Introduction

Abstract

In this chapter, the author identifies, defines, and illustrates the book’s key concepts, including concrete poetry, iconographic poetry, research poetry, poetic inquiry, and iconographic research poetry. Next, the author offers brief overviews of the history of concrete poetry, iconographic poetry, poetic inquiry, and research poetry, four central areas of inquiry that have inspired the notion of iconographic research poetry. The author explores the intellectual foundations that undergird the concept of iconographic research poetry by reviewing classic and contemporary texts from the humanities and social sciences. After enumerating the advantages of iconographic research poetry and positioning it as a methodological innovation that bridges art, literature, and science, the author concludes this chapter with a preview of the book.

The central goal of this book is to offer readers an introduction to the craft of writing iconographic research poetry. Previously referred to as concrete research poetry (Meyer, 2017), iconographic research poetry is a novel form of poetic inquiry that bridges the art-science divide by melding aspects of iconographic poetry and research poetry. By tracing the historical foundations of concrete and iconographic research poetry, as well as the development of research poetry and poetic inquiry, I hope to offer the reader an appreciation for the intellectual roots that inform this unique methodological approach. In the process, I invite previously unrelated areas of inquiry into dialogue with one another.

I begin this chapter by defining key concepts such as concrete poetry, iconographic poetry, research poetry, poetic inquiry, and iconographic research poetry. I offer exemplars to illustrate each type of poetry that I introduce. Next, I provide brief overviews of the history of concrete poetry, iconographic poetry, poetic inquiry, and research poetry, four central areas of inquiry that have inspired the notion of iconographic research poetry. Drawing on classic and contemporary texts from the humanities and social sciences (e.g., Bean & McCabe, 2015; Bohn, 2011; Butler-Kisber, 2002; Faulkner, 2009, 2020; Funkhouser, 2007; Goldsmith, 2009; Hill & Vassilakis, 2012; Hollander, 1975; Kostelanetz, 1970; Lahman, 2022; Leavy, 2009, 2015, 2020; Solt, 1968; Swenson, 1970), I trace the intellectual foundations that undergird the concept of iconographic research poetry. Next, I consider the advantages of iconographic research poetry as a methodological innovation that bridges the humanities and the social sciences. I conclude this chapter with a preview of the book.

1.1 Key Concepts

Concrete poetry has been conceptualized in many different ways. Kostelanetz (1970) defined concrete poetry as “word-imagery,” or “artifacts that are neither word nor image alone but somewhere or something between” para. (1). Kostelanetz identified two types of word-imagery: imaged words and worded images. Imaged words, which may consist of one word or one word repeated in a pattern are perhaps more closely related to art than to poetry. One classic example of an imaged word is Robert Indiana’s 1970 sculpture “LOVE.” This iconic work of pop art has been reproduced around the world in many different colors and languages. Pictured here is the LOVE sculpture in New Castle, Indiana, Robert Indiana’s hometown. (See Fig. 1.1.)

Fig. 1.1

Concrete poem (imaged word): LOVE sculpture in Arts Park, New Castle, Indiana (photograph). Source Bertram (2021). Used with permission

Kostelanetz’s (1970) second type of concrete poem is the worded image. This vision of concrete poetry is congruent with Solt’s description of a concrete poem as an “ideogram or a constellation” of words (Solt, 1968, p. 59). In this type of concrete poem, the “language fills an image, embellishing the shape through linguistic means... making pictures with words and letters” (Kostelanetz, 1970, para. 1). One brilliant example of a worded image is Mary Ellen Solt’s “Forsythia,” which employs the letters F-O-R-S-Y-T-H-I-A, in concert with their Morse Code equivalents, to form the roots and branches of a flowering shrub. (See Fig. 1.2.) This poem is a visual feast, as well as a puzzle to solve.

Fig. 1.2

Concrete poem (worded image): “Forsythia.” Source Solt (1968). Reprinted by permission of the Estate of Mary Ellen Solt

Closely related to Solt’s concept of concrete poetry is May Swenson’s iconographic poetry. Swenson (1970) derived the term “iconograph” from the Greek “eikonos,” meaning “image” or “likeness” and “graphe,” which means “carve” (p. 86). Similar to pattern poetry or shaped poetry (Hollander, 1967), an iconograph is an emblematic poem “in which the words or letters form a typographical picture” (Drury, 1995). Put differently, iconographic poems provide the reader with a text to read, as well as a visual object to perceive. By creating a gestalt visual image for the reader to decode, the poet preempts the linear, logical, sequential means by which humans typically process written communication word-by-word, line-by-line, paragraph-by-paragraph, and page-by-page. As the poem’s physical form shapes the reader’s interpretation, it interrupts the left brain’s task of cognitive processing and invites the right brain to participate in the interpretive process, thereby creating space for a more emotionally evocative reading of the text.

