in which phenom-
ena in the world are understood through the poetic data. As argued by Richardson
(1997, 2003b), data presentation is a rhetorical activity that has ramifications on
the comprehension of the reader. One of the reasons that poetry data is used is to
generate emotional, multisensory understandings of personal experiences. The or-
der of poems and the contextual relationships between them will generate different
responses in the audience. This is the same as when a poetry book is designed or a
poetry reading performance is conducted in front of a live audience.
Several different ways of presenting and organizing poetry can be used: indi-
vidual moments of life; inferred narrative; and juxtaposed experience. The first way of
organizing poetry consists of positioning each poem as an individual case. The or-
der of the poems presented in the research report is still important but the concep-
tual approach to the organization of the poetry is that each individual poem offers
a unique situation and as such occupies its own conceptual space. To an extent
every usage of lyric poetry assumes the individuality of the specific experience de-
scribed. The second way of organizing poetry consists of narrative presentation.
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

While each lyric poem may involve a moment of life experience and understanding,
a collection of several moments of life may infer and loosely construct a narrative of
events. For example, Chapter 4 showed a series of poems dealing with family di-
vorce constructed as a form of narrative development in which each poem marked
a moment of change and understanding. Obviously different orders or choices of
poems will generate different inferred narratives. The third way of presenting po-
etry as data consists of offering the reader several different viewpoints on the same
phenomena. In this sense, poems may juxtapose through their close proximity and
differences in subjective positioning. This third option aims to exemplify the diver-
sity of positions in relation to the experience and understanding of world phenom-
ena (as will be exemplified in the next chapter). The use of juxtaposed poems will
construct a collage of the experience rather than a unified picture of reality.

5.4 Philosophical considerations

The current usage of poetry writing as a research method utilizes positions devel-
oped in both qualitative and arts-based research. The approach specified here in-
tegrates aspects of previous poetic inquiries and studies of poetry writing con-
ducted and presented in this book. Specifically the approach can be described as
building upon Furman, Lietz and Langer (2006) and Furman’s (2007) concept of
the value of poetry writing for auto-ethnographic purposes, Kidd and Tusaie
(2004) and Bjorklund’s (1999) concept of integrating auto-ethnographic poetry
writing with data collection by other researchers, and Richardson’s (1997, 2003a)
concept of the centrality of lyric poetry in capturing moments of life. The approach
developed here suggests that a writing context be constructed that facilitates auto-
ethnographic poetry writing directed by the desire of the poets/participants to
understand and explore their own lived experiences and that the poetry that re-
sults from this process be considered and analysed as qualitative and aesthetic data
to answer specific questions within the realm of the social sciences and humani-
ties. The specific contribution of the studies presented in this book consists of the
definition of the process of poetry writing, the characterization of second language
poetry writing and the explication of the analytical concept of poetic identity.
These contributions explicate why and how poetry works in producing valuable
poetic data, that advanced second language learners are fully capable of producing
written poetry that is useful for qualitative research and ways in which written
poetry can be analysed for qualitative research purposes.
There are, however, philosophical issues that still need to be addressed. As dis-
cussed by Richardson (1997), using poetry writing for research purposes raises ques-
tions concerning the representational aspects of research. Specifically, it questions
 Chapter 5. Philosophical and methodological guidelines 

the common practice of translating verbal participant data into the format of aca-
demic prose. This convention of converting the verbatim text of the participants and
producing another text which conforms to the conventions of academic prose writ-
ing has been normalized to such an extent that researchers do not feel the need to
actually justify it (Mantzoukas, 2004). While reflectivity and explicit discussion of
methodological decisions has been a hallmark of qualitative research over the last
two decades, the explicit discussion within research reports themselves as to their
choice of representational form has not been extensively explored or explicated.
Interestingly, the issue of the genre choice for representing data and research
reflects a much deeper set of epistemological, ontological and methodological as-
sumptions. The normalization of verbatim data into the format of academic prose
enacts a division between the researcher and the researched and thus gives the illu-
sion of disembodied and objectified data. This happens even when selected verba-
tim quotes from participants are embedded within the research report. The trans-
formation of participant data into other formats, such as a system of categories or
the definition of contextual contingencies, involves the attempt to make a personal
perspective palatable, relevant and seamless from a discursive perspective to a com-
munity of researchers. In an important discussion of aesthetic inquiry, Alexander
(2003) points out that even qualitative research which aims at presenting, explor-
ing, explicating and contextualizing participant understanding, does so by translat-
ing an “insider into an outsider perspective by means of cognitive processes” (p. 5).
The use of academic genre conventions of writing contextualize and explicate the
participant’s position and transform a personal voice into a research position.
As described by Richardson (1997), her own translation of interview data into
poetry was far less palatable for sociology researchers than the conventionalized
translation of interview data into academic prose. Both, however, involved a trans-
lation of data but the genre of poetry raises different expectations than academic
prose. The conventional expectations of poetry reading are that it will be polyse-
mantic, difficult to understand and embedded with implicit meanings (Culler,
1975; Hanauer, 1998b). Poetry is subjective and personal. Academic prose, like all
language texts, is also open to various interpretations but assumes the convention
of trying to provide ease of access to its meanings. The form of academic prose
assumes the voice of the disimpassioned observer exploring understanding. The
usage of academic prose sends the message that meaning can be determined, de-
fined, specified, explicated and disseminated. As Richardson (2003a) points out,
presenting data as poetry sends the message that meaning is multiple, inferential,
partial, constructed and personal.
To a certain extent it is these conventions of the genre of written poetry that
make poetry writing as a research method seem so untenable. Poetry writing as a
research method, even as explicated in this chapter, cannot fulfill the assumptions
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

concerning the importance of objectivity, the separation of knowledge and know-

er, the emphasis on method, the marginalization of affect, the restriction of inves-
tigation to a limited set of variables, replicability, prediction and the aim of con-
structing generalizations. Poetry writing is an arts-based and qualitative research
methodology and as argued by Maxwell (2004) and Alexander (2003) the logic of
quantitative and qualitative approaches is very different and needs to be under-
stood as such for each to be purposefully employed.
Every research project, irrespective of the approach or method, aims to con-
struct new knowledge that is trustworthy and of interest to a community of re-
searchers. Broadly, all forms of qualitative research are concerned with “human
understanding, interpretation, intersubjectivity, lived truth (i.e truth in human
terms)” and “record phenomena in terms of participant understanding” (Ernest,
1997, p. 33). Qualitative research can provide a rich, contextualized description
that allows insights into participants’ understandings, emotions, intentions, inter-
actions and the contexts that they live and function in. In relation to research aims,
qualitative research aims to produce an understanding of a unique, contextualized
case. The assumption is that the detailed and rich description of particular case
“may serve as an exemplar of something more general” (Ernest, 1997, p. 34).
Using poetry writing as an auto-ethnographic research method and present-
ing written poetry as part of the data presentation process involves the integration
of aesthetic inquiry and qualitative research. Specifically, aesthetic inquiry blurs
the distinction between insider (emic) and outsider (etic) perspectives through the
construction of a “virtual reality created nondiscursively by a whole thinking-feel-
ing person using metaphoric language, symbolic behavior, or virtual shapes,
sounds or movement” (Alexander, 2003, p. 5). Accordingly, in aesthetic inquiry
emotion and cognition are integrated and the process of understanding the par-
ticipant’s perspective is the process of entering into the participant’s aesthetic re-
construction of the world by the reader/listener. Gordon’s (1996) concept of aes-
thetic cognitivism is crucial here in that art is positioned as a vehicle for directing
cognition and understanding through artistic means. The outcome is the recon-
struction and reliving of someone else’s experience. As defined by Hanauer (2003)
“in poetic writing, linguistic uniqueness embodies cognitive attention that acti-
vates associative potential meaning, emotional response, and compensatory sen-
sual perception and thus creates an artistic experience for the participant, reader
or observer” (p. 77). This experience is the reconstruction from participants’ per-
spective of their understandings of their own experiences.
The process of eliciting auto-ethnographic poetry, presenting it and analysing
it creates a situation in which both insider and outsider positions are offered for
the reader. Ernest (1997) states that this type of description allows “a reader to
understand the case through identification, empathy or a sense of entry into lived
 Chapter 5. Philosophical and methodological guidelines 

reality” (p. 34). The meanings and insights that are constructed are by definition
subjective, interpretive and multiple. As argued by Maxwell (2004), qualitative re-
search as an approach values the interpretive and avoids a “unified, totalizing un-
derstanding” (p. 35) of phenomena. The view of the world that emerges from lyric,
poetic data is one that is comprised of multiple, described, subjective moments of
experience. This is a postmodern perspective that critiques the assumed neutrality
of representation and the possibility of a unified, universal description of reality.
Gubrium and Holstein (2003) explain that “social researchers adopting and adapt-
ing the postmodernist impulse for empirical aims have generally come to terms
with reality by examining the content of lives and experiences” (p. 8). The locus of
reality in a postmodern research context is situated in the exploration of the dis-
cursive construction of the world by individuals and groups of individuals and
expressed through various forms of representation.
The outcome of the presentation of a series of lyric poems and their interpreta-
tion as the results of an inquiry is the construction of a collage of expressed reali-
ties. As in a collage, different perspectives are present that reconstruct moments of
experience and ways of understanding these experiences. The emphasis is on the
multiplicity of viewpoints at particular temporal moments. The analysis of each of
these poems aims to explicate the poetic identity – the specific, linguistically and
literarily negotiated emotional and cognitive understanding – expressed in each
poem and in relation to autobiographical information. In this sense, understand-
ing a phenomena means being exposed to, experiencing, and understanding the
diversity of positions, historically present and potentially possible in relation to a
studied phenomenon. The use of poetry allows access to emotional and cognitive
understandings and provides an artistically directed, multisensory reconstruction
of experience. Together, the poetry and its interpretation should create a rich, di-
verse, and insightful description of the phenomena being explored that counters
broad generalizations and simplified presentations of lived experience.
How does one evaluate the quality of poetic inquiry? The concepts of accuracy,
validity, and reliability are not suitable terms to explore qualitative data in general
and poetic data in particular (Guba & Lincoln, 1989; Lincoln & Guba, 1985;
Maxwell, 2004; Seale, 1999). In relation to aesthetic inquiry, both Alexander (2003)
and Richardson (2003b) suggest using criteria drawn from both qualitative re-
search in the social sciences and art criticism. Richardson (2003b) delineates a
useful series of specific criteria that she uses in evaluating the quality of research
papers submitted for publication. Richardson’s (2003b) criteria are:
1. Substantive Contribution: “Does this piece contribute to our understanding of
social life? Does the writer demonstrate a deeply grounded (if embedded) so-
cial scientific perspective?” (p. 522)
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

2. Aesthetic Merit: “Does the piece succeed aesthetically? Does the use of creative
analytic practices open up the text, invite interpretive responses? Is the text
artistically shaped, satisfying, complex, and not boring?” (p. 522)
3. Reflexivity: “How did the author come to write this text? How was the infor-
mation gathered? Are there ethical issues? How has the author’s subjectivity
been both a producer and product of this text? Is there adequate self awareness
and self exposure for the reader to make judgments about the point of view?
Does the author hold him- or herself accountable to the standards of knowing
and telling of the people he or she has studied?” (p. 522)
4. Impact: “Does this affect me? Emotionally? Intellectually? Does it generate
new questions? Move me to write? Move me to try new research practices?
Move me to action?” (p. 523)
5. Expression of Reality: “Does this text embody a fleshed out, embodied sense of
lived experience? Does it seem “true” – a credible account of a cultural, social,
individual or communal sense of the “real”?” (p. 523)
Together these criteria offer a way of evaluating the quality of a research publica-
tion that incorporates poetic data.
Ultimately, poetry writing can be used as a research method as long as it is
understood that this form of data is useful in attaining the goal of understanding
individual, subjective, literary and linguistically negotiated, emotionally laden de-
scriptions of experience. There is a wide range of qualitative research questions
that this approach can be suitable for. As described above, the auto-ethnographic
value of the poetry writing as a research method, in addition to its potential to
answer questions of interest to a community of researchers, makes it an ethical
way to work with participants. What poetry can offer is the ability to present con-
cise, focused, emotionally informed, image-directed descriptions of moments of
life that can engage readers and generate empathy and understanding of the ‘other’
without the usual objectification and erasure of participants. Finally, it is impor-
tant to note that poetry writing provides participants with a clear voice and pres-
ence within the research project. There is value in hearing individual voices and
appreciating the diversity of lived experience.
 chapter 6

Exploring the study abroad experience

6.1 Introduction

Study Abroad
Before study abroad,
The color of image is
Yellow, Orange, Pink, Sky blue.
But in fact
The color changed into
Sorrow Gray, Dark Black, Regret Purple
Blood Red.
Nervous, Tough, Cry, Shock
I just remember these words.
The poem that opens this chapter was written by a Malaysian student studying
abroad during an ESL College Writing class and in response to a request to care-
fully consider his life and write about meaningful life experiences. He chose to
write about his experiences as a study abroad student. Through the use of the
bright tones of yellow, orange, pink and sky blue, the future events and expecta-
tions of studying in an American university for a year seem positive, exciting and
optimistic. As marked by the adversative “But in fact”, the perception at the time
of writing was very different from the original one. The initial colors are replaced
with sorrow gray, dark black, regret purple and finally blood red, standing for par-
ticularly negative and progressively worse experiences and creating a contrast. A
subtle detail is that the colors of the university where this student studied in are
also gray, black and purple, which connects this description to the context of writ-
ing. In the final stanza of the poem, the poet describes his state of being. The adjec-
tives nervous and tough, the verb cry, and the noun shock offer a negative emo-
tional state. As specified in the last line of this poem, the whole of the poet’s
existence seems to be focused on the difficulties of the experience. In sum, from
the poet’s perspective at the time of writing studying abroad seems a very negative
and emotionally draining experience.
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

In Chapter 5, an approach to using poetry writing as a research method was

developed and described. The aim of this chapter is to use this method to answer
the question – How is the study abroad experience characterized through poetic data
written by second language study abroad students? The chapter does not aim to
present a generalizable characterization. The approach taken here is to capture
moments of this experience and to describe it through the prism of individual
poets’ presentation of their own perception. This way of describing reality presents
a collage of experiences rather than a unified and collective view. The attempt is to
present single moments of life and understanding and through these to explore
lived experience. The assumption is that the understanding of human experiential
phenomena means taking account of a diversity of positions. In this chapter, the
aim is to identify and present what has been poetically described in relation to
studying abroad and thus, perhaps, deepen our views of what the poets who both
wrote about and underwent this experience see and feel.

