Introduction: When Water Shapes Stone: Poetry as a Transformative Force in Librarianship

This introduction presents the edited collection of works that draw on poetry to illustrate its role in the intertwined personal and professional streams of life journeys of library and information science (LIS) professionals. We frame the discussion on the power of poetry as a voice in transforming librarians’ lives and shaping their motivations, directions, choices, and actions at the intertwined personal and professional nexus of intersection from all around the globe. We also discuss how poetry, as both text and image, offers librarians and information professionals worldwide an opportunity to explore the use of poetry and its transformative potential within and beyond the academy. We highlight the theoretical construct of “voice” that inspires the collection as an instrument of self-consciousness, narrative development, storytelling, and discourse analysis.