Perhaps because of its capacity for aesthetic, evocative representation, poetry has been embraced by art-based researchers, as well as literary scholars. Prendergast (2009) defined poetic inquiry as a “form of qualitative research in the social sciences that incorporates poetry in some way as a component of an investigation” (para. 1). Poetic inquirers may integrate poetry into a study’s literature review, methods, analysis, or findings. Research poems differ from literary or creative poems in that they typically address issues related to conceptualization and methodology—in other words, research poetry should connect to existing scholarly literature and the methods should be shared for verification and replication (Lahman & Richard, 2014). Sameshima et al. (2018) argued that poetic inquiry has profound epistemological and ontological implications for researchers, as it offers them an alternative way of knowing and conducting research, as well as “a way to be and become in the world” (Leggo, as cited in Sameshima et al., 2018, p. 16). In this sense, practicing poetic inquiry has the potential to change not only how scholars conduct research and represent their findings, but also who they are as human beings.

Research poetry (Faulkner, 2009) is a specific form of poetic inquiry in which scholars produce arts-based representations of research findings by creating poetry from qualitative data, such as interviews and observations (Leavy, 2015). Because most research poems transform existing text (e.g., interview transcripts) into poems (Lahman et al., 2011), they can be classified as found poetry (Butler-Kisber, 2002). Although some writers have intentionally contrasted multiple forms (e.g., Furman, 2006) or have experimented with specific forms such as haiku (e.g., Holman Jones, 2011; Lahman et al., 2011; Prendergast, 2004), most research poetry takes the form of free verse (e.g., Carr, 2003; Ellingson, 2011; Faulkner, 2005; Glesne, 1997). For example, Sjollema and Yuen (2017) wrote research poems that embodied their affective responses to interviews that they conducted with participants in an arts-based participatory action research project that sought to support and empower Indigenous women who were survivors of violent crime to become agents in their healing journeys. Sjollema wrote,

I cried when you said

you had a chance to feel proud

came in touch

with your own artist

that the word “Aboriginal”

means beauty

means art (p. 117)

Sjollema and Yuen’s research poetry offers a powerful affective representation of the research process—a confessional tale that would most likely not be told in a traditional methods section.

Iconographic research poetry melds the practices of iconographic poetry and research poetry in order to create poems that represent research findings in shapes that are symbolically significant. For example, in an autoethnographic study about the experiences of caregivers of children with mental illness (Meyer, 2017), I employed the shape of a rollercoaster to represent participants who compared their child’s mood swings to a rollercoaster ride (See Fig. 1.3.) As I explain later in this chapter, iconographic research poetry has a number of distinct advantages because it offers the reader a visual shape that provides a cognitive schema for interpreting participants’ words.

Fig. 1.3

Iconographic research poem: “Rollercoaster.” Source Meyer (2017). Reprinted by permission of the author

In sum, iconographic research poetry is a fusion of iconographic poetry and research poetry. On one hand is iconographic poetry. Akin to one type of concrete poetry, iconographic poems are shaped like the subject that the author is writing about. On the other hand is research poetry, a form of poetic inquiry in which scholars represent qualitative research findings via poetry. Figure 1.4 employs a Venn diagram to illustrate the relationships between concrete poetry, iconographic poetry, poetic inquiry, research poetry, and iconographic research poetry. Although these concepts are distinct, they also overlap to a certain extent. Iconographic research poetry is located at the nexus of these overlapping concepts.

Fig. 1.4

Venn diagram of poetic inquiry, research poetry, concrete poetry, iconographic poetry, and iconographic research poetry

1.2 History

Concrete and iconographic poetry. Literary scholars typically locate the roots of the concrete poetry movement in the 1950s with the Brazilian Noigandres group, an avant-garde group of writers, musicians, and artists; however, early examples of iconographic poetry may have existed as early as 300 B.C., when Greek poets such as Simmias of Rhodes created a series of shape poems (Hollander, 1975). Other examples of iconographic poetry, such as George Herbert’s “Easter Wings” (Herbert, 1633), Lewis Carroll’s “Mouse’s Tale” (Carroll, 1866), Stephane Mallarmé’s “Un Coup de Dés” (Mallarmé, 1897), and Guillaume Apollinaire’s “Calligrammes” (Apollinaire, 1991), illustrate that British and French poets had been experimenting with shape poems long before the modern era (Draper, 1999).