6.2 Research on study abroad

Interestingly enough, spending up to a year in an educational institution that is in

a country other than your home country is often presented within the promo-
tional literature of various programs as a very positive experience in which cul-
tural and linguistic learning is optimized. For example, the International Student
Exchange Program website mentions the benefits obtained in the following terms:
“ISEP students gain intercultural competence through integration into their host
institution and host culture while exploring the international dimensions of their
academic field” (ISEP). In a similar way, the International Studies Abroad website
refers to its importance: “In the age of globalization, an intimate understanding of
a foreign culture is both a valuable academic asset and an enriching personal ex-
perience” (ISA International Studies Abroad).
In a recent white paper from the Institute of International Education, an inde-
pendent non-profit organization housed in the US and dedicated to enhancing
international education, the growing need of understanding foreign cultures are
echoed in the following words: “In a world of greater interconnectedness and glo-
bal economic interdependence, study abroad has become increasingly important
for U.S. students to attain international knowledge, cross-cultural communication
skills, and intercultural competence” (Goodman, 2009, p. 4). Here, the programme
is couched in concepts of cross-cultural interaction and the appreciation of foreign
cultural understandings as an aspect of a widened self perception. These positions
are supported to a certain extent through student motivations which include the
 Chapter 6. Exploring the study abroad experience 

belief that language learning in a foreign context is qualitatively superior to any

other type of language learning experience (Mazzarol & Soutar, 2002).
This positive outlook is also presented in some of the academic literature. For
example, Amuzie and Winke (2009) claim that there is agreement among teachers
and learners “that one of the best ways to learn a foreign language is to study
abroad” and that it “offers a different level and type of language input, opportuni-
ties for interaction, and exposure to target culture” (p. 366). As with other educa-
tional settings, applied linguistic research has looked at language learning out-
comes for these students. Research has explored advances in the acquisition of
phonology (Diaz-Campos, 2004; Simões, 1996), oral fluency (Freed, 1995;
Segalowitz and Freed, 2004) and lexical and grammar development (Guntermann,
1995; Isabelli, 2004; Reagan, 1995), among other linguistic factors. The research
has also documented a series of specific language related difficulties that students
face. For example, as reported by Mulligan & Kirkpatrick (2000), study abroad
students have problems following lectures in a second language and may not par-
ticipate in classroom discussions (Tater, 2005). There can also be difficulties in
relation to specific types of academic literacy tasks that result from differences in
literacy experiences in home settings (Ridley, 2004; Spencer, 2003).
The positive outlook on study abroad outcomes, mainly proposed through
promotional materials and in the early literature on the subject, is far from univer-
sally accepted. Kinginger and Farrel Whitworth (2005) point out that contextual
factors such as individual differences, gender, language variety, and host country
may have relevant influence on what is learnt in the experience. Individual differ-
ences and issues of gender and race have been considered intervening factors. In a
well-known paper, Twombly (1995) documents American female study abroad
students’ responses to verbal male harassment (piropoing) in Costa Rica. She con-
cludes that it was an “alienating experience in which gender played a major role”
(p. 1). Polayni (1995) investigates the same problem in Russia. Talburt and Stewart
(1999) take this one step further and discuss the interrelationship between gender
and race and how this expressed itself in communicative interactions in Spain. In
all these papers, gender relations within the broader cultural setting negatively
influenced the perception and understanding of the study abroad experience.
In an investigation of conversational interactions of American students during
a study abroad experience in France, Wilkins (1998) documented the difficulties of
cross-cultural communication, challenging assumptions about the additional op-
tions for communicative interaction with native speakers. Specifically, participants
in her study reported negative interactions with French speakers within the class-
room and the home setting often preferring and needing their own home peer group
as a source of support and understanding. Wilkins observed that “participants often
viewed the immersion setting as a complex and frustrating environment” and
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

“cultural misunderstandings were a daily occurrence” (1998: p. 30), which led to

negative stereotyping of the members of the host country. Psychological and cul-
tural research has also revealed how stressful the experience is. This stress is tied to
both academic achievement and functioning as well as cross-cultural interaction
(Constantine, Okazaki, and Utsey, 2004; Hashim & Zhiliang, 2003; Ye, 2006).
As argued by Talburt and Stewart (1999), most research has “tended to general-
ize student experiences abroad, giving scant attention to the specificities that can
shape their interactions and cultural learning” (p. 164). The current study is inter-
ested in study abroad experiences in the context of the American educational setting
and focuses on how America is experienced by these students. Since the data used
here consists of written poetry, the aim is to reconstruct emotional, multisensory
moments of meaningful lived experiences during the study abroad experience.

6.3 Materials and method

The data for this study was collected over a 6 year period and consisted of a collec-
tion of poems written by second language writers during their study abroad expe-
rience at a public university in the state of Pennsylvania, USA. These poems were
written by the same students described in earlier chapters and the data was ob-
tained from the same ESL College Writing course in which students were directed
to write poems on their life experiences and were free to choose the topic. It must
be stressed that not all of them dealt with the subject of the current investigation.
The first stage was to collect those poems which came under the heading of
study abroad experiences. While it could be argued that all the poetry was in fact
written from the perspective of writers situated in a study abroad experience, a
decision was made to define study abroad poetry in relation to the setting de-
scribed. Thus poems that were set in the US that described and explored experi-
ences within the educational framework of American university studies were con-
sidered to be explicitly about this topic and were included in the current analysis,
resulting in a sub-corpus of 78 poems. Then, the poems were carefully read multi-
ple times by the researcher, who took extensive notes on their literary and infor-
mational features. These notes became part of the process.
While rereading the sub-corpus and the researcher’s annotations, there was also
an attempt to organize the poems thematically according to the types of experience
they focused on. A close consideration of the specific experience described in each
poem revealed that several different themes occurred. While these types of experi-
ence did not cover every poem in the corpus, they did address the majority of them
and seemed to capture the issues that the poets as a group were collectively explor-
ing (see Section 6.5 below). During this stage, decisions were made as to which
 Chapter 6. Exploring the study abroad experience 

poems to place under which thematic category – a difficult process as the core desire
of the project was to collect as many as possible. Two main criteria were used for
choice of presented poem: a) nature of the perspective; and b) aesthetic quality.
Following this, all the poems in a particular category were reread and carefully
considered for their presented perspective and understanding of a particular expe-
rience. Some poems for both aesthetic and informational reasons really stood out
as poetic statements and were included within the category. An attempt was made
to address different perspectives on the same experience. While none of the poems
in any of the categories were exactly the same, there were poems which had similar
perspectives. The choice ultimately of which poems to include involved providing a
range of perspectives on the category of experience. Finally, each poem in each of
the categories was also carefully analysed for its subjective positioning. Content and
linguistic and literary choices were observed. The criterion used here highlighted
the specific perspective, emotional content and understanding of the experience.

6.4 Context

The overall enrollment in the university studied is 14,000 students, of which 93.1%
are in-state residents and 15.6% are minority students within the American con-
text. The remaining 4.7% are international students who go through an immersion
program, reside in the university premises and have access to all services and
courses. They enroll in those of their major interest and are designated two ESL
writing courses and are helped by a language institute that offers specific services
such as conversation groups and help with pronunciation. These ESL writing
courses (101 College Writing and 202 Research Writing) are populated exclusively
by second language learners. On the International Students Exchange Program
website, the university is described as “a safe, friendly community within driving
distance of many interesting places in the United States” and as a “welcoming at-
mosphere for international students who, when not studying, have easy access to
major attractions in the mid-Atlantic region” (ISEP Pennsylvania). The university
and its office of International Education offer a series of activities to help study
abroad students, including an International Friendship Program that puts them in
contact with local American families, a foreign music and film festival, an interna-
tional coffee hour, a conversation club and an international education week. In
addition, the university hosts a range of international student groups mainly or-
ganized according to national heritage and addressing the home countries of the
international students who are on campus. At the time this text was being written,
the university hosted 700 international students on the undergraduate and gradu-
ate levels from 65 different countries.
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

6.5 Results

This section is organized according to the seven types of experience encountered

by the participants of the program. These are: self positioning and the emotional
response to language; emotional responses to academic classrooms; contact with
American students; negotiating American culture; and homesickness. In the sub-
sections that follow, each of these thematic categories of types of experience is
presented. Each subsection includes examples and analyses of poetic identity
(see Chapter 4).

6.5.1 Self positioning and the emotional experience of language

The first poem selected to explicate this category was written by a female student
from Taiwan and expresses the difficulties of using English as a second language:
Second Language
Discouraged
Disappointed
Disconcerted
It isn’t as easy as I think
To make myself clear in
A second language
Eyes are staring
Waiting for
understanding
What am I trying to
express
Words are on the tip of
my tongue
My mouth keeps silent
While my head wants to
shout
Broken sentences
Poor pronunciation
I do my best
Faulty
Fatigued
Frustrated
 Chapter 6. Exploring the study abroad experience 

I lose my energy
It’s not getting better
Anymore
Give up?
No!
It’s the last word I will
say
Challenge!
That’s the reason why I
am here
Step by step
I will get it one day
This poem starts with three one-word rhyming lines presenting the speaker’s sense
of disappointment at her command of English as a second language. In the second
stanza, she explains this feeling as the distance between her expectation to make
herself understood and her lack of clarity in English. In her third stanza, she re-
constructs moments of misunderstanding in which her lack of clarity leads to mo-
ments of awkward silence while discussion partners wait to understand her. Her
embarrassment and discomfort are apparent in the way this scene is constructed
with its emphasis on the “eyes staring” and the “waiting”. The speaker is placed at
the center of attention while others wait for her to speak. The next stanza further
describes this situation. The words are on the tip of her tongue, while silence oc-
cupies the moments of waiting. Ironically perhaps, while she is silent, she actually
wants to shout. Feelings of frustration are added to the speaker’s embarrassment of
not being understood and of being silent while knowing the words and what to
say. In the fifth stanza she responds to these feelings of frustration and embarrass-
ment by paradoxically both denigrating herself and absolving herself. She de-
scribes her English as consisting of “broken sentences” and “poor pronunciation,”
perhaps in the attempt to explain her experiences of not being understood. But she
is also aware that she is trying hard. The sixth stanza returns to the format of the
first one with the use of three one-word structures. At this point, she states her
sense of frustration at her “faulty” English. The short three line stanza reinforces
this sense of being flawed and disappointed, which is further explained in the next
stanza, which stands as the lowest emotional low point. As stated in these lines, her
language is not improving at the rate she had expected and perhaps not improving
at all. The whole situation is emotionally draining to her.
The next stanza represents a point of emotional shift in the poem. The preced-
ing stanzas with their description of language difficulties and emotional frustration
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

could lead to the situation of giving in; but in this stanza the speaker presents her
defiance and unwillingness to succumb. She rejects the despair of slow language
development as a reason to capitulate but rather redefines this as a “challenge” and
explains her own motivation for coming on a study abroad experience in the first
place. Wasn’t the point of the whole trip to contend with exactly situations of lan-
guage usage such as ones described in this poem? In her final stanza, the speaker
comforts herself and tries to reduce her frustration by changing her initial expecta-
tion of an “easy” communication process with a slow, methodical development of
language skills. This final position closes the poem on a positive note that enables
the speaker to continue in the face of unexpected communication difficulties.
This poem presents a complex progression of feelings concerning actual lan-
guage usage as a second language learner in a first language setting. The description
focuses heavily on the emotions elicited in being a second language speaker. These
emotions include embarrassment, frustration, disappointment and depression. In-
terestingly, the speaker has internalized a range of negative characterizations of her
language abilities that she utilizes to describe her own language experience.
The emotional transformation in the poem can be seen as a coping mecha-
nism designed to allow the speaker to position herself in a way that alleviates the
frustration of everyday communication and allows time to learn and develop. This
poem also represents a moment of recognition in relation to a mistaken self evalu-
ation of her speaking ability and the potential difficulties of conducting a conver-
sation in a first language setting. The ending presents a way of changing this per-
ception; but it should be noted that the speaker takes full responsibility for creating
smooth communication. Her assumption is that she should develop her pronun-
ciation and “broken sentences” and not that her first language interlocutors should
take a course to aid them in the comprehension of second language pronunciation.
Her outlook is directed by the need for her to become more ‘native-like’ and her
final coping strategy allows her the time to fulfill this directive.
The next two poems offer a more critical position on American English:
Untitled
I’m using the language, I don’t know what I mean
I’m thinking with a five thousand year language
Translating them into a simple world language
I’m writing poems
It is me
If you know what I am talking about
This poem written by a female Chinese student explores the writer’s sense of com-
municative insecurity. Both in the first and the last lines the speaker asks whether
 Chapter 6. Exploring the study abroad experience 

she is understood: in the first line she states that she is not sure if she knows what
she is saying and in the last line she questions whether the reader will understand
her. These questions situate the usage of a second language as a tool of which she
does not have control and thus the outcomes of comprehension are questionable.
These lines express her core lack of trust and the sense of artificiality in second
language communication. This is a subtle perception of second language usage
that constantly raises the question of comprehension and disallows naturalized,
unmarked and unattended communication.
An interesting aspect of this poem is the juxtaposition of a “five thousand year
language” with a “simple world language”. On one level, this juxtaposition de-
scribes the process of using a second language as perceived by the speaker. This
process involves thinking in one language and speaking in another. On a different
level, it contrasts the speaker’s sense of the depth of her first language with the
superficiality of her second. The word “simple” functions in these lines as a nega-
tive descriptor and critique of the nature of English while recognizing that English
has, for her, the purpose of allowing interaction with the world. To a certain ex-
tent, this juxtaposition represents a contrast of competing ideologies that she has
been exposed to and has internalized: the cultural value and richness of her native
Chinese and the functionality of this “simplified” linguistic tool of world English.
By specifying the heritage and value of Chinese, English is situated in a very differ-
ent way than in the previous poem. By extrapolation from language to language
user, this poet does not undervalue herself nor her language.
This same posture continues into the second stanza, where she recognizes her
own presence within the text and expresses her sense of ownership over her writ-
ing. The last line assigns a degree of responsibility on the reader for the comprehen-
sion of her poetry and by extension second language usage. She questions whether
she is understood in English but does not negate herself in this communicative
equation. This is a much more equitable position to take than the previous poem,
which placed all responsibility on the second language speaker. The last line follows
the critique of English in the first stanza and positions the second language speaker
of this poem in a much more central position than the one in the previous poem.
In the next poem, written by a female student from Taiwan, a sense of mistrust
and insincerity in interactions with first language speakers is described: In this case,
there is a shared responsibility for comprehension in relation to second language
communication in which both speaker and listener have challenges to overcome.
A Foreigner
No!
Do not speak.
She is a foreigner.
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

