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Poetry, Poetic Inquiry and Rwanda

Engaging with the Lives of Others

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. Laura Apol

    1. Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA

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  • Provides a significant contribution to current thought on poetic inquiry, therapeutic writing and poetry of witness
  • Guides the reader through the practice and process of poetic inquiry
  • Offers insights on the complex interactions among a commitment to accuracy, an obligation to the story/data, writing for witness, relational responsibility, and the aesthetic demands of poetic craft

Part of the book series: Studies in Arts-Based Educational Research (SABER, volume 3)

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xviii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Going to Rwanda

    • Laura Apol
    Pages 1-16

  3. Turning Research into Art: The Process

    • Laura Apol
    Pages 17-31

  4. Attending to Aesthetics: The Art of Revision

    • Laura Apol
    Pages 33-48

  5. Attending to Accuracy: Investigative Poetry

    • Laura Apol
    Pages 49-64

  6. Self, Audience, and Activism: Poetry of Witness

    • Laura Apol
    Pages 65-76

  7. Relational Responsibility: Poetry of Withness

    • Laura Apol
    Pages 77-92

  8. Public/ation

    • Laura Apol
    Pages 93-102

  9. Poetic Respect; Poetic Letting Go

    • Laura Apol
    Pages 103-110

  10. Conclusion: Engaging with the Lives of Others

    • Laura Apol
    Pages 111-118
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Keywords

About this book

This book describes the practice of poetic inquiry and takes the reader through the process of translating lived experience into poetry that attends to the lives of others. Using her own writing—from early drafts to published poems—Apol demonstrates elements of poetic inquiry that both give it strength and make it complicated: the importance of craft (the aesthetic); the imperative of accuracy and reliability (the investigative); the significance of ethical responsibility that leads to action (witness); and the centrality of relational connectedness and accountability (withness). Apol raises questions about what it means for poems to function as both research and art, and illustrates what happens when there are irresolvable conflicts between the demands of the poem and a commitment to relationship. Throughout, Apol addresses her white privilege, as well as the dominant white/colonial narrative that often seeps into arts-based work unless it is overtly and critically addressed. 


The book goes beyond arts-based research, speaking as well to other forms of cross-national, cross-cultural research. It is a call for relational scholarship that moves toward action, a heart-rending teaching, a post-traumatic aesthetic map laid down with clear and poignant theory and praxis to extend, serve and guide.

Reviews

"It has been a long time since I have been so powerfully affected by a book. I feel like I have been punched in the gut and am grateful for it. This book is unflinching, unapologetic, and haunting. The material is accessible to everyone; poets and non-poets alike, or anyone desiring to conduct ethical inquiry to transform self and the world." Morna McDermott McNulty, Towson University, Maryland, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  • Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA

    Laura Apol

About the author

Dr. Laura Apol is an associate professor in Teacher Education at Michigan State University, where she specializes in issues of diversity in children’s and YA literature, global children’s literature, poetic inquiry, gender studies, and creative writing. Apol’s scholarship in the areas of literacy education, children’s and YA literature, and arts-based research methodologies has been published widely. She is the author of several prize-winning collections of poetry: Falling into Grace; Crossing the Ladder of Sun; Requiem, Rwanda (drawn from her work using writing to facilitate healing among survivors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi and translated into Kinyarwanda under the title Emwe N’imvura Irabyibuka—Even the Rain Remembers); and Nothing but the Blood.  Her most recent work focuses on the therapeutic uses of writing and literature in response to trauma, and she currently serves as poet laureate for the Lansing area in mid-Michigan.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Poetry, Poetic Inquiry and Rwanda

  • Book Subtitle: Engaging with the Lives of Others

  • Authors: Laura Apol

  • Series Title: Studies in Arts-Based Educational Research

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56562-6

  • Publisher: Springer Cham

  • eBook Packages: Education, Education (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-56561-9Published: 10 November 2020

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-56564-0Published: 11 November 2021

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-56562-6Published: 09 November 2020

  • Series ISSN: 2364-8376

  • Series E-ISSN: 2364-8384

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XVIII, 118

  • Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Creativity and Arts Education, Research Methods in Education, Poetry and Poetics

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