Most scholars of concrete poetry have characterized it as an international movement. One of the most well-known scholarly texts about concrete poetry, written by US poet Mary Ellen Solt in 1968, organized the extant concrete poetry literature by geographical region, noting particularly active communities in Brazil and Europe. As Draper (1999) observed, an emphasis on shape rather than words enabled concrete poetry “to transcend the regional and national divisions associated with the use of a spoken language” (p. 222). When Swiss poet Eugen Gomringer (as cited in Solt, 1968) wrote his concrete poetry manifesto in 1956, he described the movement as

International-supranational. It is a significant characteristic of the existential necessity of concrete poetry that creations such as those brought together in this volume began to appear almost simultaneously in Europe and South America . . . I am therefore convinced that concrete poetry is in the process of realizing the idea of a universal poetry. (p. 68)

Indeed, this phenomenon of simultaneous innovations occurring across the globe may be what differentiated the modern concrete poetry movement from the lone poets who created shape poems in the past. By playing with language, manipulating graphic space, and interacting with each other’s work, concrete poets from around the globe addressed themes of globalization, transnationalism, and the universality of language in innovative ways (Graber & Rivière, 2017).

In the 1960s, the concrete poetry movement spread to the USA, where poets such as Emmett Williams, Mary Ellen Solt, and Richard Kostelanetz developed their own concrete poetry and wrote anthologies (e.g., Kostelanetz, 1970; Solt, 1968; Williams, 1967) that showcased the existing body of concrete poetry and provided biographical information and commentary about the poets. Williams’s 1967 anthology presented a compilation of the work of 70 concrete poets, accompanied by biographical information about the authors, as well as his commentary about the poems.

Solt (1968) extended Williams’s work by providing a detailed historical overview of the concrete poetry movement, English translations of manifestos written by leading concrete poets, stunning reproductions of more than 150 concrete poems, informed interpretations of the poems, and a multilingual glossary to help readers understand poems that were written in poets’ native languages. Solt’s work exemplifies the innovative, international, and visual aspects of concrete poetry.

As previously mentioned, May Swenson’s iconographic poetry shares certain characteristics with Solt’s concrete poetry. Although she did not identify as a concrete poet, Swenson also theorized about the relationship between word and image. Commenting on her book Iconographs (1970), Swenson wrote

To have material and mold evolve together and become a symbiotic whole. To cause an instant object-to-eye encounter with each poem even before it is read word-after-word. To have simultaneity as well as sequence. To make an existence in space, as well as in time, for the poem. These have been, I suppose, the impulses behind the typed shapes and frames invented for this collection. (p. 86)

One of Swenson’s iconographic poems, “How Everything Happens (Based on a Study of the Wave),” ebbs and flows across the page, constrained only by the margins of the page and the limitations of the 1960s typewriter (Spooner, 2006). As Spooner observed, this poem serves as a visual and prosodic representation of a wave, as well as a metaphor for creative writing.

Kostelanetz (1970) added to the extant literature by showcasing roughly 100 poems, most of which had not been published in previous anthologies. As previously noted, Kostelanetz made the distinction between imaged words and worded images when describing the existing body of concrete poetry: “In imaged words, a significant word or phrase is endowed with a visual form, so that language is enhanced through pictorial means. In worded images, in contrast, language fills an image, embellishing the shape through linguistic means...” (para. 1). This distinction is important because it demarcates two subgenres of concrete poetry: Imaged words usually consist of a word or a few words (e.g., Robert Indiana’s iconic “LOVE” sculpture), whereas worded images are rooted in an image (e.g., Mary Ellen Solt’s “Forsythia”). In imaged words, words are often whittled down to their essential letters or syllables; in worded images, the poems are drawn out, like sketches that spill across the page (or multiple pages, as is the case with Mallarmé’s “One Toss of the Dice,” which spans 21 pages; Poetry Foundation, n.d.).