Hush!
Just keep silent.
Leave!
Away from her.
All fake!
Say Hi and Small Talk.
Not sincere!
“How are we doing?”
“What’s up?”
That’s the foreigner’s suspicion
If reliable or not,
“You can come to me if you need help.”
That is the alien’s doubts
If true or not,
“Well, it happens sometimes.”
Speak up, Alien!
Speak out, Foreigner!
It’s the time.
The title of this poem sets the initial tone. The concept of a foreigner is that of
someone who does not belong to one’s group, an outsider. It has the connotation
of someone who is not to be trusted and who remains on the outer margins of
society. The first three stanzas clearly express how it feels to be defined as such.
These three initial stanzas describe the experience of being marginalized and dis-
tanced during human interaction. The italicized first words of each stanza – No,
Hush, Leave – all with exclamation marks, describe what she imagines the inter-
locutors think. These are members of the “in-group” of first language, American
students, who are quietly offensive. Their methods of functioning are to not speak,
keep silent and move away from the second language, study abroad student. The
irony of this situation is the backdrop of reasoning for coming on a study abroad
experience in order to interact with first language speakers. From a personal and
linguistic perspective, this is far from being the welcoming environment of the
brochures. It is unclear from the poem whether this is overheard, reported speech
or imaginative reconstruction. In any case, these first three stanzas position the
second language user as an outsider who experiences the feeling of being rejected
and marginalized.
In the fourth stanza, the speaker presents her emotional understandings of
everyday verbal interactions on campus. The habit between students is to greet
quite briefly and conduct limited small talk. To American students, this is a form
 Chapter 6. Exploring the study abroad experience 

of politeness that recognizes the presence of another. To the speaker of this poem,
it offers a promise and invitation to talk. Her desire is to respond seriously and
fully to the invitation but she finds out very quickly that this is not an invitation
or real interest in her. Her response is angry and she sees her American peers as
being false and offering empty promises, which strengthens the feeling of dis-
tancing present in the first three stanzas. There is an obvious cultural component
here of what acknowledging another entails and the nature of politeness in dif-
ferent societies.
In the fifth stanza, the speaker questions her own understanding of interac-
tions with Americans. She presents a statement which at face value seems very
positive. But her understanding and experiences presented in the first four stanzas
play themselves out here as a suspicion that this invitation to help is not sincere.
Can she trust the statements being made? She presents an interesting form of lan-
guage problem; she understands the words, but cannot evaluate the truth value of
what is being said. This is a problem that only happens in real world language us-
age and is never an aspect of classroom language learning. Her position as a cul-
tural outsider makes the operative understanding of this invitation to help very
difficult. In the last lines of this stanza, the speaker decides to act and speak even
without definitive knowledge of whether the request to help is sincere or not. Her
position is still self-defined as a foreigner and an alien; but she decides to take mat-
ters into her own hands. This final statement can be seen as a form of defiance in
which the speaker becomes more active and vocal in response to her surround-
ings. It will be up to her to be vocal even if she is defined as a foreigner and part of
an out-group.
Throughout this poem is the desire of the speaker to interact with first lan-
guage, American students. She wishes to be invited to interact and asked to join.
Her experiences, however, are that she is seen as a foreigner. Her understanding of
everyday interactions have created a form of paranoid response. She questions the
intent and truth of the people around her. But she also questions her own sense of
her surroundings and in the end changes her stance from one of expecting passive
acceptance to entering into a process of active, vocal interaction. Contrary to pre-
vious poems in this subsection, the speaker here describes first language users in
directly negative terms. Her aim is not to become more like them but rather to
express herself from the stance of being an alien.
The three poems in this subsection present three different subject positions
in relation to communicative responsibility. In the first poem, a very particular
poetic identity is constructed. The speaker situates herself as a flawed language
user who needs to slowly improve through the emulation of first language speak-
ers. She has internalized and expresses throughout the poem the inaccuracies of
her language usage as compared to first language users and in interaction with
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

them. She has internalized the belief that they are the target and that she needs to
improve her language skills. She positions herself as a project for language change
and places all the responsibility for communication on her shoulders. In the sec-
ond poem, the speaker has a much stronger sense of her own worth and the value
of her first language. English is seen as a merely functional tool. The speaker has
internalized two different ideologies concerning the languages she knows:
Chinese valued for its rich cultural heritage and English for its usage in world
communication. This positioning of English and Chinese has ramifications on
the way first language English speakers are positioned. While the speaker may
not feel secure in the content of her communication, she does take ownership
over her language and sees herself as present within this language. She does not
undervalue her own worth or see herself as flawed. She positions the first lan-
guage speaker as sharing part of the communicative responsibility to understand
what she has said and written. It is not only her responsibility as a second lan-
guage learner but rather is a challenge for both first and second language users.
The third poem expresses anger towards first language users and their ways of
interacting with second language users. The former are described in negative
terms and the speaker does not believe that she can ever join them as a member
of an in-group. First language users are presented as offensive, distancing and
fake. But rather than trying to emulate them, she wishes to be heard from a posi-
tion of being an outsider. This is a belligerent stance that challenges the hegem-
onic assumptions of first language speakers.
The actual emotional language experiences presented in these poems ex-
plore the difficulties and emotional pressures of using a second language. This
indicates that the study abroad context involves frustration, embarrassment,
marginalization, misunderstanding, silence, depression, anger and being of-
fended. The cultural and linguistic surroundings present constant emotional
challenges that require the second language speaker to find ways of positioning
herself in response. The types of response expressed in these poems include self
definition as a project requiring linguistic improvement and change, a challenge
to first language users to share communicative responsibility, anger at first lan-
guage users and the decision to interject within first language contexts from the
position of being a foreigner. As expressed in the first poem, the aim of study
abroad is often the desire to use a second language in a first language setting and
with first language users. As expressed through these three poems, first language
users may have no interest in interacting, communicative abilities may not allow
interaction, and communication is often characterized by misunderstandings
and mistrust. The experience of using English in this specific study abroad expe-
rience is emotionally demanding and requires adjustment from the second lan-
guage learner.
 Chapter 6. Exploring the study abroad experience 

6.5.2 Emotional responses to academic classroom experiences

Entering a foreign classroom for the first time can also be a very difficult experi-
ence. The first impact is thus described by a male Mexican student:
First Day of School
First day of going to class
First day school in America
Afraid to get in
Getting into a classroom
Sitting there
Feeling lonely
Everyone staring at me
I feel like I am in the dark
Afraid to speak
I could not make friends
I feel insignificant
The first stanza sets the scene while the second one focuses on those very first mo-
ments of entering the classroom, an emotional challenge fraught with anxiety. The
stanza ends with the speaker “sitting there”. The graphic placement of this line ex-
emplifies the situation of sitting alone and frightened. The next stanza further em-
phasizes the emotional aspects of this initial scene. The third stanza presents three
distinct negative feelings: being lonely, feeling that everyone is looking at you and
feeling confused and disorientated. The speaker specifies that he feels that every-
one is staring at him. This is the experience of being an outsider and a stranger
within a group. The stanza ends with the image of being “in the dark”, which has
connotations of a child scared at night in a state of anxiety. The first line of the
fourth stanza returns to the sense of fear. This time it is related to speaking in the
classroom. The situation described in the previous stanza concerning feeling that
all eyes are upon you and that you are alone makes participation very difficult.
When usage of a second language is required this becomes even more difficult. The
poem ends with two statements that reflect the speaker’s conclusions. Based on his
emotional state and initial response to this classroom, the speaker states that he
could not make friends. Both the lack of speaking and his sense of the emotional
atmosphere of the class would make social interaction very difficult if not impos-
sible. More importantly, the final state of the speaker and the final line of the poem
make clear that the whole situation has influenced the speaker’s sense of self es-
teem. The choice of the word insignificant relays the association of being small,
lacking in power and of lowly status in this setting. Throughout this poem, the
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

emotions expressed make this initial classroom experience sound quite traumatic.
This is far from a hospitable environment in which a study abroad student is wel-
comed and made to feel at home. Entry and survival in this classroom would seem
to be a challenge on an emotional as well as academic level. The poet situates him-
self as an outsider in a strange and potentially hostile situation. This has direct
ramifications on self esteem, participation in the classroom and social interaction
beyond the classroom. While every new student must feel a degree of anxiety upon
entering a new educational system, this particular description is overlaid with the
sense of being a second language learner and in a study abroad experience. The
speaker here seems acutely aware of his status as outsider. The other students in the
classroom have implicitly conveyed a sense of the classroom social hierarchy upon
him without even saying a word and he obviously has been pre-conditioned to ac-
cept their understanding of social structure. It is interesting to notice that no other
students appear in this poem and none of their actions or speech are represented.
The speaker’s feelings, as reported, seem to result from non-verbal cues and inter-
nalized understanding of ideological value systems in relation to American cam-
pus social structures. The poem makes it clear that the speaker is entering into a
human environment which characterizes him in particular ways. He responds to
his social structure emotionally with anxiety and lowered self esteem.
The next poem, written by a female Taiwanese student, also explores the feel-
ings of a second language learner in an American literature classroom with
American students.
Leonard 211
She started to talk
I turned my head left...
Then it’s his turn
I turned my head right...
And they were waiting
I tried to pay attention
One by one...
“Blah~ blah~ blah~”
On my chair I sat still
Pretending that I understood
Only to feel like being isolated
Anxious deep inside
In Leonard 211
Leonard 211 is the name and number of a classroom within the English Depart-
ment. The first stanza describes an interactive, classroom discussion. It is not clear
 Chapter 6. Exploring the study abroad experience 

who is speaking except that the speaker needs to turn her head. The use of the
pronoun “she” signifies that it is another female student. The image continues with
another student speaking. This time it is a male student. The image involves the
speaker looking right and left, trying to listen to different students speaking in
turn. The specification of looking right and then looking left recreates the tension
of the situation and the way in which the speaker is trying to accommodate to the
class. This tension is further enhanced with the specification that “they were wait-
ing”. Silence in a classroom when a question has been asked and a response is re-
quired is often a tense moment. The speaker in this poem uses the pronoun “they”
that differentiates her from the other students and creates a sense that the whole
class is waiting for her to speak. In the next line she further enhances the distance
between herself and the rest of the class when she states that “I tried to pay atten-
tion”. As seen in the last line of this stanza, the rest of the class “one by one” are
speaking and participating. But the speaker is silent trying to understand what is
going on. The use of “they” and “I” creates a breach between herself and the entire
class. As with other poems presented in this section there is a sense of being differ-
ent and an outsider to the group of students in the classroom.
Further explanation of the situation of this student is presented in the next
section of the poem. At the center of the poem, graphically differentiated by itself,
is the reconstruction of what she hears as a meaningless string of sounds. This class
is constructed around verbal interaction with students and discussion of literary
texts. However, the poet in this context cannot follow what is happening in the
class. In the last stanza, in an attempt to at least save face, she sits still and “pre-
tends” to understand what is going on. This attitude is interesting in that it is a
response to the social rather than the academic situation. Instead of revealing her
lack of understanding, she prefers to create the illusion that she is following the
class. This response perhaps reflects the earlier feelings of being differentiated
from other people in the class and thus not having the option of expressing her
confusion and lack of comprehension. The next two lines make these feelings ex-
plicit. As she states, she feels “isolated” and “anxiety deep inside”. The poem ends
by juxtaposing the speaker’s internal feelings (of anxiety and isolation) and the
external world of the classroom. In this interactive, discussion-based literature
classroom, this student plays the role of being attentive. This classroom situation
raises questions about the educational experience of being a study abroad student.
Exposure to English in this case does not seem to translate into the input of lan-
guage but rather into anxiety and feelings of isolation. Interestingly, this does not
result from negative actions taken by her classmates but rather from the nature of
the educational experience itself. The use of discussion and student responses are
pedagogical strategies used in literary education in this university and all students
are expected to share and learn from each other’s interpretations. As described
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

here the speaker cannot participate or follow the discussion and feels isolated, cut-
off and anxious.
This distance between internal feelings and external presentation is central to
the experience expressed in this poem. It describes a strategy of coping that ulti-
mately, from an educational perspective, is very damaging and from a personal
perspective enhances the sense of isolation and helplessness. The speaker does not
address how other students or the instructor respond to her silence or if this is
noticed or commented on at all. The classroom does not seem to be responding
negatively to this student or aiming to isolate her and perhaps, if made aware,
could have helped address her confusion. But the position taken by this student
does not allow anyone to actually see what she is going through. Thus at the end of
the poem, she is left alone with her anxieties unresolved.
Presenting in front of a class can also be quite a stressful situation, as described
in the next poem:
First Blushing
Standing in front of a platform
I was holding my paper
Seated below are my friendly professor and classmates
Generously giving me an encouraging smile
Accidently closed the projector
Black large screen swallowed my pride
Ironically
Sweat, wet chalk
Left a dark stamp
Embarrassingly
I kept standing
Though blushing
It was that intense air colored my pale face
My first time blushing
And I hope it is the last time
This poem was written by a female Chinese student. It starts with a description of
the setting. The speaker is about to give a presentation. She is the focus of the class
as she is standing on a “platform” while the rest of the class and the instructor are
sitting. She describes the classroom as a warm, supportive environment but there is
a degree of tension in this scene in that the speaker is about to perform publically
and present her work. This is difficult for any second language speaker. Suddenly, as
described in the next stanza, she accidently closes the classroom projector creating
a “black large screen” that “swallows her pride.” The description of the screen as
 Chapter 6. Exploring the study abroad experience 

black and large and an entity that ‘swallows” is reminiscent of a black hole – an emp-
tiness that engulfs everything else. In particular, this accident has influenced her
perception of self value as she stands in front of the whole class. As with previous
poems in this subsection, the classroom experience affects her sense of self-esteem.
However, in this case it results from actions directly taken by the speaker herself.
The word “ironically” that ends the stanza suggests the incongruity of the accidental
event and reflects her perception of the irony of her doing this to herself.
In the next stanza the speaker describes her physical response to her acciden-
tal closing of the projector. As she waits for the projector with the black screen
behind her, she begins to sweat, figuratively described as “wet chalk” that creates a
“dark stamp.” Her physical response has become very public through the marking
on her clothes. This physical response is described as embarrassing, which is em-
phasized in the next stanza. The speaker reminds the reader that she is still stand-
ing on a platform in front of the whole class and that a mark of sweat has appeared
on her clothes. As a response she begins to blush. This is described as “an intense
air” that “colored her pale face”. The use of tactile imagery of a hot wind and the
sense of the change of color reconstruct the personal impression that everyone is
looking at her face and that she is being humiliated. The word “intense” suggests
that this is a very strong feeling and that she is deeply embarrassed by her actions
and her physical response to them. The public aspect of being on a platform and
being expected to perform enhances this sense of embarrassment. The poem ends
with the wish to never experience again such public humiliation.
The speaker in this poem does not assign any blame to the class, instructor or
students. Quite the opposite, her embarrassing moment is accidental and results
from her own physical response. However, this is a difficult moment and seems to
reflect her shyness. As with the previous poem in this subsection, public presenta-
tion of competence and the hiding of internal feelings is seen as important. The
poem describes her feelings at the moment concerning her physical response. It is
not really about the closing of the projector but rather that she was publically ex-
posed as being under stress and blushing.
The three poems in this subsection share the emotional experience of being at
the center of attention, of being the object of an evaluative gaze that classifies and
judges. This experience is related to the sense of being ‘other’ within the frame-
work of the educational setting. In the first poem in this subsection, the classroom
environment is presented as hostile. The judgment of being isolated and assigned
a lowly hierarchal social status results from the atmosphere in the classroom itself
and the internalized understandings of the student. It does not result from actions
taking place in the classroom or the actions of the student himself. In the second
poem, linguistic and communicative difficulties cause the sense of isolation that
this student experiences. The classroom does not seem to be in any way hostile but
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

rather unaware of the difficulties that she is facing. In the third poem, this sense of
being the center of attention is the result of the educational situation of presenting
her work and her own actions while accidentally turning off the projector. The
classroom environment is positive, encouraging and supportive. Her sense of em-
barrassment results from her physical response to her actions and not from the
way the class responds. This suggests a significant difference in the perception of
the classroom atmosphere moving from hostility to empathy and support. How-
ever, for all three poems, the speakers seem acutely aware of being on a stage and
carefully evaluated by peers. Inherent in these described experiences is a sense of
the presence of a societal gaze which sets the speaker apart from others and judges
every action and response. The presence of this gaze would seem to be part of the
study abroad experience for these poets.
From an emotional perspective, all three poems suggest that being a second
language learner in an American classroom causes anxiety and stress. In addition,
all three poems present situations in which the self-esteem of the speaker is low-
ered. The intensity of the feelings is different between the poems and the situations
described. In the first poem, the speaker reports actually being afraid as well as
anxious. In the second poem, the speaker feels anxiety and in the last poem the
speaker reports on embarrassment. Interestingly, none of them describe the experi-
ence of speaking in class. All three are silent and respond either physically or emo-
tionally. The social pressures of the American classroom setting as well as the lin-
guistic demands do not seem to be conducive to speaking in class. Once again the
public aspect and the classroom atmosphere seem crucial here. The speakers seem
very isolated and feel ‘othered’ in the classroom. The intensity of this feeling is more
pronounced for the first two speakers than the third one. This sense of being a
stranger has ramifications on the sense of self value. For the first speaker, entry into
the classroom makes him feel “insignificant”; for the third speaker, her sweating
and blushing involves a decrease in her sense of pride. For the second and third
speaker, a significant aspect of their described classroom experience is the impor-
tance they place on outwardly appearing competent and part of the class, while
hiding a very different set of feelings. This desire to hide the emotional and aca-
demic difficulties they face can be seen as both a feature of their cultural heritage
and a response to the presence of an evaluative gaze within the classroom setting.
The academic experiences expressed in these three poems suggest that the
educational experience of studying abroad demands quite extensive personal and
emotional resources and involves challenges to personal self-esteem as well as feel-
ings of isolation, anxiety and embarrassment. In particular, this experience re-
quires the ability to withstand constantly feeling that you are being watched and
judged. This is an unpleasant and stressful way of being positioned in a social set-
ting. In addition, if participation and, in particular, speaking are not part of the
 Chapter 6. Exploring the study abroad experience 

academic study abroad experience, this raises interesting questions about the aca-
demic value of this experience.

