Chapter 15: Dwell in Possibility: Using Poetic Inquiry to Reveal the Relational Well-being Potential of Shared Reading

Poetry offers an especially valuable resource at this moment of need for language that not only informs but also connects, enacts, and creates. With precision and wonder, poetry can shake us from slumber, from fear, from loneliness, and can beckon us across a bridge to a mended world of possibility. As library and information science (LIS) scholars, I believe we have a unique opportunity (and perhaps a responsibility) to produce research that contributes to remaking our fractured communities, and I believe poetry is a worthy subject and object for that research. Poetic inquiry offers a qualitative set of methods for data collection, analysis, and communication. In poetic inquiry, poetry is both the process and product of the research. With this chapter, I argue that poetic inquiry allows us to attend carefully to participants, articulate the complexity and nuance of experiences, and increase the emotive impact of our work. As an example of the application of poetic inquiry as a LIS research methodology, I draw upon my larger dissertation study that explores how participation in shared reading groups (the reading aloud and discussion of literature in a community group setting) shapes experiences of relational well-being. I create and share three sets of poems: found poems from the transcripts of conversations with shared reading group participants, found poems from relevant theorists, and threshold poems that weave together the voices of participants, theorists, and myself as the poet-researcher.