In the late 1970s, concrete poetry became passé (Bean & McCabe, 2015). According to Perloff (2008), literary critics such as Bayard (1989) pointed out the shortcomings of concrete poetry as seen through the lens of Umberto Eco’s 1976 iconic fallacy theory. Essentially, critics questioned the assumption that poems should attempt to fuse form and content. “The 1950s experiment in material poetics was ideologically suspect—too ‘pretty,’ too empty of ‘meaningful’ content, too much like advertising copy” (Perloff, 2008, p. 66). As Kostelanetz (2011) reflected in his self-deprecating autobiographical poem, “No one ever thought me in fashion. I failed to win acceptance from powerful literary mobs...” (p. 21). Although Kostelanetz continued to publish his work into the twenty-first century, the movement lost momentum.

In 1996, Kenneth Goldsmith launched UbuWeb, n.d. an online repository of concrete poetry. As Goldsmith (2009) reflected, “There was something formally astonishing about the way that the computer screen and concrete poetry seemed to work naturally together. It seemed a fulfillment of concrete poetry’s original premise” (p. 50). Similarly, Bean and McCabe (2015) observed, “The great dreams of the democratization of concrete poetry by poets such as Henri Chopin have become embedded into our everyday activities” (p. 14). With the advent of the personal computer and the Internet, poets and readers were able to create and consume new forms of digital poetry, “a genre that fuses crafted language with new media technology and techniques enabled by such equipment” whereby “words are arranged into literal shapes; words show patterns that represent dispersal or displacement of language; or words are combined with images” (Funkhouser, 2007, pp. 318–322). Digital poetry has diverse, constantly evolving forms that range from simple computer-generated texts (e.g., Poem Generator, n.d.); to complex programmable poems and codework (e.g., Cayley, n.d.); to kinetic, multimedia video poems (e.g., Caselli, 2009). Concrete video poems such as Caselli’s blur the boundaries between poetry and film, juxtaposing text, images and sound in startlingly original ways.

Perloff (2008) referred to the rebirth of concrete poetry in new media as “arrière-garde” (p. 66): When an avant-garde movement (such as the concrete poetry movement) is no longer a novelty, it is the role of the arrière-garde (in this case, digital poetry repositories such as Moving Poems (n.d.), TED-Ed (n.d.), UbuWeb (n.d.), and Vispo n.d.) to insure its success. Paralleling their predecessors in the 60s and 70s, contemporary arrière-garde scholars Bean and McCabe (2015), Bohn (2011), and Hill and Vassilakis (2012) have published anthologies of concrete and visual poetry in the twenty-first century. Note that Bohn’s (2011) definition of visual poetry as “poetry that is meant to be seen” (p. 13) doesn’t differentiate visual poetry from concrete poetry in a meaningful way. Perhaps this is because concrete and visual poetry are so closely related: Both practices integrate literature and art. In contrast, Swenson’s (1970) statement that iconographic poems “are to be seen, as well as read and heard” (p. 87) suggests that iconographic poets are located closer to the literary end of the continuum (poet-artists), whereas concrete and visual poets are situated closer to the artistic end of the spectrum (artist-poets).

Research poetry and poetic inquiry. Only within the past 25 years has poetry been recognized as an alternative form of representation in social science research. Unlike concrete and iconographic poetry, which have traditionally been male-dominated disciplines—with the notable exceptions of Mary Ellen Solt and May Swenson—research poetry has feminine roots. One of the first scholars to passionately embrace the creative analytic practice of poetic representation was US sociologist Laurel Richardson (1992), who confessed,

I have breached sociological writing expectations by writing sociology as poetry…By violating the norms of sociological production and dissemination, I have felt the power of those norms, their role in suppressing lived experience, and the exhilaration of writing nonalienating sociology. (p. 126)

Richardson referred to her poem “Louisa May’s Story of Her Life” as a “transcript masquerading as a poem/a poem masquerading as a transcript” (p. 127). She described the difficult literary challenge inherent in constructing a poem from a transcript comprised of speech that was bland, unconcretized, and devoid of images, metaphors, and poetic language. Nevertheless, by using spaces and line breaks to capture the rhythm in her informant’s voice, Richardson successfully distilled her participant’s experience in a poem.