6.5.3 Experiencing American students

Meeting American students was also depicted as an issue of central relevance to

study abroad students. A personal and cross-cultural critique is described in the
following poem by a female student from Kenya:
A Different Culture
Jeeps
Mercedes Benz
Hummer
All pulled over at the Grant Suites
Young American adults
All college students
All over 18
But like small kids they say
Mommy do this, Daddy get that
Their parents do it all for them
The carts, they push
The bags, they carry
The suitcases, they carry
As their adult children just stand and look
So when will they ever grow up
When will they learn to do things for themselves
Drive themselves to school,
Pull their own suitcases and carry their own bags
When will they learn
That maturity comes with no age but responsibility?
The poem starts by describing the arrival of expensive cars parking in front of a
new dormitory building on campus. Each brand name has overtones of opulence
and privilege and is given a separate line suggestive of the way they appear. In ad-
dition, this description has connotations of mobility and independence, the stere-
otypical and commercially promoted role of cars within the wider American
framework. From a literal perspective, it reflects what happens on campus at the
beginning of the academic year when students arrive.
The second stanza starts by describing the arriving college students. The word
“adults” is emphasized through the graphic placement at the end of the line and
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

brings with it the idea of maturity, independence and responsibility. The continu-
ation of the stanza presents an additional description that directly opposes the
concept of being an adult. The students are compared to children who ask their
parents to “do this” and “get that.” They call their parents Mommy and Daddy,
further emphasizing their child-like nature. In the third stanza the parents are
described as being physically active while the students “just stand and look”. Each
of the three central lines of the stanza ends with a verb of action assigned to the
parents. Ironically, in the last line of the stanza and in the description of the inac-
tion of these students, the speaker calls them “adult children”. The American stu-
dents are legally and by age adults but they are presented here as totally dependent
on their parents. In addition there seems to be an implicit criticism of the children
not helping their parents. In the last stanza, the students are critiqued for being not
only dependent but also immature and irresponsible. The poem ends with a list of
items beyond the academic curriculum of a university they need to learn. The
speaker emphasizes the need for these students to learn “how to do things for
themselves” and take responsibility.
The speaker’s perspective here is deeply critical of her peers. This is a judg-
mental gaze that finds them lacking in relation to her own sense of age-appropriate
behavior and her own experience. The students portrayed in this poem do not
seem desirable or suitable partners for social interaction and personal friendship.
The gaze of the poet creates a distance between herself and the American students
and evaluates her personal qualities as more appropriate. The last lines of the poem
suggest that the American students could learn a lot from her own maturity and
independence. Overall, the poem creates a hierarchy based on personal attributes
that valorizes the speaker and devalues the observed American students.
In the next poem, a male Malaysian student provides a critical description of
his American dormitory roommate:
Dorm
I have a roommate
Sleep late at 2am everyday
Eat cheeseburger everyday
Never turn off the TV
The one stanza poem presents three daily characteristics of his roommate: he goes
to bed at 2 a.m., eats cheeseburgers and leaves the television on. These are mun-
dane events but characterize the student as lazy, irresponsible and inconsiderate.
The limited nature of the description which focuses on these daily actions suggests
a wasted life with an avoidance of the real reason for being at a university –
academic development. Academic issues such as learning, reading and writing are
not part of this description of this student’s life.
 Chapter 6. Exploring the study abroad experience 

Perhaps there is also an implicit critique of the nature of privilege. This student
has the option of being in university and developing as an individual and member
of society and instead lies in bed with the television on. As with the previous poem
in this subsection, the speaker’s gaze is both evaluative and critical. While this is not
stated explicitly, the description of mundane everyday events suggests that these
actions are problematic from the speaker’s perspective. The lifestyles, aims, actions
and understandings of the speaker and his roommate do not seem to match.
Further criticism is found in the following poem:
American Style
Go out of your circle
Have a look at the colorful world
Do not tell me “not really” every time
When I ask “are you interested in anything from the outside world?”
Do not tell me the farest you will go is IUP
Go out of your circle
Find interests in contacting with the outside world
Do you know it just makes you a coward?
This female Chinese poet explores the differences between local and global under-
standings of the world and directly critiques the local, monocultural perspective of
American students. Her tone is angry and she uses reported speech to describe a
series of conversations between herself and American students on campus. To her
understanding, American students are culturally limited, disinterested and ethno-
centric. In contrast, the poem positions the writer as having a much wider perspec-
tive on the world. She knows the “colorful world” whereas the symbol of an enclos-
ing circle stands for the insular nature of the American students. The poem also
references a form of nihilistic, self-interested, and local perspective of some students.
They only know America and have no desire to explore beyond their locality.
The poem starts with the imperative “Go out of your circle” and continues
with a series of additional orders on what to do and what not to do. The use of the
imperative together with the comparison of global versus local perspectives cre-
ates a hierarchy in which the poet has the higher position. The poem ends with
an insult in the form of a question. The lack of interest and local monocultural-
ism of the Americans is described as cowardly suggesting that this is rather the
reaction to being afraid of the world. The linguistic structure of the poem at-
tributes power to the speaker. She is the one who orders the American students
to look beyond the American university setting and who insults them at the end
of the poem. The American students here are passive and reluctant, which angers
the speaker.
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

As with previous poems in this section, the speaker’s gaze is evaluative and
critical. In this case, however, the poet manages to express her anger and attempts
to engage with American students, although the outcome does not seem very pos-
itive. Still, American students here are not hostile or offensive. They are merely
bored and unmotivated. For the poet, who has travelled across the world to be in
an American university, this lack of interest is quite a problem. American students
do not seem to understand the world and there is not much hope that they will
arrive at any sort of global perspective. One of the ironies of this situation is that
the speaker of this poem is the one who could alleviate the isolation and monoc-
ulturalism of these American students. But their lack of interest will not allow this
to happen. These two opposing perspectives indicate there will never be a mutual
basis for communication, which challenges the assumptions that study abroad
programs promote cross-cultural interaction.
The next poem, written by a male Taiwanese student, describes the experience
of going to a party with Americans.
Party
Noisy and crowded around me
Blind and deaf
I can’t see my finger or hear the voice of mine
Cause the smoggy and loud music
I am disorientated here
Which by-and-by black doth take away
Dark seals up all in rest
Suddenly
Drink up, a voice less loud
Through its joy and enthusiastic
My hearts beating each to each
Tequila! Whiskey!
After drinking, people become crazy and amorous
Everyone lead
the life of a king
Without any gap
Within the effect of alcohol
Boys girls dancing and talking without embarrassment
But after more than ten toss
Headache, I feel dizzy
Skin drummed in my brain
I cannot breathe and think anymore
Just like the spoondrift beat my heart
 Chapter 6. Exploring the study abroad experience 

I feel dry and burning in my body

I couldn’t stand anymore
Exhausted, I dragged to leave
It took all my energy
And swear not to get drunk again
Maybe! I wish
The poem starts with an image of the being “blind and deaf ” as a result of the noise
and darkness of the crowded room. The music is described as “smoggy” perhaps
suggesting the presence of cigarette smoke. The speaker becomes “disorientated”
in the dark. Within this confusing setting, he “suddenly” hears an enthusiastic and
joyful voice urging him to drink. This suggests that the speaker is not self moti-
vated but rather conforms to the social setting. The experience seems to be one of
an initiation into binge drinking and the effects of alcohol are described. As ob-
served by the speaker, alcohol makes people “crazy and amorous.” This situation is
not described in negative terms but rather the speaker tells us that “everyone lead
the life of a king” and that “Boys girls dancing and talking without embarrass-
ment”. These descriptions suggest that alcohol seems to facilitate interaction. It
seems to help overcome inhibitions concerning meeting girls. In line 18, however,
the use of “But” triggers a red light. After having drunk ten “tosses” of whiskey and
tequila, he complains of a headache, of feeling dizzy and dry and of experiencing
burning in his body. He is exhausted and cannot stand up. He ends the poem by
swearing “not to get drunk again”; but he immediately qualifies this promise with
the word “maybe” and “I wish,” suggesting that he knows he will end up getting
drunk again.
This description focuses on the attractions of a hedonistic life style, one in
which physical responses to excessive drinking do not seem to be a real deterrent.
There is an implication here that he feels the social pressure of drinking and get-
ting drunk. He is socially coerced to behave in a certain way to conform to his
surroundings. This description illustrates the stereotype of the American college
social experience of freedom, music and excessive drinking. As opposed to the
previous poems in this subsection, the speaker does not see his American peers
critically or negatively. He tries to integrate by participating in forms of behavior
which include being irresponsible. The irony is that the poet sees this attitude as
one that should not be pursued but he knows he will have to repeat it if he wants
to integrate.
The poems in this subsection present an unflattering description of American
students. They are immature, dependent, irresponsible, lazy, monocultural, cor-
rupt and self indulgent. The first three poems are characterized by the presence of
a critical, evaluative gaze which devalues the American peers through their
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

perceived personal flaws. This same perspective positions the study abroad speak-
ers on a higher level. This perception necessarily makes cross-cultural interaction
difficult and undesirable. The different outlooks on life and understandings of per-
sonal values are too distanced to allow for communication. Study abroad speakers
define themselves as more mature, responsible, independent, interested and mul-
ticultural than their American peers, which raises questions concerning the pos-
sibility of cultural learning and interaction on campus. The poem on drinking
does indicate a possible path for cultural meeting but it is based on the participa-
tion in what the student sees as a corrupting experience. The suggestion is that to
be close to the American students one has to follow the hedonistic guidelines of
social behavior.

6.5.4 Negotiating American culture

Some of the poems in the collection focused on the experience of trying to com-
municate with American students. The following by a female Chinese student is
one of them:
Cold and Warm
I can feel your warm
Covering my cold heart
You do all you can to kiss the sunshine
While I do everything to avoid from the sun
You think everything is just for fun
While I want to ask can you be serious someday?
I hide the cold heart inside while saying “enjoy the sunshine!”
You just said “indeed...”
The poem presents a series of internal thoughts and external statements in the
attempt for interaction. The title “Cold and Warm” reflects the difference be-
tween the speaker (cold) and the American student (warm). This opposition
remains throughout the poem through the usage of the personal pronouns “I”
and “you”, indicating opposing subjectivities. In the central lines of the poem,
the conjunction “while” once again marks the difference between the speaker
and her American partner. These linguistic choices create a structure intended
to explore differences between the poet and the person she is addressing. The
poem starts with a figurative reaching out of the speaker to her American
partner, who is described as warm and trying to do all she can to “kiss the
sunshine”. In contrast, the speaker sees herself as cold and doing everything to
avoid this sunshine. However, the American student is also described as taking
everything lightly. The speaker internally wants to ask the American student if
 Chapter 6. Exploring the study abroad experience 

she can change. But this question is not verbalized. She “hides” her cold heart
and her question, preferring to just say “enjoy the sunshine” and get an in-
nocuous reply (“indeed”). As a result, the poem, which had started with the
attempt to reach out to an American student, ends with an empty exchange of
pleasantries.
From the perspective of the speaker, it is clear that she and the American stu-
dent come from very different cultural positions and have very different outlooks
on life. The first lines of the poem suggest that the speaker can perceive the warmth
of the American student but she also criticizes this student for her lack of serious-
ness. At the same time, the speaker does not seem to like her own coldness and
perhaps would wish to be warmer and have more fun; but she does value her abil-
ity to be serious. In the reported interaction, none of the internal deliberations of
the speaker are verbalized. The experience of this failed cultural negotiation con-
sists of silence on the part of the study abroad student and the internal reflection
of their unsurmountable differences.
This poem describes a very common form of everyday cultural negotiation,
where the poet opts to conform to the guidelines of social discourse. It is interest-
ing that the meeting is not hostile in anyway. The irony is that the tension only
takes place internally. The gulf between the participants of the discourse is not
crossed. This is actually a one-sided cultural negotiation which takes place in the
speaker’s mind. In negotiating this cultural event, the speaker ultimately opted for
American interactional politeness – the exchange of a “feel good” statement – and
the placing of the interaction on a superficial level.
Another poem which reflects on interacting with another cultural setting was
written by a female student from Ghana:
Accepting America
How can I blend into this new world
and still have my cultural values intact
how can I call someone
old enough to be my Dad
by his first name
this is disrespectful
how can I talk to an elderly person
as if I am talking to a friend
this is an abomination
how do I go against my church values
and accept everyone’s preference
this is also an abomination
why should I think more of myself
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

rather than my family

this is selfishness
my family and friends will say
I am now behaving
like our colonial masters
What do I do?
The poem is constructed as a series of questions in response to observed phenom-
ena. It starts with the speaker asking how she can “blend” into this “new world”
and at the same time keep her “cultural values intact.” This question presents a
sense of a conflict between new world values and her heritage cultural values. The
use of the word “blend” is relevant, as it suggests the possibility to combine two
distinct entities into one. The speaker wishes to construct a cultural sense of self
that combines her cultural values within the new world but has experienced the
conflicted nature of the meeting of these two cultures. The first two questions deal
with the issue of respect for elders. As presented by the speaker, Americans feel
comfortable in calling older people by their first names and treating them as
friends. For the speaker this seems a case of disrespect. She describes it as an
“abomination”, which reflects her strong disapproval. The issue of how to address
an elder is for the speaker a core tenet of social structure. Crossing boundaries is
to her a very serious issue.
The next two questions deal with the relationship of self to wider social struc-
tures. The speaker asks how she can accept the presence of belief systems and as-
sociated behaviors that go against her own inherited religious values. Once again
she uses the word “abomination” to describe the depth of her feelings concerning
the clash with her accepted values. This is a moral issue and raises questions about
the ethical integrity of the culture she is being exposed to. The speaker then ad-
dresses the relationship between self and family. Her sense of American culture is
one that promotes the importance of self. This contradicts her cultural heritage of
first considering the family and not oneself. Following these issues, the speaker
states that her family and friends will see such behavior as one of the “colonial mas-
ters”. This is an important connection that sees the particular set of values that focus
on the self and selfishness as a trait of an enemy of her home culture. She is aware
that her acceptance of these cultural values and outlooks can distance her from her
own family and friends and turn her into a ‘cultural monster’. By raising the spectre
of colonialism and relating this to a particular set of observed values and behaviors,
the speaker once again expresses how offensive this belief system and behaviors are
to her. This is not a minor conflict but rather addresses the core aspects of internal-
ized beliefs and ways of acting in the world. The poem ends with the question of
“what do I do” that focuses on the ways she should behave and act.
 Chapter 6. Exploring the study abroad experience 