Corinne Glesne (1997) extended Richardson’s (1992) work by explicating a method for generating research poems. Glesne, a qualitative methodologist from the US, is perhaps best known for her work on poetic transcription, in which she represented her participant’s words from an interview transcript in the form of a poem. Glesne created six poetic transcriptions derived from an interview that she conducted with Dona Juana, an elderly Puerto Rican researcher and educator. She began by conducting a traditional qualitative thematic analysis of the data. Next, she created “poemlike compositions” from the transcribed interview. Her process involved using her interviewee’s words (as opposed to the researcher’s words) and keeping enough words together to re-present the interviewee’s speaking rhythm and speech patterns. In describing poetic transcription as “an amalgamation of science and the literary” (p. 216), Glesne asserted:

I believe that this amalgamation is useful, not because it produces good art or rigorous science (although it could possibly do both), but because it opens up a spirit of discovery and creation in the researcher, and in the reader, who may begin to think about the process and product of research in very different ways. (p. 216)

Here, Glesne is alluding to two very different, but equally valid, motivations for writing research poems: The heuristic value of generating alternative representations of research findings via research poetry; and the epistemological standpoint of poetic inquiry as a valid way of knowing. Similar to Richardson’s (2000) perspective on writing as a method of inquiry, the practice of writing research poetry is not only a way to give voice to one’s participants via found poems; it is also a way of finding out about oneself. As Leggo (2005) offered, “Poetry is a way of knowing and being and becoming” (p. 442). In other words, poetic inquiry is “a phenomenological and existential choice that extends beyond the use of poetic methods to a way of being in the world” (Prendergast, 2009, para. 18).

In 2002, Canadian education professor Lynn Butler-Kisber built on the work of Richardson and Glesne by employing found poetry to portray the voice of a graduate student named Ann. Butler-Kisber described the process that she used to create found poetry as nonlinear: After viewing videotapes several times to create a “mental kaleidoscope” (p. 233) of the sight and sound of her participant, she “nuggeted” words and phrases from the chained prose. She experimented with words to create rhythms, pauses, emphasis, breath-points, syntax and diction; then played with order and line breaks to portray the essence of her story. She read her work aloud many times as she refined her initial draft to produce a final version.

In 2006, Canadian theatre professor Monica Prendergast added to the conversation about poetic inquiry by creating found poetry from a review of the literature. She borrowed words from primary source texts and used line breaks, patterns on the page, parentheses, and repetition to reconfigure them as poems. This project emerged from Prendergast’s dissertation, which was the first systematic review of the literature related to poetry in research. One visionary characteristic of Prendergast’s work is that she later reached out to the authors of the sources that she reviewed and invited them to collaborate with her in what became the International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry.

From 2007 to 2022, an invisible college of research poets from around the world gathered biennially at the International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry (ISPI). First organized at the University of British Columbia, Canada, by Monica Prendergast and Carl Leggo, the symposium became a place where scholars could share their poetic inquiry. Subsequently, six anthologies (Galvin & Prendergast, 2016; Honein & McKeon, 2023; Prendergast et al., 2009a; Sameshima et al., 2018; Thomas et al., 2012; Van Rooyen et al., 2023) and five special issues of scholarly journals (Butler-Kisber, 2010; Faulkner, 2018a; Galvin & Prendergast, 2012; Guiney Yallop et al., 2014; and Prendergast et al., 2009b) have been published to disseminate poetic inquiry from these symposia. As the special issues were published in peer-reviewed, online, open access journals such as Art/Research International, Creative Approaches to Research, Educational Insights, in education, and LEARNING Landscapes, diverse readers can access the information, regardless of their socioeconomic status, institutional affiliation, or geographic location. At the 2022 symposium in Cape Town, South Africa, nearly 150 scholars, poets, and performance artists from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK, and the USA presented a diverse array of poetic inquiry and research poetry. Over the past 15 years, members of the poetic inquiry community have also participated in McGill University’s Artful Inquiry Research Group Symposium, as well as the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting and the International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry, both of which have Arts-Based Research Special Interest Groups. In addition, The Handbook of Arts-Based Research (Leavy, 2018) and arts-based research primer Method Meets Art (Leavy, 2009, 2015, 2020) have featured chapters about poetic inquiry.