The speaker’s position in this poem involves several layers of conflict. On the
explicit level of the poem, the posed questions reveal particular conflicts between
her accepted values and those that she is observing in the new culture. However, if
the poem were just about the rejection of the observed values and reinforcement
of hers, there would not actually be any conflict. But this speaker wishes to “blend”
these two worlds and as suggested in the last lines may indeed have begun to act in
ways that are “selfish”. This causes her to feel that she may be seen by her friends
and family as behaving in a profoundly immoral and offensive way. Throughout
the poem, the speaker explores the way to relate to others and it is on this level that
the conflict is most intense. Her last question – What do I do? – asks how she
should act and how she should resolve the conflicts in cultural values that she is
experiencing. The poem does not provide any answers.
In this poem, cultural negotiation involves experiencing internal conflict over
cultural beliefs and ways of behaving. It shows the speaker questioning the culture
she is exposed to but also trying to approach it and integrate two different sets of
cultural values. At the point of writing, the speaker is culturally closer to her set of
heritage values and is concerned about how she will be seen by her family and
friends. She does not completely reject the cultural environment she is in. But this
raises questions about how she will be seen and how she will be evaluated. This is
a case in which the cultural negotiation cannot be just an additive as for the speak-
er the two cultures are contradictory.
Romantic relationships were also raised by the study abroad students. Here is
one written by a female Chinese:
American
You said to me
“It’s America, it’s not China,
Ella you got me, you got me”
You know how it feels
You know how it hurts
Chinese guys do not do what you do
You fucking jerk
Just caring about yourself
Stop texting me
You fucking jerk
A central aspect of the poem is the difference in the way each of the parties in the
relationship behaves. The difference is presented by both the speaker and through
the reported speech of the American student as a conflict based on cultural under-
standing. The poem starts with a statement from the American student that tries to
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

simultaneously express a feeling of emotional closeness and recognition of cultural

difference. The statement “It’s America, it’s not China” seems to be an attempt to
convince the speaker that she needs to conform to new social patterns of behavior
and behave in a way that is expected by the American student. The student seems
infatuated with her and expresses this as being “got.” As seen in the second stanza,
the speaker of this poem sees this relationship in a very different way. She has been
hurt by this American student. She judges him in relation to the way Chinese
“guys” would act and finds him lacking. The first and second stanzas involve the
meeting of two different ways to approach cultural negotiation. In the first stanza
the American student expects the speaker to change and assimilate American
norms of behavior and interaction. The second stanza is based on the idea of un-
derstanding cultural difference and recognizing that cross-cultural interaction can
be hurtful. In the third stanza, the speaker expresses her anger at the American
student. She accuses him of being selfish. She also wants to stop the annoyance of
his intrusive text messages. The poem ends with the repetition of an insult.
A romantic relationship by people from different countries involves close cul-
tural negotiation. This poem explores a relationship that is one-sided. The theme of
the selfishness and self-centeredness of the American student is prevalent through
the three stanzas. The American student is infatuated with the speaker and expects
her to accept his way of interacting with her. He is completely unaware that his be-
havior is offensive and hurtful. He insistently tries to contact the speaker even
though she is not interested and has been hurt by his actions and words. This lack of
understanding on the part of the American student causes the speaker to feel really
angry with him and to resort to the use of offensive terms. Her dislike has a clear
cultural aspect and results from the way actions and words are evaluated from a
cultural perspective. The American student’s complete lack of understanding of how
romantic relationships are conducted in a different culture (and the idea that she
should modify her own behavior accordingly) leads to his acting in ways that are
deemed completely inappropriate by the speaker. She recognizes that he can com-
pare American and Chinese patterns of behavior but does not want to change. She
is shocked by his complete lack of appreciation of how his behavior can be experi-
enced and is really angry at his persistence in pursuing her. This specific incident of
failure in cultural negotiation is very personal and leads to feelings of anger.
Other poems in the data dealt with the negative outcomes of official, racial
stereotyping, as the following one by a male Greek-Cypriot study abroad student:
Vagrants: My Family, My Brothers, My Friends
The fault maybe is on my untidy hair
Maybe even to the fact that I never shave
myself
 Chapter 6. Exploring the study abroad experience 

Or even to my old leather jacket

All this makes me a vagrant
And drug user lover, searching a piece of your
bread; marijuana
Even if I never taste drugs, never taste your life.
Stuck on my door to hear
And smell like a dog
So to call me spooky and weird
However you said is your job
You serve the authorities
That’s the reason to shop on me
Police visit me at midnight
But nothing, I was clean even if my hair was
still untidy
Checking everything and anything
But they forgot to check your nasty brain
You squealer, the centuries destroyer
And after, you saw me
You had already fed your prejudices
From a blind cigarette
And like an old pick-up you griped
“I had just done my job; I had to do it.....”
For one hour the same phrase.
The poem describes an experience of being accused of being a drug user and hav-
ing the police search his dormitory room and body in the middle of the night. This
experience is obviously deeply traumatic and involves a situation in which cul-
tural stereotypes are projected onto an innocent victim merely because of what the
poet sees as his physical and cultural difference. The poem starts with the question
that perhaps the speaker’s physical appearance is the cause of being seen as a
“vagrant” and a drug user. The choice of the word vagrant is interesting in that it
specifies the legal offence of being homeless. This study abroad student is indeed
homeless and may look different from other students on campus. The title of the
poem suggests that he might even identify with this designation.
The second stanza introduces an unnamed character and a central theme of
this poem – the role of prejudice in cultural negotiation. This character is a dor-
mitory police informant who is described figuratively as an animal and form of
voyeur. He is “stuck” to the door listening and smelling like a “dog”. His preju-
dice leads to name calling, the activation of the local police force and the
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

assumption that his prejudiced and stereotypical understanding of others is le-

gitimate. The speaker specifies that the informant made the claim that calling
the police on him was his “job”. There does not seem to be any recognition on
the part of the informant that he is a racist and acted inappropriately. In the
fourth stanza, the speaker directly addresses the paradox of the police search.
They came at midnight to check his room for drugs; but they never bothered to
check the quality of the original information. The informant is defined as a hav-
ing a “nasty brain”; of being a “squealer” and a “destroyer”. This collection of
descriptors reverses the definition of who is the real criminal here. The speaker
has done nothing wrong and is wrongly accused and harassed by the police
merely because of his appearance. The real criminal is the original informant
and his basic racism and prejudice against a person who comes from a different
culture. The language the speaker uses suggests that he is angrier with the in-
formant than with the police. The racism of the informant is the central causa-
tive agent in this poem.
In the final stanza the speaker describes a later meeting with the informant. A
central image of this description consists of the informant feeding his prejudices
on a “blind cigarette”. The concept of feeding prejudice returns to earlier descrip-
tions of the informant as a voyeur and a dog. This description is reminiscent of a
troublemaker and scoundrel with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. The detail
presented at the end of the poem – that the informant just keeps repeating the
phrase that he was just doing his job – reinforces the sense of the inability of this
person to understand the nature of his own prejudice. This phrase functions as a
form of self-rationalization of his stereotypical projection upon the speaker. This
last stanza reinforces the depiction of the deep-rooted nature of prejudice.
This poem presents a very difficult experience of cultural negotiation. The
emphasis is on the inability of the American police and their dormitory attendant
to understand cultural difference. The assumptions of the police and those of the
dormitory informant are racist and based on stereotypes of what foreigners are
like. In the case of this poem, if you come from a foreign country, you must be a
drug dealer or some other form of criminal. The informant never contends with
his own racism but rather just returns to his rationalization that acting on preju-
dice consists of doing his job. The speaker of this poem questions why the police
did not check the reliability of the information. As stated in the poem, they
checked everything except their own prejudice. The poem describes the experi-
ence of being stereotyped while a study abroad student and its very negative con-
sequences.
The four poems presented in this subsection share the notion of the inability
of members of the American society to appreciate or understand the presence of a
different culture. Although the implications of this monocultural perspective are
 Chapter 6. Exploring the study abroad experience 

very different in these four poems, in every case the Americans were unaware of
their own cultural limitations and assumed that the study abroad students should
accept the social norms of America. American cultural negotiation is character-
ized in these poems as being oblivious to the presence of people with different
cultural understandings and the assumption that if someone visits the US they
should immediately assume American norms and patterns of behavior. The conse-
quences of this lack of cultural understanding are different in the four poems. In
the first poem, the lack of cultural understanding does not allow communication
to take place but is not more serious than a loss of a conversation. In the third
poem, it causes a situation of acting inappropriately (from a cross-cultural per-
spective) and angers the speaker. In the fourth poem, ignorance and prejudice
leads to false accusations and to involvement with the police. While the intensity
of these experiences is very different, the underlying description that assigns mo-
nocultural assumptions to Americans within the study abroad experience in
America is not.
Cultural negotiation as manifest in these poems consists of a reflective process
where each of the speakers tries to understand the experience of being in a foreign
culture. The reflection on cultural difference is presented as a difficult process
without a real partner to discuss this negotiation with. For the speakers of the
second, third and fourth poems presented in this subsection, this reflection causes
conflict and a degree of anger. The speaker of the second poem explores the op-
tions of integrating two cultural positions but experiences the inherent conflict
and questions as to what she should do. The speaker of the third poem is hurt in a
cross-cultural relationship and feels anger towards her monocultural, would-be
partner. The speaker of the fourth poem is the object of prejudice and responds
with anger towards the police informant. The first two poems in this subsection
consists of personal reflections in response to observation of cultural difference
and the attempt to explain to oneself the meaning of these events; the last two
poems show how the insensitivity and ignorance of the referenced members of
American society directly hurts the study abroad students. In this latter case, cul-
tural negotiation means contending with the ramifications of this ignorance. In all
these poems, cultural negotiation is presented as a very serious and emotionally
difficult aspect of study abroad. The main issue seems to be contending with living
in a society that does not have an appreciation or understanding of cultural differ-
ence. In none of these poems was there a description of a two-sided, cross-cultur-
al interaction. The Americans in these poems are presented as monocultural and
inaccessible; the study abroad students choose to reflect alone and to avoid inter-
action. Multicultural assumptions concerning the study abroad experience were in
this set of poems replaced with the need to contend with monoculturalism and its
ramifications.
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

6.5.5 Homesickness

An additional aspect of the study abroad experience consisted of longing for fam-
ily and home. The following poem expresses one male Russian student’s feelings
on this theme:
Hidden Tears
I’m holding a picture.
The door is locked.
My eyes are wet.
I remember that Sunday picnic
Here is my brother
Hugging my shoulder
Here is my mother
Holding my hand.
Tears are falling down my cheek
I miss my home.
I want to be there,
To see my family again,
To breathe fresh mountain air,
To dip my legs into the rough river,
To see my grandma cooking
And fall asleep in my tiny room.
The poem starts with the image of the speaker holding a photograph and crying in
his locked dormitory room. The detail of locking the door and the title of the
poem suggest that the speaker is embarrassed by his emotional response. Being
male may make crying problematic for him or perhaps longing for home is felt to
contradict the desire to be a study abroad student in a foreign country. It is clear
that the poem presents a very private and emotional moment. The photograph is
of a Sunday picnic with his family. Using tactile imagery the speaker specifies a
close relationship to his brother and mother. In both cases, he focuses on touching.
This memory of a close and loving family causes the speaker to cry. The last sec-
tions of the poem depict the things that he misses: the mountain air, the feel of the
water in the river, his grandmother’s cooking and sleeping in his room at home.
The poem moves from the speaker’s locked room in his dorm to his room at home
where he feels safe.
This poem raises an interesting paradox of the study abroad experience. As
with all nostalgic memories, this is an emotional experience that blends sadness
(at loss) with the happiness of remembering. The experience of being abroad has
made being at home a valued experience. This suggests that the study abroad
 Chapter 6. Exploring the study abroad experience 

experience can generate an appreciation of what was left behind. In particular, the
speaker focuses on very concrete images of things that he misses. Family closeness
is central to his feelings of nostalgia but also food, air and landscape play a role.
The speaker longs to be home once again. This multisensory sense of home acti-
vates memories that make the speaker cry. As in some of the previous poems in
this chapter, the experience of being a study abroad student can be emotionally
difficult and thus a vision of safety in a place that one knows, where one is loved,
may be a valuable thing. The final sense of social and physical safety at home con-
trasts the feelings of disorientation and alienation of studying abroad.
Visions of home are also brought up in the following poem by a female Taiwanese
student, who describes the experience of drinking a cup of Chrysanthemum tea:
A Warm Fire in my Heart
Dry Chrysanthemum blooms in the hot water,
As beautiful as the natural Chrysanthemum,
Like a little sun in the water
It is like the sun warming my day back home.
Thank my friend for giving me a little sun in my cup
On this cold, cold day,
In this foreign land.
This poem transforms the cup of tea into a vision of home. The chrysanthemum is
a “little sun” in the tea cup which then moves to the sun on a warm day in her
home country. The title of the poem connects the flower, the sun, the warmth of
the tea and her emotional state. The second stanza of the poem situates the figura-
tive image of the chrysanthemum tea within the context of a study abroad experi-
ence. The tea was prepared by a friend on a cold day in a foreign land. The act of
giving her this culturally specific gift is an act of kindness and sign of emotional
warmth. The speaker emphasizes the coldness and foreignness of the setting
through the repetition of the word “cold” and the ending of the poem with the
words “foreign land”. The second stanza reciprocates the kindness of her friend by
offering thanks.
Placing a chrysanthemum bloom in tea is a cultural practice for the speaker
but in this poem it counters the coldness and foreignness of the study abroad ex-
perience and reconnects the speaker to positive feelings. The teacup literally and
metaphorically warms her heart and reminds her of her connections. Against the
cold and foreign background, the warm tea offers consolation and a reminder of
the real emotional connections.
For both speakers of these poems, the presence of a personal and culturally
valued artifacts activated feelings of homesickness. The experience involves the
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

interjection of memories and feelings relating to the home country within the ex-
perience of studying abroad. This experience involves situations that give rise to
feelings of disorientation and alienation. Remembering home and exploring the
sensory experiences of being at home allows the study abroad student the option
of reconnecting to past experiences. An important aspect of the activation of
memories of home is the experience of the multiple multisensory social and phys-
ical connections that memories of home provide for them.

6.6 A word of caution

The poetic data presented here reflects the concerns and understandings of study
abroad students writing about their experiences. Each poem captures a particular
moment defined as meaningful by a specific poet during the study abroad experi-
ence. As part of the analysis for the current chapter these moments of life were
organized into five different types of experience. The corpus was generated in the
same context and as such cannot be generalized to all American universities. How-
ever, the different perspectives of these study abroad students may find some reso-
nance in other settings. Several poems refer to the rather disturbing experience of
being the object of an evaluative gaze. In the poems that deal with second language
usage and classroom experiences, the feeling that all eyes are upon you and that
you are the center of attention produces embarrassment, marginalization, anxiety,
fear and even anger. This sense of being singled out seems to reflect the experience
of being foreign and using a second language. At the same time, several of the
poems which dealt with cultural negotiation describe the experience of the study
abroad student employing an evaluative gaze in relation to the local American
students that they encountered. This perspective devalued the American students
and involved an increase in self-esteem of the study abroad student. In addition,
the overall experience of cultural interaction within this particular setting seems
to be characterized by the necessity to function within a society defined by its mo-
noculturalism. As reflected in several of the poems in this data set, the people they
met seemed unaware of the need for cultural negotiation and the conflicts study
abroad students undergo. The consequence of these three characterizations – be-
ing the object of an evaluative gaze, being the initiator of an evaluative gaze and
experiencing the environment as monocultural – seems to be the silencing and the
distancing on the part of the poets. They reflect on the surroundings they are in
and recognize cultural difference, but do not share this realization. This emotional
and psychological mindset does not seem conducive to verbal and cultural inter-
action with local American students and rather describes a series of subjective
understandings that would direct an individual to avoid social interaction. The
 Chapter 6. Exploring the study abroad experience 

sense of being alienated and at the same time devaluing local students may turn
this form of cultural interaction into an undesirable situation where nostalgia for
the home country sets in. Ironically, these experiences reflect what American study
abroad students in foreign countries feel, when they too are alienated, misunder-
stood and collectively devalued residents of the host country (for example see
Talburt and Stewart, 1999 or Wilkins, 1998). This raises the possibility that this
way of being positioned and positioning may reflect a wider set of experiences as
a foreigner in a foreign country.
What this method has shown is that when asked to write about meaningful life
experiences, these poets chose moments that involved quite intense emotional
situations. In relation to the study abroad experience these tended to be more neg-
ative than positive. It is very possible that a whole series of very positive life experi-
ences did happen during these study abroad experiences that were just not written
about. However, the aim here is not to generalize, but rather to point out that the
experiences described in this poetry set do represent the way these students per-
ceived moments of their life during the study abroad experience. Some of them are
extremely challenging and offer insights into the difficulties of actually engaging in
this sort of experience. In particular, the frustrations of using a second language,
being the object of an evaluative gaze and interacting with Americans seem to
demand extraordinary emotional effort. This data set more than anything else at-
tempts to reconstruct some of these moments and perhaps offers the opportunity
of understanding these experiences from the perspective of the student who un-
derwent this study abroad experience.
 chapter 7

Philosophical grounding

7.1 Introduction

Over the centuries, the discussion of poetry and research has raised many con-
tentious positions, some of which see art and science as antithetical. This chapter
addresses more extensively some of these philosophical issues. While the aim is
not to produce a comprehensive historical account of these arguments, it may be
helpful to explicate further the philosophical underpinnings of this book so as to
justify the relationship of poetry and research. The approach taken here is to
explicate and interact with the core objections to poetry as scientific knowledge
and then discuss the broader issue of the integration of literary texts and re-
search methods.