In 2009, US communication professor Sandra Faulkner wrote a book about research poetry entitled Poetry as Method, which explored the connection between social science and poetry. Unlike the ISPI anthologies, Faulkner’s text was a single-authored methods book about writing research poems. She framed her subject as research poetry, rather than poetic inquiry, the term used by the ISPI anthology editors. In her book, she described the practice of writing poetry as a method for representing research findings, presented examples of various forms of research poetry, and offered suggestions for evaluating the quality of research poems, as well as writing exercises for aspiring research poets. Faulkner’s extensive treatment of evaluating research poetry (see also Faulkner, 2007) provided scholars with a helpful set of criteria for discerning what constitutes effective research poetry. In the second edition of her text, Faulkner (2020) changed her focus from research poetry to poetic inquiry, expanding her discussion of poetry as a form of representation to include a broader conceptualization of poetry as/in/for inquiry (Faulkner, 2018b). Faulkner (2018b) defined poetic inquiry as “the use of poetry crafted from research endeavors, either before project analysis, as a project analysis, and/or poetry that is part of or that constitutes an entire research project” (p. 210). From this perspective, research poems can inform a research project, be part of the analytic process, or represent the research findings as a whole or in part. As Vincent (2018) observed, there is no one exclusive way to conduct poetic inquiry.

Faulkner (2009) acknowledged that “the label ‘poet’ is problematic, as one can self-publish a book, teach poetry, and that still doesn’t make one a poet” (p. 66). Inherent in this distinction is the idea that not all research poetry adheres to aesthetic criteria that inform the art and craft of writing poetry. As Richardson (2000), Percer (2002), and Faulkner (2007) have asserted, we need to establish (and periodically revisit) criteria to evaluate the quality of research poetry. Richardson identified substantive contribution, aesthetic merit, reflexivity, impact, and expression of a reality as characteristics that can be used to evaluate social science art forms. Faulkner highlighted artistic concentration, embodied experience, discovery and/or surprise, conditionality, narrative truth, and transformation as criteria for judging the success of research poetry. Percer advocated for a critical adoption of poetry in research, whereby scholars are asked to state a precise rationale for using poetic representations and to question whether poetry is appropriate for meeting the goals of their research.

Faulkner (2020) recognized the difficulty inherent in attempting to achieve credibility and rigor in both poetry and research at the same time. She also acknowledged the “caveat of constraint,” namely that “criteria limit alternative forms of research writing by constraining freedom and possibility” (p. 150). It is perhaps because of these challenges that Lahman and Richard (2014) advocated for “good enough” research poetry:

With the understanding that learning to write well, both in prose and verse, takes time, training, and practice; we advocate for the space to engage in writing good enough research poetry while the research poet hones her craft. (p. 352)

Lahman et al.’s (2011) position that researchers should be encouraged to experiment with words reflects a process-oriented philosophy that encourages arts-based researchers to create new forms of representation. Lahman’s commitment to this philosophy is evidenced by the abundant and creative nature of her scholarship: In a recent chapter about “poemish research representations,” Lahman (2022) provided exemplars of over a dozen different forms of research poetry that she has published over time. As Lahman demonstrates, when we allow ourselves to focus on the artistic process, rather than feeling pressured to produce a professional product, we develop curiosity and creativity as habits of mind (Lapum & Hume, 2015).

One emerging area of poetic inquiry that reflects curiosity and creativity is digital poetic inquiry. In the same way that technological advances have transformed the landscape of concrete poetry, digital poetry has made inroads in the field of poetic inquiry. Kedrick James (2009a) is perhaps the first scholar who employed digital poetry as a method of poetic inquiry. For his dissertation, James created cut-up poems that he generated from spam email using a process similar to erasure or black-out poetry, in which “the cut-up becomes poetically resonant by procedurally eliminating information in the text from which it is culled” (James, 2009a, p. 181). He employed both chance-generated procedures and selective editing to reduce and repurpose electronic junk mail into an artful installation of research poems.

In 2015, Adrian Schoone conducted dissertation research about the lived experiences of alternative education tutors in New Zealand. Schoone employed James’s (2009a, 2009b) cut-up method, kinetic sculpture, and digital photography to create 2- and 3-dimensional concrete poems that represented his participants’ voices. Because Schoone photographed the poems, then edited the photographs on his computer, I characterize his work as digital research poetry here; in Chap. 3, I will treat his work in greater depth as an exemplar of concrete research poetry.

The most recent example of digital poetic inquiry is Susan Cannon’s (2018) article about the transcription process. In her paper, she applied Goldsmith’s (2011) uncreative writing exercises to convert qualitative interview data from her original transcription to various media, including collage, a musical translation of the audio, screenshots of the image produced by the recording software, a.txt file, a word count, her participant’s unrecorded words hand-stitched on cloth, a.txt file of a photograph of her participant, an open iteration, and a rev.com transcription. She created a series of self-portraits and research poems that reflected on processes of “re/search and re/presentation” (p. 1) related to the transcription process.

Another emerging area of poetic inquiry is installation art (Lapum, 2018). Because installation art typically involves the display of multiple forms of media in a physical space, it offers a unique opportunity to engage audience members. As Lapum observed, installation art has traditionally been seen as a method of disseminating research findings. Lapum et al. (2014) created an art installation entitled, “The 7024th Patient,” which employed poetry and photographs to chronicle patients’ experiences with open-heart surgery and recovery. The authors employed narrative methodology to analyze attendees’ open-ended comments and focus group data. Attendees reported that the exhibit immersed them in patients’ experiences, which prompted self-reflection. Lapum (2018) concluded that installation art is a high-impact method of disseminating research findings to the public because it creates experiential encounters that evoke emotions, challenge taken-for-granted assumptions, prompt critical reflection, and invite dialogue between researchers and audience members.

1.3 Summary

As I have described in this chapter, concrete poetry, iconographic poetry, poetic inquiry, and research poetry have strong intellectual traditions. Concrete and iconographic poetry fuse literature and art, whereas research poetry fuses literature and the social sciences. Each genre has multiple forms that exist on a continuum: Iconographic poetry is closer to literature than art, whereas visual poetry and concrete poetry are closer to art than literature; poetic inquiry is closer to literature than social science, while research poetry is closer to social science than literature. (See Fig. 1.5 for a visual representation of iconographic research poetry as it relates to art, science, and literature.) Each genre originated as an avant-garde movement, resuscitated by contemporary arrière-garde movements. Across genres, contemporary movements have democratized access to their material via websites and online open access journals. Each genre is international, with active communities around the globe. Historically, concrete poetry and shaped poetry have been male-dominated forms of writing, whereas research poetry and poetic inquiry are typically pink-collared methodologies. Although the intellectual camps share many characteristics, they have traditionally been separated by disciplinary boundaries. In fusing concrete poetry, iconographic poetry, research poetry, and poetic inquiry to propose iconographic research poetry, a new form of inquiry that spans literature, art, and the social sciences, I aspire to spark a conversation among scholars housed within these previously siloed disciplines.

Fig. 1.5

Triangular prism: art, science, literature, and iconographic research poetry

1.4 Why Iconographic Research Poetry?

As I have argued elsewhere (i.e., Meyer, 2017), there are a number of benefits to using iconographic poetic structures in research poetry. (See Table 1.1.) First, iconographic research poetry reflects the principle of crystallization (Ellingson, 2009; Richardson, 2000) in which the act of representation is accomplished via multiple genres. Whether employed as an alternative to a traditional literature review or a results section, iconographic research poems have the potential to transform data into art, providing greater insight than traditional qualitative analysis alone. Second, because word-images convey metaphoric structure through visual cues, iconographic poetry is a powerful device for representing metaphors. Third, because iconographic poetry enlists visual images to help shape the reader’s interpretation, it may be more easily digested than traditional research findings and conventional forms of poetry. Therefore, it offers a vehicle for translating scholarly research into a more accessible format that can be appreciated by both scholars and community members. Finally, as a form of poetic inquiry, iconographic research poetry can enhance teacher-scholar-students’ creativity. For these reasons, iconographic research poetry is a promising methodological innovation for arts-based researchers who are interested in issues such as crystallization, metaphor, representation, and public research.