7.2 Poetry as knowledge

As discussed in Chapter One, the objection to poetry as a form of knowledge has

deep historical roots in the Western world. Geuss (2003) argues this issue precedes
Plato and asks whether poetry can provide a “self-validating, correct representa-
tion of the real world” (p. 1). As reconstructed by Geuss (2003), Plato’s argument
is that poets “cannot provide an adequate account” of their artistic activity and as
such cannot construct a “correct representation of the real world”. Plato’s argument
rests on his well-known division between imitation and true existence. Poetry, as
mimesis, is triply removed from truth; it is an imitation of a specific manifestation
of an abstracted ideal truth. Thus, the poet deals in illusion and distances man
from reality. Furthermore, as argued in The Republic, poetry deals with the baser
aspects of human beings, encourages immorality, and stimulates the passions. This
is why Plato claims poetry is a form of dangerous “entertainment” (p. 2) and can-
not be considered as a form of knowledge.
Objections to this position on poetry have come from many corners span-
ning a historical period from Aristotle within the Greek context to Nelson
Goodman (1968) and Gordon Graham (1996) in our own times. Plato’s position is
presented here because it raises some core dichotomies that capture the issues that
surround the proposition that poetry can be a form of scientific knowledge.
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

Consider, for example, a contemporary attempt to demark the boundaries of sci-

ence in education and distance the humanities. Shavelson and Towne (2002) have
argued against the idea that humanist (arts-based) research can produce scientific
knowledge. Their position is that humanist research is concerned with the indi-
vidual case and the complexity of lived experience; as such, it is not replicable or
generalizable to other cases and situations. They specify that “replication means
the ability to repeat an investigation in more than one setting (from one labora-
tory to another or from one field site to a similar field site) and reach similar con-
clusions” (p. 70) and that scientific knowledge should strive for “a stable encapsu-
lation of “facts” that generalizes beyond the particular” (p. 75). While using a
different terminology and designed to forward the idea of empirical research
(as opposed to Plato’s argument for the centrality of philosophy), the claim is still
that poetry (or any other art form) cannot produce a true, abstracted representa-
tion of reality and as such is not useful in constructing knowledge.
From the opposite direction, researchers in the humanities have objected to
the use of empirical methods in relation to literary texts. In his criticism of stylis-
tics, Stanley Fish (1980) claimed that empirical methods had nothing to offer as
the study of literature was contextual and directed by interpretive communities.
On a deeper cultural level, as analysed by Van Peer, Hakemulder and Zyngier
(2007) the central argument of the humanities against empirical methods is that
the explication of meaning belongs to the humanities and is not accessible to re-
search methods from the social sciences. This creates a distinction, summarized
through the hermeneutic work of the 19th century philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey
between explaining – the search for causal connections within the Natural Sci-
ences – and understanding – the unraveling of personal meaning within the hu-
manities (Van Peer, Hakemulder and Zyngier, 2007). This distinction, while re-
futed through many examples of empirical studies of meaning construction in the
fields of cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, sociology and education, is still
presented as a way of distancing empirical methods from the humanities.
Looking at these objections to poetry as research in more theoretical terms,
several core dichotomies emerge. These can be summarized in the four problems
listed below:
1. True Representation: Scientific knowledge provides a true representation of
the real world; poetry offers a fictional and contrived construction and as such
cannot be true knowledge.
2. Detachability: Scientific knowledge provides true propositions that are detach-
able from their mode of representation (or stated another way can be repre-
sented in a variety of ways); poetry unites form and meaning in a unique lin-
guistic construct that is not detachable.
 Chapter 7. Philosophical grounding 

3. Universality: Scientific knowledge consists of universal, general truths; poetry

presents particular, individual instances.
4. Emotionality: Scientific knowledge is cognitive and rational; poetry is emotive.
The most commonly used strategy refuting the proposition that art cannot truly
represent the world is to raise the issue of postmodern skepticism concerning the
nature of truth, the empirical method, the predominance of logic and the neutral-
ity of representation. For example, in a postmodern argument Richardson (1997)
raises “the doubt that any discourse has a privileged place, any method or theory
a universal and general claim to authoritative knowledge. Truth claims are sus-
pected of masking and serving particular interests in local, cultural and political
struggles” (p. 232). This introduces what Constas (1998) calls the political dimen-
sion of research and negates the assumption that one form of research extracts it-
self from the socio-political and historical context of its own construction. Ac-
cording to this position, the proposition that logical argumentation is primary for
knowledge and that truth is constructed through its implementation is in itself a
political argument that creates a self serving hierarchy of power. The problem with
this position, as eloquently stated by Alexander (2003), is that Richardson’s (1997)
own argument is dependent on the prioritizing of skepticism as the primary dis-
course. Thus, if postmodern skepticism is correct then skepticism itself cannot be
prioritized.
A different aspect of the postmodern critique of empirical research is that all
scientific knowledge is ultimately produced in language. Since language is an im-
perfect and inherently polysemantic tool for the dissemination of information, the
idea that knowledge expressed in language represents a true, unified, coherent,
objective and neutral representation of a real world is highly problematic. Accord-
ing to this viewpoint, all linguistic productions of knowledge (and all productions
of knowledge are ultimately linguistic) are ways of representing and constructing
the world rather than true reflections of the world. As argued by Richardson (1997)
the use of conventional prose style, academic writing hides the “technical mecha-
nisms” and processes of representation but “they are not eradicated” (p. 232). In
other words, language with all its problems of communication and representation
is always a part of knowledge and as such all knowledge is suspect and a form of
representational manipulation and rhetoric.
The postmodern critique of logic and empiricism counters the “knowledge as
the true representation of the real world argument” by reconstructing the world as
a linguistic entity and thus equalizing the problematicity of any form of world
construction whether it is poetry or a scientific research article. However, in a
discussion of the parameters of philosophical interpretation, Rescher (2001) points
out that there is flaw in the postmodern argument. As summarized by Rescher
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

(2001), postmodernism’s claims against the primacy of any particular understand-

ing are based on three basic propositions: 1) Omnitextuality – any interpretation
of a text will itself be yet another text; 2) Plasticity – every text is polysemantic and
as such has multiple interpretation; and 3) Equivalency – no interpretation has a
hierarchical status above any other as all interpretation have equal merit. Rescher
(2001) argues that while propositions 1 and 2 are evidently true, the third proposi-
tion is problematic in that it does not take into account the role of textual evidence.
While an infinite number of interpretations might be possible, not all interpreta-
tions are equally grounded in a plausible reading of presented evidence. Conse-
quently, some interpretations are more evidence-based than others and provide a
clearer argument for the understanding of the phenomenon being described.
This position introduces the ideas of justified knowledge and explicit argu-
mentation into the discussion of what counts or does not count as knowledge. A
basic aspect of epistemology is the proposition that what counts as knowledge is
grounded in evidential justification (Williams, 2001). There is a responsibility on
the person who proposes an interpretation to base it on adequate and clearly pre-
sented evidence. The truth- value of a statement rests on the evaluation of the
quality of the evidence and the way it has been interpreted. Both the evidence and
the interpretation need to be accessible to the consumer of this knowledge. For
this reason, the approach presented in this book considers the presentation and
analysis of auto-ethnographic poetry as central to the usage of poetry writing as a
research method. The elicited poetry is positioned as a form of data that requires
subsequent interpretation. Using poetry writing as data requires clearly delineated
and explicated procedures of data collection and interpretation. Readers must be
in an informed position to evaluate the quality and accuracy of conclusions made.
These procedures transform poetry writing into a form of justifiable knowledge.
Furthermore, it is important to clearly specify the core validity of poetic data.
As described and exemplified in the previous chapters, poetry is useful for elicit-
ing succinct, emotion-laden understandings of self experience. As such, poetry
touches upon the ways individuals construct their own personal understandings
of the world. The object of inquiry for poetry, as represented in the types of re-
search question that this method explores, is the subjective and linguistically ne-
gotiated construction of meaning by a writer of her/his own experience. Is auto-
ethnographic poetry valid data for this object of inquiry? Since the object of
inquiry and the method of representation are identical, the answer would seem to
be yes. Poetry can be a true representation of the real world if the ‘world’ that is
being presented is one of individual understanding of experience. If the data
source is valid and the analysis evidence-based and explicitly described, the result
should be justifiable knowledge. Poetry writing, as developed here, would seem to
meet this criterion.
 Chapter 7. Philosophical grounding 

This issue does, however, bring us to the second objection – the problem of
detachable knowledge. The objection to poetry as a form of knowledge is that it
cannot be paraphrased without a loss of meaning. Underpinning this idea is the
assumption of disembodied knowledge which assumes a division between the
knower and the known. The linguistic representation of knowledge is not, in itself,
supposed to be significant but rather just the content that it embodies. The con-
ventional understanding of this type of writing is directed by a principle of replica-
tion in which it is assumed that “the style is a mode of transport that safely carries
a distinct meaning that can be (and is) divorced from the transporting agent”
(Hanauer 2003, p. 73).
Critiques of this understanding of the representation of knowledge have come
from rhetorical analyses of scientific prose. Specifically, as seen in the works of
Bazerman (1988) and Myers (1990), rhetoric plays a central role in the way scien-
tific publications are written and scientific knowledge is presented. Knowledge,
even scientific knowledge, in these very close analyses of written scientific texts is
tied to the ways it is written, the context of writing and the specific people who are
doing the writing. This repeats to a certain extent Richardson’s is (1997, 2003b)
proposal that academic literacy utilizes a normalized genre of writing that hides its
own constructive and interpretive actions. Furthermore, as supported by the
framework of qualitative research and sociological critiques of some formulations
of positivist epistemology, the researcher is never divorced from the knowledge
that s/he creates. Political viewpoints such as those of Constas (1998) situate re-
search and researchers within historical, socio-political contexts. Theoretical and
historical descriptions of the sociology of science, such as Latour and Woolgar’s
(1986) description of the workings of a laboratory situate the researcher in her/his
context as central to the production of scientific knowledge. Accordingly, the idea
of knowledge detached from the mode of written representation and the research-
er is actually only the illusion of detachable knowledge that has been normalized
through the accepted conventions of specific ways of writing.
However, in the case of poetry as knowledge a subsequent argument needs to
be made in relation to this objection. As argued by Gordon (1996) the unity of
form and content in poetry is crucial for understanding the way in which poetry
creates knowledge. It is through the specific linguistic and literary choices made by
the poet that the autobiographical experience is reconstructed for the reader. The
use of artistic form is directive. As such, appreciation and analysis of this form
produces the knowledge of the described experience and thought. Not only does
the principle of uniqueness in poetry not disqualify poetry as valid data, as held by
Gordon (1996), it is actually crucial for the understanding of the way in which
written poetry can become knowledge. As described in this book, the analysis of
the linguistic and literary choices made by the poet in describing her/his own
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

constructions of experience are key to an understanding of the expressed subjec-

tive positioning. On the one hand, the presentation of the participant’s poetry to
the reader allows the entry into and reconstruction of the participant’s experience;
on the other hand, it is a tool through which the participant’s understanding of this
experience can be analysed. In both these senses, the unity of form and content is
beneficial for the positioning of poetry as knowledge.
The third objection to poetry as knowledge is the problem of universality. The
argument is that poetry focuses on the individual, particular and unique and as
such is not generalizable to other contexts. This argument has been directed against
all forms of qualitative research (see for example, Shavelson and Towne 2002) and
is based on a restricted understanding of the concept of causality. These empirical
positions see causality as limited to the analysis of repeated regularity between
specific (manipulated) inputs and outputs and the specification of a statistical de-
scription of the relationship between variables. This implies that causality cannot
be established through the study of individual cases. In response, qualitative re-
searchers redefine causality by focusing on the causal mechanisms that produce
particular results (Maxwell, 2004). Causal explanations can result from a detailed
observation of specific events and as such provide crucial information for inter-
preting the relationship between variables. The meanings, beliefs, values and in-
tentions of participants in a study are a significant aspect of establishing how the
causal mechanism operates in relation to human phenomenon (Maxwell, 2004).
Specifically in relation to the role of art as knowledge, Gordon (1996) states
that “art can be valued for its illumination of human experience” and that literature
“could be interpreted as providing insight and illumination on the themes of hu-
man nature and the human condition” (p. 61). What qualitative, arts-based re-
search can do is provide rich, detailed and personalized understandings of specific
lived experienced that may be able to provide some insight into other contexts.
Also it should be remembered that in many situations understanding the particu-
lar case is important in itself with or without the transition to an exemplar. Even in
medicine, where the stakes on reliable and valid knowledge are high, single case
studies are a common research practice used to explore a range of conditions.
The final objection that needs to be addressed is the idea that knowledge is
purely cognitive and devoid of emotional content. In its extreme form this argu-
ment is construed as the core division between art and the sciences with the former
expressing emotion and the latter as cognition. In this dichotomy, art and emo-
tions are relegated to a secondary role of fleeting diversion and entertainment and
science and cognition are elevated to the central role of constructing knowledge.
But this argument rests on the assumption that emotion and cognition do not in-
teract with the human, thinking system. Psychological and philosophical research
has posited that emotion and cognition are integrated and influence one another
 Chapter 7. Philosophical grounding 

(Roseman, 1984, 2001; Scherer, 2001; Solomon 1977, 1993). For example, in
Roseman (1984), external stimuli are appraised according to five different aspects
(motivational state, situational state, probability, power and agency) in order to
determine what emotion will be elicited in any given situation. While we can agree
or disagree with this specific theory, the idea that emotion and cognition interact
in human thinking is an occurrence that all of us know and experience consist-
ently. In exploring personal subjective experience emotion plays a central role in
defining the orientation and outcome in human psychic states of an experience. In
other words, avoidance of emotion in the description of participant’s perspective
may mean to misunderstand the experience from the participant’s perspective.
Accordingly, a research method such as poetry writing, which allows the expres-
sion of emotional content in the reconstruction of subjective experience, provides
knowledge of that experience.
At a basic level, the core of all the objections raised against poetry as a form of
knowledge resides in a particular understanding of the concept of scientific knowl-
edge. In a well- known discussion of types of writing inquiry, Emig (1982) points
out that all research is directed by what he terms a “governing gaze” (p. 65). He
further specifies two basic types of gaze – the positivistic and phenomenological.
The difference between these two types resides in the “width” and “focus” of the
gaze. The phenomenological gaze acknowledges the contextualization of phenom-
enon within specific fields of action; the positivistic gaze wishes to focus on the
phenomenon a-contextually in order to construct generalizable statements. Fur-
thermore, the phenomenological gaze examines the world as experienced by the
participant, which means “to describe the nature of that world for the perceiver”
(Emig, 1982, p. 67). This focus on participant understanding creates a situation in
which it is accepted that there are many ways of understanding a phenomenon.
The positivistic gaze desires to establish a “one-to-one correspondence” between a
“phenomenon and the interpretation of that phenomenon” (Emig, 1982, p. 67).
The argument that poetry can be seen as a form of knowledge is constructed on
the basis of a phenomenological gaze in relation to research.
The core defense of poetry as a form of knowledge consists of a consideration
of the object of inquiry that poetry as a research method wishes to construct
knowledge about. This object of inquiry, as discussed throughout this book, is the
individual, subjective, emotional, linguistically- negotiated understanding of per-
sonal experience. The central question is whether understandings of this object of
inquiry can be elicited through the usage of poetry writing. Poetry writing can
produce a deliberative account of the writer’s autobiographical experience that in-
volves multisensory, emotional information that reconstructs for the reader the
experience of the writer. The written poem offers the opportunity to enter into
another’s experience and, once analysed, understand that experience through the
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

directive processes of the poetic medium. As such, poetry writing as a research

method has the possibility of enhancing, deepening and/or extending what we
know about the world and contribute to our ability to comprehend the diversity of
experience in the world.

7.3 Empiricism and the literary text

The integration of research methods and literary texts has a disciplinary history.
Since the late 1980s and under the heading of the Empirical Study of Literature
researchers who cross the boundary between empirical research methods and lit-
erary texts have produced studies that utilize research methods from the psycho-
logical and social sciences. Most of them are constructed in relation to four areas
– psychological, sociological, medium and application – as delineated by Schmidt
(1989) in a foundational outlining of the field. Similarly, within the fields of
Pedagogical Stylistics, Education and Applied Linguistics, studies of literary text
processing and its relationship to language learning have been conducted using
empirical methods. Furthermore, over the last 20 years, literary texts as part of a
range of research projects have found their way into the field of psychology and
sociology. Predominantly, the literary text that has managed to make this move is
the story and narrative inquiry is currently a well-established method of conduct-
ing research (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach & Zilber, 1998). Within these fields it is
common to find literary texts and scientific research methods working together.
Accordingly, it is sad that the idea that a literary text can be the basis of a re-
search method still meets opposition. Arguments over disciplinary boundaries
with the adjacent restrictions on what can and cannot be considered research re-
strict the development of serious understandings of a range of phenomenon. The
outcome is the imposition of artificially limiting restrictions on the ways in which
research questions can be addressed and ultimately on the knowledge that is pro-
duced. This confines the way literary and cultural researchers understand their
own field as well as limiting the option of using the special characteristics of liter-
ary texts to understand research questions in a wide range of educational, social
and psychological fields.
The position developed in this book has been expressed by both empirical
researchers of literature and qualitative researchers. Simply put, it is beneficial for
researchers and disciplines to be aware and be able to use a wide range of research
methodologies including those based on literary texts. For example, Van Peer,
Hakemulder and Zyngier (2007) argue against monomethodology – the claim that
there is only one way of conducting scientific inquiries – and see this as a danger-
ous position that can impair the development of appropriately researched
 Chapter 7. Philosophical grounding 

questions. From a qualitative perspective, Maxwell (2004) has argued that margin-
alizing qualitative methods is problematic as “it inhibits researchers from fully
using the unique advantages of qualitative methods to strengthen their causal in-
vestigations” and “it damages the relationships between qualitative and quantita-
tive researchers, making genuine collaboration more difficult” (p. 8). These re-
searchers aim at widening and integrating (while recognizing the epistemological
and ontological differences) a range of research methods so that the value of each
method can be used to compliment the limitations of the others.
In her defense of poetry as a research method, Cahnmann-Taylor (2009)
points out that “if poetry is to have a greater impact on research, those engaged in
poetic practices need to share our processes and products with the entire research
community, and the terms of its use must be clearly defined” (p. 16). In this book,
I have tried to provide an informed approach to the usage of poetry writing as a
research method that clearly explicates how and why this method works. This ap-
proach integrates art-based and qualitative ways of conducting research and ad-
dresses the under-theorized issues of data collection and analysis. I do not claim
that this is the only way to conduct poetry writing as a research method. I do
think, however, that this is one way it can be done and I have tried to provide as
much evidence, research and argumentation as possible.
My position is that a range of research methodologies with different epistemo-
logical and ontological positions can and should be utilized in research. The over-
reliance on one sort of research method runs the danger of not fully understand-
ing the nature of the phenomenon explored. This is a classic argument for
qualitative research that explores situated participant understandings of their con-
text and processes and sees these as having the potential to elaborate and fine tune
our knowledge of phenomenon. Poetry writing as described in this book can help
fulfill this role and thus has a place as one option as a research method.
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 appendix a

The book of poetry assignment

Introduction to poetry writing

Lesson 1 – Understanding and Writing Poetry

Preparation for Lesson 1:
1. Go to Prof. Hanauer’s webpage http://www.english.iup.edu/dhanauer/web/
and download and read before class the following academic article:
Hanauer, D. (2003) Multicultural moments in Poetry: The importance of the
unique. Canadian Modern Language Review, 60 (1), 27–54.
2. Think of a specific incident from your life that captures a moment of interac-
tion that is significant to you. This moment might be an incident that you were
a participant in or it might be something that you observed. Think carefully
about the whole experience and try to really visualize and feel the experience.
What was it like? What made it so significant? Did this experience provide you
with any insights into your experience? Write out some notes describing this
experience. Make a drawing or find pictures that relate to this experience.
Bring these notes, drawings or pictures to class.
* Instructor-led discussion of the nature of poetry and its relationship to finding out
the meaning of life for each individual.
* Writing Poetry about Experiences – Classroom Workshop
The aim of this workshop is to provide each student with the experience of writing a
poem. The workshop scaffolds the process of thinking in poetic terms and then trans-
lating this into the form of a written poem. This workshop is conducted in pairs.
1. Choose yourself a working partner that you trust and enjoy talking to.
2. Try to explain to your partner the significant moment that you have chosen.
Use the materials that you have brought with you (notes, pictures, drawings...
etc) to enhance your explanation. Try to make your description as vivid and
visual as possible. In particular, try to explain what makes this moment so
significant to you as a person. In order to do this you might need to explain
your feelings and emotional responses in relation to the incident or moment
you have chosen.
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

3. With your partner try to decide what is the quintessential aspect of the signifi-
cant moment of experience. Try to pinpoint the central feeling that accompanies
this significant moment. Try to find a scene, object or action that summarizes
the meaning of this event for you. Remember that in poetry one does not need
to provide a whole scene, all the events, and all the participants in order for the
poem to work. Poems tend to focus in on a specific aspect of the event and
work through that in a multi-layered fashion. With your partner, experiment
and write a poem about the event focusing on different aspects. Choose which
seem to you to be the most powerful from an emotional point of view. Remem-
ber that a good poem provides its readers (audience) with an insight into the
writer’s understanding and feelings in relation to a specific experience. How-
ever, it does not have to be coherent from a narrative viewpoint.
4. Repeat stages 1 to 3 with your partner
Lesson 2 – Library and Internet Work on Poetry
During class time you will be going to the library in order to collect 5 different
poems. Three of the poems should be from your home culture and relate to your
own preferences in poetry. These poems do not have to be in English (but for class
purposes you will need to translate them). The last two poems should be in English
and should be poems that you like. The aim of this exercise is to provide the class
with knowledge about poetry in your culture and to offer a wide range of possi-
bilities for writing poetry. If you do not know about poetry in your culture, you
will need to explore this through the library and internet. Of particular impor-
tance is to find poems with different styles and from different periods. Each of the
five poems should be photocopied in five versions.
Defining and Presenting Poetry
Lesson 3 – Exploring the Genre of Poetry
Preparation for Lesson 3:
1. Prepare 5 photocopies of each of the poems you have collected (25 poems).
You will need to bring your poems to class. Look at each of the poems and
think about the features that are special about the poems you have chosen.
* Defining the Features of Poetry Workshop
The aim of this workshop is to analyze the features of poetry and to provide stu-
dents with a variety of different options for writing poems themselves. This work-
shop will be conducted in small groups of 4–5 students:
1. Each student will present the five poems that s/he has brought to class. Each
participant should have a copy of the poem. Each of the poems will be read by
the student to the other participants in the group.
 The book of poetry assignment 

2. Following the reading of the poem, the specific characteristics of the poem
will be discussed. As a group you need to relate to the topics discussed in the
poem, the ways of laying the poems out on the page, the types of language
games used, and the types of vocabulary used.
3. One member of the group will make a list of features that characterize all the
different poems discussed by the whole group. This list needs to be carefully
written so that it can be used by the different members of the group.
4. Each group will present their understanding of the different ways in which a
poem can be written. The discussion should include the specific range of fea-
tures which can be used to write a poem.
Lesson 4 – Presenting Poetry
Preparation for 4:
1. Finish writing your poem about a significant moment (that you started in les-
son 3). Your poem should try to focus in on a specific aspect of the event and
provide an emotional experience for your audience. Do not try to tell a story
but rather to present a moment in time that is meaningful to you. Try to make
your audience sense what makes this an emotionally significant moment to
you. Type your poem.
2. Prepare an exact copy of your poem on a large piece of paper as a poster. The
paper should be large enough that people will be able to read it at a distance.
Bring this to class.
3. Practice reading your poem out loud. Remember that it is very important to use
your voice to express the feelings that you have incorporated in your poem. Your
reading should enhance and highlight the insight that appears in the poem.
* Classroom Workshop – Reading Multicultural Poetry
The aim of the workshop is to provide you with the experience of presenting
and speaking in class. Each student will read her/his poem to the other members of
the class. Following each poem a brief discussion of the original experience and the
way it is understood by the poet and other members of the class will take place.
Exploring Autobiographic Memories
Lesson 5 – Exploring My Experiences
Preparation for Lesson 6:
1. Think very carefully about your life. What are the most salient memories of
your life that you have. Make notes in list form of your memories. You need to
have at least 15 specific memories to share.
2. Please bring to class a big piece of paper and a series of colored markers, pens
or pencils.
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

* Classroom Workshop – Exploring my life

The aim of this workshop is to help you decide on the specific memories that will
be turned into poems for your book of poetry. This workshop will be conducted in
small groups of 4–5 students.
1. Each student will present the list of fifteen memories to the other members of
the group. Each memory should be discussed and explained. It is important
that the group discuss the importance for the presenter of each of the themes.
2. Each student will need to choose those memories that will direct the writing
of the poems in the book of poetry. You will need to be able to explain why
these memories are so important to you.
3. Every student in the class will present one or two of their significant memories
to the class and explain why they are so important to her/him. Other members
of the class should provide feedback and helpful comments to the writer.
* Classroom Workshop – Developing a set of poems through brainstorming and con-
ceptual mapping
The aim of this workshop is to help you develop a set of ideas that can be used to
write your book of poetry. The workshop will deal with the strategies of brain-
storming and conceptual mapping. Brainstorming is the process of generating as
many ideas, thoughts, references and points of association as one can for a par-
ticular topic. Conceptual mapping involves visually exploring the relations be-
tween the ideas, thoughts, references and associations and trying to graphically
represent this knowledge as a net of connecting ideas. Both of these strategies
utilize your own personal knowledge about a specific topic or memory in order to
explore the depth, extent, content and organization of your knowledge. This eval-
uation of your personal knowledge can later be used as a basis for writing your
book of poetry.
1. Each member of the group will brainstorm the set of memories that you have
chosen for your book of poetry. In your notebook write out as many ideas,
thoughts, references and associations for the memory as you can. Don’t stop to
think about what you are writing and do not censor your thoughts. Write
down whatever comes up. Do your best to write down as many items as you
can. Your list should consist of at least 25 items. Don’t worry if your list con-
tains items that seem irrelevant. These items consist of your understandings
and associations for the specific memories that you have.
2. Each member will present his/her memories to the group. In the center of a
big piece of paper write the names of each of the memories that you have cho-
sen to discuss. As a group really question the presenter about his memories.
You need to be able to visualize the exact memory that he is presenting. The
details that you elicit from the presenter must be written down on the paper
 The book of poetry assignment 

and linked to the memory. The idea is that the presenter will have a detailed
conceptual map of the memories and the experiences that s/he has chosen.
Poetry Writing
Lesson 6 – First Draft and Thematic Organization
During this lesson you will be writing a series of poems and having individual
meetings with your instructor. Class time will be dedicated to an in-class series of
writing workshops. During these workshops you will be required to write
20–30 poems based on the memories that you have chosen. Remember to use both
the conceptual maps that you have developed and the analysis of different types of
poems in order to help you write your poems. Be creative and don’t worry so much
about things like grammar and spelling. The communicative content of the poem
is what is really important.
As part of the process of writing poetry you will be reflective exploring your
own experiences. Think about your significant memories, conceptual maps and
notes and consider whether you can find any themes within your poetry. Think
about the issues you are concerned with and the experiences you have had in your
life. Try and decide on a theme for your book of poetry. Discuss your ideas with
your peers and your instructor. It is important to find a theme that is truly mean-
ingful to you and historically situated in your life experiences. This theme should
allow you to explore your own experiences.
Evaluating Poetry
Lesson 7 – Criteria for Evaluation of Poetry
Preparation for Lesson 8:
1. Reread all the poems you have written. Bring 2 copies of each of the poems
you have written to class
2. Find copies of the poems you found at the beginning of the semester. Bring
copies of your own poems and the poems you found to class.
* Classroom Workshop – Criteria for Evaluating Poetry
The aim of this workshop is to find criteria for evaluating poetry. These criteria can
be used to help you write and improve the poems that you have written. This work-
shop will conducted in small groups of 4–5 students.
1. Look at the collection of poems brought by all the different members of the
group. Decide which poems as a group you think are good. Try and decide
what it is about the poems you like that make them “good poems” in your
understanding. Try to describe the qualities of the poems that make them
“good poems” in your minds.
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

2. As a group write up a list of criteria for evaluating poetry. Your list will be
presented to the whole class and discussed.
* Classroom Workshop – Evaluating your Book of Poetry
The aim of this workshop is to provide you with feedback on your poetry so that
you can improve the poetry you are writing for the book of poetry. This workshop
is conducted as pair work.
1. Choose a close friend that you feel comfortable with. This should be someone that
you can talk to easily and will provide you with good feedback on your poetry.
2. Tell your partner about the theme of your book of poetry and give your part-
ner a copy of all the poems you have written.
3. Read each of the poems to your partner. As a partner listen carefully to the
poem and think what would improve the poem in your opinion. Provide your
partner with ideas for ways of revising each of the poems.
4. Once you have heard all the poems, together think carefully about the whole
book of poems. How do the whole series of poems work together? Remember
that this is a book of poetry organized around a central theme. Think what the
series of poems say about the central theme that has been developed in this
book of poetry.
Redrafting and Finalizing your Book of Poetry
Lessons 8
During this week you will be rewriting your series of poems and having individual
meetings with your instructor. Class time will be dedicated to an in-class series of
writing workshops. During these workshops you will be required to carefully con-
sider each of the poems that you have written and think about the book as a whole.
It is very important that the book of poetry clearly express your thoughts and feel-
ings on the memories you have chosen to discuss. In the individual meetings, your
instructor will help you to make the book of poetry as expressive as is possible.
During this week you will also have to make decisions as to the format and
aesthetic qualities of the final book of poetry. Examples of poetry books will be
brought to class to help you imagine different ways of producing your book of po-
etry. You should already start to develop your final version of your poetry book.
Writing an Introduction for your Book of Poetry
During this lesson you will also write an introduction for you book of poetry. Your
introduction should be about 3 pages long and should be written from a personal
point of view. Your introduction should make the reader desire to continue to read
the whole book of poetry and tell your reader what is important about each of the
poems from your perspective.
 The book of poetry assignment 

Poetry Publishing and Presentation

Lesson 9
During this week you will present your finalized and published book of poetry to
the class. Remember that you need to produce three versions of the book of poetry.
The book must be properly typed, organized, bound and presented. The work
must be professionally presented. Each student will choose three poems that s/he
wishes to read to the class. Each student will introduce the theme of their book of
poetry and then read in front of the class three of the poems that they think best
represent their work. Other students in the class will provide positive feedback on
the book of poems.
 appendix b