Table 1.1 Advantages of concrete research poetry

1.5 Preview of the Book

Chapter 2 offers a detailed description of the methods that can be used to create and design iconographic research poetry. I begin by locating iconographic research poetry on the qualitative continuum (Ellingson, 2009). Next, I present an overview of iterative thematic analysis (Tracy, 2013, 2020) and metaphor analysis (Tracy et al., 2006), two qualitative analytic methods. Drawing from the extant literature in research poetry and poetic inquiry (e.g., Ellingson, 2011; Faulkner, 2009, 2020; Glesne, 1997; Prendergast, 2012), concrete, iconographic, and visual poetry (e.g., Bohn, 2011; Kostelanetz, 1970; Solt, 1968; Swenson, 1970), as well as germinal work in iconographic research poetry (previously referred to as concrete research poetry by Meyer, 2017; Miller, 2019; Schoone, 2020, 2021), I explicate the processes by which data can be represented in the form of iconographic research poetry. Next, I provide a step-by-step description of strategies that researchers can use to create iconographic research poetry from qualitative data. Specifically, I describe my methods of creating iconographic research poems with word processing software and graphic design programs using typed text, clip art or icons, and layered text and images. I discuss the importance of soliciting member reflections from participants and artist-poets. At the end of the chapter, I offer writing exercises designed to help aspiring iconographic research poets exercise their poetic imagination. For example, I ask readers to re-analyze an existing qualitative data set with the methods I have previously described. I invite qualitative researchers to make their first foray into iconographic research poetry by conducting a metaphor analysis, selecting a visual image to represent the metaphor, and creating an iconographic research poem with word processing software.

Chapter 3 provides a review of extant exemplars of concrete and iconographic research poetry. I trace the development of concrete and iconographic research poetry in recent journal articles, book chapters, and books (e.g., Lahman & DeOliveira, 2021; Lahman et al., 2019; Meyer, 2017; Miller, 2019; Penwarden & Schoone, 2021; Schoone, 2018, 2019, 2020). In addition to describing and interpreting recently published exemplars, I share some previously unpublished iconographic ekphrastic research poetry (e.g., “Grounds for a Miracle Backstory”) that has promising implications for collaborative arts-based inquiry. Following my review, I engage in a reflexive examination of ethical tensions that I experienced as a non-Native scholar writing about Native artists and their works of art. At the end of the chapter, I offer exercises designed to help writers develop their poetic inquiry practice. Specifically, I elaborate on techniques suggested by creative writing coaches (e.g., Cameron, 1992; Davis, 2008) and meditation teachers (e.g., Smith, n.d.), who instruct writers to enhance their creativity by writing morning pages, going on artist dates, practicing yoga poetry, and engaging in walking meditation.

Chapter 4 explores techniques for integrating iconographic research poetry in the classroom. I begin by providing an overview of arts-based research pedagogy (Barone & Eisner, 2006; Bresler, 2018; Dixon & Senior, 2009). Next, I describe pedagogical innovations that embrace research poetry (e.g., Benton & Russell, 2016; Guyas & Keys, 2009; Jacob & Kincaid, 2018; Lahman & DeOliveira, 2021; Lapum & Hume, 2015; Meyer & Helmer, in press). Finally, I offer readers a toolkit that they can use to incorporate iconographic research poetry into their qualitative research courses. In the toolkit, I adapt techniques developed by writers who teach (e.g., Addonizio, 2009; Cohen, 2009; Padgett, 2000) in an effort to generate poetry-centered exercises for the classroom. By prompting students to create a broadside (a poem incorporating an image), a shape poem with line breaks, or a found poem shaped like a calligram, qualitative research instructors can cultivate creativity in the research methods classroom and encourage students to begin thinking about concepts like crystallization and alternative representation of findings (Ellingson, 2009; Richardson, 2000).

Chapter 5 offers a summary of the book, as well as a critical discussion about the limitations of iconographic research poetry and the implications of employing various media to represent one’s research findings. I generate directions for future research, citing digital concrete poetry (e.g., Caselli, 2009) and installation art and poetry (e.g., Lapum et al., 2014) as inspiration for future experiments in iconographic research poetry. In addition, I initiate a self-reflexive discussion about how this exercise in poetic inquiry—the process of writing a book about iconographic research poetry—has changed me. This reflection, continued in the postscript, explores what living poetically in community means to me. By reviewing literature about poetic inquiry (Leggo, 2008; Prendergast, 2009; Sameshima et al., 2018) and identity (Clarke, 2014; Sjollema & Yuen, 2018), I explore how the practice of poetic inquiry can be a constant source of discovery and renewal for teacher-scholars. Toward this end, I encourage readers to nurture the spirit of curiosity and playfulness that is inherent in us all by developing a regular writing practice, engaging in creative writing exercises, experimenting with poetic inquiry and iconographic research poetry in their scholarship, and integrating poetry-centered exercises in their teaching. This chapter ends with a list of additional resources, including scholarly books, journal articles, videos, digital archives, museum websites, and children’s books that readers can consult to learn more about concrete and digital poetry, as well as poetic inquiry.