Transcription conventions

(.) – A hearable pause

(2.0) – Length of a pause or gap in seconds
Underline – Underlining marks speaker’s emphasis
((laughs)) Double brackets designate the transcriber’s comments
. – A full stop designates a stopping intonation
Adapted from Speer (2005)
 Name index

A Fialho, O., 6 I
Alexander, H., 2, 6, 91–93, 133 Finley, M., 78 Intaraprawat, P., 38
Amuzie, G.L., 97 Finley, S., 1, 2 Ireland, M., 42, 50
Armstrong, C., 13–15, 29 Fish, S., 132 Irwin, R.L., 1–2
Foucault, M., 56 Isabelli, C., 97
B Francis, M.E., 40, 42 Ivanic, R., 58–59, 63
Bazerman, C., 135 Francis, W., 44
Benwell, B., 55 Freed, B., 97 J
Bernhardt, E., 34 Furman, R., 4–6, 77–80, 87, Jacobs-Sera, D., 84
Bizzaro, P., 13, 14–15, 29 89–90 Junko Negi, N., 5, 87
Bjorklund, R.W., 81–82, 87, 90
Bley-Vroman, R., 37 G K
Block, D., 57, 58 Gallardo, H.P., 79 Kidd, L.I., 81, 89–90
Bolton, G., 13, 16, 29 Georgakopoulou, A., 56 Kiefer-Boyd, K., 1, 3
Booth, R.J., 40, 42, 50 Gerrish, D.T., 13–14, 16, 29–30 Kim, M., 35–36, 52
Bourdieu, P., 56 Geuss, R., 131 Kirkpatrick, A., 97
Butler, J., 56 Ginther, L., 38 Knowles, G., 1
Butler-Kibser, L., 41 Glesne, C., 78 Kucera, H., 44
Gonzalez, A., 42, 50 Kuiken, D., 34
C Goodman, A.E., 96 Kulkarni, S., 79
Cahnmann, M., 82 Goodman, N., 131 Krusche, D., 34
Cahnmann-Taylor, M., 139 Gordon, G., 61, 64, 92, 131,
Chung, C.K., 42, 50 L
135–136 Langer, C.L., 4–5, 77–80, 89–90
Cole, A.L., 1 Gouzouasis, P., 1–2
Colley, D.O., 13, 15–16, 29 Lantolf, J.P., 57
Gramsci, A., 56 Latour, B., 135
Constantine, M., 98 Grant, L., 38
Constas, M.A., 133, 135 Laufer, B., 39–40, 44
Grauer, K., 1–2 Leavy, P., 1, 78
Coyne, A., 5, 87 Gregory, D., 80
Culler, J., 34, 91 Leggo, C., 1–2, 4
Grumet, M., 1 Leki, I., 37
Cumming, A., 37 Guba, E., 93 Lieblich, A., 138
D Gubrium, J.F., 93 Lietz, C., 4–5, 79–80, 89–90
Davis, C.S., 79 Gunterman, G., 97 Lightman, E.J., 50
Denzin, N.K., 56 H Lincoln, Y., 93
Diaz-Campos, M., 97 Hakemulder, J., 132, 138 Linnarud, M., 38
Doanne, W.E., 84 Hall, G., 34–36
Duffy, D.F., 50 M
Hanauer, D., 3–4, 13, 15–16, 29, Mantzoukas, S., 91
E 34–36, 52, 60, 77, 84, 91–92, 135 Maxwell, J.A., 30, 92–93, 136,
Eisner, E., 1, 4 Hashim, I.H., 98 139
Emig, J., 137 Hatfull, G., 84 May, S., 56
Ernest, P., 92 Hick, T.L., 84 Mazzarol, T., 97
Hinkel, E., 37 McCarthy, P.M., 50
F Holstein, J.A., 93 McNamara, D.S., 50
Farrell Whitworth, K., 97 Holmes, V., 80 McNiff, S., 1–2
Faulkner, S., 78 Hoorn, J., 34 Miall, D.S., 34
Fecteau, M., 35–36, 52 Huberman, A.M., 4
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

Miles, M.B., 4 S Theodoridou, M., 34

Mukarovsky, J., 34 Sameshima, P., 4 Towne, L., 10, 132, 136
Mulligan, D., 97 Sargent, W.E., 84 Twombly, S., 97
Myers, G., 135 Sasaki, M., 37–38 Tusiae, K.R., 81, 89–90
Scherer, K., 137 Tuval-Amischiach, R., 138
N Schmidt, S.J., 138
Nation, P., 39–40, 44 Schouten, J.W., 82 U
Schuster, S., 81 Utsey, S., 98
O
Ohlen, J., 78 Schwartz, M., 13, 15, 29 V
Olson, T., 81 Seale, C., 93 Van Peer, W., 34, 60, 132, 160
Okazaki, S., 98 Segalowitz, N., 97 Victori, M., 37–38
Shavelson, R., 10, 132, 136
P Sherry, J.F., 82 W
Paran, A., 34, 36 Silva, T., 37 Williams, M., 134
Pavlenko, A., 57, 61, 63 Simoes, A., 97 Wilkins, S., 97, 129
Peck, Z., 81 Sinner, A., 1–2 Winkie, P., 97
Pennebaker, J.W., 40, 42, 50 Skibniewski, L., 37 Woolgar, S., 135
Prendergast, M., 4, 85 Smith-Shank, D., 1, 3
Phillips, A., 13, 15, 29 Y
Solomon, R., 137
Piirto, J., 5 Ye, J., 98
Soutar, G., 97
Poindexter, C.C., 78, 88 Spencer, A., 97 Z
Steffensen, M., 38 Zachos, P., 84
R Stewart, M., 41, 97–98, 129
Reagan, V., 97 Zamel, V., 37
Stirman, S., 42, 50 Zhiliang, Y., 98
Rescher, N., 133–134 Stokoe, E., 55
Richardson, L., 3–5, 10, 76–77, Zilber, T., 138
Zyngier, S., 6, 36, 132, 138
80, 88–91, 93, 133, 135 T
Ridley, D., 97 Talburt, S., 97–98, 129
Roseman, I.J., 137 Tater, S., 97
 Subject index

A Autobiographical self and homesickness 126–128

Aesthetic inquiry as component of poetic iden- population in current
as component of poetry writ- tity 62–63 study 36, 39
ing as research method 90 definition 58 population at university
integration with qualitative and poetry writing 59, 83, studied 99
research 92 86–87 problematic relationships
and participant data 91–92 Auto-ethnography with American
philosophy and distinctive combination with other data students 104–125, 128–129
features of 2 types 81, 92 purported benefits of
problematic aspects of 6 and ethicality 92 studying abroad for 96–97
relation to traditional re- examples of 79–80 Learners
search 3 as justifiable knowledge 134 ability to write poetry 38,
suggested criteria of 93 and narrative 80 52, 90
Applied linguistics as poetic research data 5–6, perceived inability to write
and language learning 79 poetry 6
outcomes of study abroad poetry reading methods
experiences 97–98 C of 34–36
and literary text process- Comparative fallacy 37 process of facilitating
ing 138 Cultural negotiation poetry writing for 7–10,
and literature 4 and conventions of social 85–87
and migration 85 discourse 119 Writers
Arts-based as component of second lan- ability to read and
Research guage poetry reading 35 interpret own poetry 36
core positions of 89 and evaluative gaze 128 common themes and
definition 1 and racial prejudice 122–124 concerns of 49–52
as distinct from arts in and romantic relation- difficulties expressing
research 2 ships 121–122 personal thoughts for 8–9
negative response to 10, during study abroad experi- distinctions between
132 ences 118–125 novice and skilled 37–38
and other forms of and values 119–121 trends in research
research 2–5 D concerning 36–37
origins of 1 Discourse vocabulary capabilities
potential of 3, 136 Social of 44
Inquiry and cultural Classroom
and data analysis 89–91 negotiation 119 empowerment for students
emerging maturity of 4 and identity 56–59 within 16
evaluation of 93–94 experiences of students
history 4 E in 107–113, 128
and nature of English as a Second Language poetry writing in 6
understanding 2 (ESL) Writing
and other qualitative Students baseline comparisons with
research 2 as directors of poetry other writing forms 51
and second language analysis projects 9 frequency of word use
learners 6–10 engagement with in 46–51
various definitions of 4–5 poetry 16
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

linguistic categories used as source material for po- in students’ second

in 43 ems 10 language poetry 45–46, 52
poetic features used in 45 First language
statistics concerning that analysis of poems written I
used in the current in 9 Identity
study 42–51 poet’s perceptions of 103, 106 Poetic
Emotion process of reading poetry analysis of 62–64
and cognition 137 in 35–36 and auto-ethnography 80
as component of poetry 15, process of writing poetry components of 62
19, 28, 30, 82–83, 85, 133–134 in 16–31, 34–35 and membership 61
as component of representa- research on poetry writing Migrant 57, 61–62
tion of poetic data 77–79, in 13–16 relevance to academic
89, 93–94, 98–99 settings and second language fields 85
expression in second speakers 102–106 Second language
language poetry 39, 42, suitability of poetry as re- and conflicts resulting
49–53, 60, 70 , 87, 100, search method for writers from study abroad 57,
101–104, 106–108, 111–112, of 7 118–125
122, 125–129 use in second language and first language 103, 106
as evaluative criteria for poetry 44, 52 Gender
poetry 28–29, 87–88 writers in comparison with effect on study abroad
as motivating factor for writ- second language writ- experience 97
ing poetry 16, 29 ers 37 as identity category 58,
in second language learners’ 61–62
responses to poetry 35–36 G stereotypes of 71, 74
Empirical Genre
Academic prose L
Research Language learning
and postmodernism 93, assumed normalcy in 5
differences with poetry 25, in classrooms and real
133–134 world 105
relation to context 28 60
rewriting of interview data effect on identity 57–58
on textual features in and literary text process-
poetry reading 34–35 in 76, 91
second language writers’ ing 138
Approaches to literature and study abroad 96–97
disciplinary history of 138 textual choices in 37–38
Poetry Lexical
opposition to 132, 136 Category 39–40, 46
ESL College writing characteristics of
first-language 13, 15–17, Frequency 39–40
as context for corpus of Literature
poems 65, 95, 98–99 19–21
characteristics of Characteristics 136
educational rationale of 8–9 L2 learning
writing process used in 9–10 second-language 38–53
and emotion 15, 19, 28, 30, existing studies on
Ethics relationship 33–36
in American culture 120 82–83, 85, 133–134
general characteristics 60– Reading
in evaluation of poetic proficiency threshold
inquiry 94 61, 83–84, 87
process of writing in for 34
in poetry writing as research
methodology 83, 94 first-language 16–31, 34–35 M
in poets’ motivation for self- Narrative Migrant 57, 61–62
understanding 85 and auto-ethnography 80 relevance to academic
and identity 56–58 fields 85
F inquiry in research 138
Field notes and organization of N
as objective for poetry writ- poetry 89–90 Narrative
ing as research method 75, and poetic Personal
82 rearrangement 77, 88 in first language poetry 24
and identity 56–57
 Subject index 

as response to poetry 80 study of first language poetry Reading

in students’ second writing process 13, 18–19, proficiency threshold
language poetry 45–46, 52 30–31 for 34
research on 32–36
P R and surface features 34
Poetry Representation Writing
Research Poetry baseline comparisons with
on characteristics of historical critiques other writing forms 51
writing in second- of 131–133, 135 frequency of word use
language 38–53 to interpret research in 46–51
on process of reading in data 5, 76–80 linguistic categories used
second language 32–36 of poetic identity 62 in 43
on process of writing in of poetry writing poetic features used in 45
first language 16–31, 34–35 process 20 statistics concerning that
value of 31, 33, 55, 76–77, Narrative used in the current
79–83, 90, 94, 138–139 and identity 56–58 study 42–51
Inquiry Academic prose Classroom
objects of 124, 137 critiques of 5, 90–91, 93, empowerment for students
and self discovery 25 133–134 within 16
various definitions of 4–5 experiences of students
lyric S
Science in 107–113, 128
definition 88 poetry writing in 6
and poetic and art 1–2, 131–139
evidence requirements of 55, Social work 1, 5, 75, 79–80, 87
rearrangement 77 Study abroad
in methodology of current 93
relevance of poetry research Programs 96
study 83, 87–89 Students
worldview contained in 93 for 3–4, 11, 90, 132
representation of knowledge identity conflicts
Writing process experienced by 57, 118–125
and autobiographical in 5, 10, 84
Second language purported benefits
self 59, 83, 86–87 for 96–97
and auto-ethnographic Learners
ability to write poetry 38, Experiences
research 5, 81 with American
Characteristics 52, 90
perceived inability to write students 113–118
in first-language 13, 15–17, in classrooms 107–113
19–21 poetry 6
poetry reading methods and cultural
general 60–61, 83–84, 87 negotiation 116–125
in second language 38–53 of 34–36
process of facilitating homesickness 126–128
Surface features and language
and poetry reading 34 poetry writing for 7–10,
85–87 performance 100–106
Q Writers Research 96–99
Qualitative research ability to read and T
and auto-ethnography 79 interpret own poetry 36 Thematic organization
criticism of 136 common themes and in auto-ethnography 80–81,
general characteristics of 93, concerns of 49–52 89
135 difficulties expressing in corpus of poems in current
integration with arts based personal thoughts for 8–9 study 39, 41, 45–46
research 1–6, 81–83, 87–92, distinctions between teaching of 9–10
139 novice and skilled 37–38 techniques used by the
personal and cultural ques- trends in research researcher in current
tions in 84–85 concerning 36–37 study 98–100
and poetic identity 74 vocabulary capabilities Therapeutic practice 1, 5, 16,
and second language po- of 44 79–82, 87
etry 53
 Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing

W in poetry workshops 9, 87 in poetry writing 19–23,

Writing process as practiced by 29–30, 59–60
Revision experienced poets 25 in second language
and second language Discovery 13, 15–16, 19–21, reading 34
writers 37 23–27, 29–31, 35, 60, 79, Permutation 19–20, 25–30, 87
as central to poetry 84–87 Finalization 19–20, 27–30
writing 13–16, 29–31, 33, Activation
64, 85
In the series Linguistic Approaches to Literature the following titles have been published thus
far or are scheduled for publication:

10 Robinson, Orrin W.: Grimm Language. Grammar, Gender and Genuineness in the Fairy Tales. 2010.
xi, 190 pp,.
9 Hanauer, David Ian: Poetry as Research. Exploring second language poetry writing. 2010. xiii, 164 pp.
8 Bowles, Hugo: Storytelling and Drama. Exploring Narrative Episodes in Plays. 2010. ix, 216 pp.
7 Lindauer, Martin S.: Psyche and the Literary Muses. The contribution of literary content to scientific
psychology. 2009. xiii, 209 pp.
6 Toolan, Michael: Narrative Progression in the Short Story. A corpus stylistic approach. 2009. xi, 212 pp.
5 Zyngier, Sonia, Marisa Bortolussi, Anna Chesnokova and Jan Auracher (eds.): Directions
in Empirical Literary Studies. In honor of Willie van Peer. 2008. xii, 357 pp.
4 Peer, Willie van (ed.): The Quality of Literature. Linguistic studies in literary evaluation. 2008. ix, 243 pp.
3 McIntyre, Dan: Point of View in Plays. A cognitive stylistic approach to viewpoint in drama and other
text-types. 2006. xii, 203 pp.
2 Simpson, Paul: On the Discourse of Satire. Towards a stylistic model of satirical humour. 2003.
xiv, 242 pp.
1 Semino, Elena and Jonathan Culpeper (eds.): Cognitive Stylistics. Language and cognition in text
analysis. 2002. xvi, 333 pp.