Abstract
Through presenting a series of poetry findings from a larger poetic ethnographic study on the lived experience of 11 international graduate student first-time mothers’ learning of the “language” of motherhood during their journey of pregnancy, birth, and early years of motherhood, this article reflects on the uncontrolled nature of poetry writing in an ethnographic study and discusses the long-lasting concerns on the quality, qualification, and criteria for evaluation associated with poetic inquiry and arts-based research in general. I aim to provide methodological insights for the use and evaluation of poetic inquiry, as well as other forms of arts-based research in academia.
Keywords
Sociocultural and Sociopolitical Contexts for International Graduate Student Mothers From China
One Child Policy
When Ms. Feng Jianmei was seven months pregnant in a remote village in Shannxi province, local officials forced her to have an abortion since she failed to pay the fines for violating China’s one-child policy.
—The New York Times, June 26, 2012 They said my boy shouldn’t be born because I already have a girl. They took me into custody. I couldn’t afford the 40,000 yuan fine. They gave me an injection of anesthetic and poison. Then my seven-month son stopped kicking and giggling in my womb. They didn’t inform my husband about the surgery.
Upon Returning to the United States to Pursue a Doctoral Degree as Trump Got Elected President
The second year after my return to Georgia, I became a mother, a first-time international student mother. My son was born on Trump’s inauguration day. He also had an immigrant mother. On Skype, Mom shouts “Our Little Trump! He’ll be president someday!” “Or he may be banned,” I say, “birthed to an immigrant mother.” We give him an American name, Edgar for Edgar Allan Poe. “How to say?” “爱打嗝ai da ge (love hiccup)!” I explained to his grandmother. 徽言Huiyan, as his Chinese middle name, beautiful words from Confucius, chosen by his mother. Edgar Huiyan Xue (E.H.X.), always a middle initial included. It’s not okay to be “EX,” although a son’s an ex-lover, in the past life, to his mother.
After the National People’s Congress Approved the Constitution Amendments, Which Removes Presidential Term Limits and Allows Xi to Rule China Forever
On TV, the delegates applauded, 20 seconds, after the voting outcome was announced: 2,958 “YES,” 2 “no.” “What a shame!!!! Why doesn’t he just declare he’s the King? Why doesn’t he just say ‘China should go back to the feudal monarchy!’” I shout, almost throw up my lunch. “Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Mom can’t wait to sew up my mouth. “Only inside the home is fine. Don’t say that in front of other people especially Chinese! You don’t know who actually they are!” “You mean my friends are spies of the Chinese government?” I laughed! “Everyone can be!!!” Mom insisted. She chopsticks me some fish, “Eat more, talk less! None of your business!”
International Graduate Student Mothers’ Pregnancy Stories
Pregnancy
I have known the secret joy of pregnancy, clip-clop of heartbeats in duet, high-fives across the belly, a mini-stove in winter, a hug lasting 24/7, a grey table, a white pillow, ice-cold ultrasound gel, the most common androgynous creature detected, a perfect patient, a happy hospital, an additional free bread from the Korean baker in H-mart. And I’ve seen the checklist of inappropriate mothers-to-be—— too young, too old, too queer, too many children already, single, selfish, still in school (x), no stable job (x), speaking imperfect English or no English at all (x), an alien attempting to parent a U.S. citizen (x) . . .
Genesis
In the second semester of my Ph.D., my mom started sending me cute babies’ photos. It became an eternal topic for our weekly Skype meetings across the Pacific Ocean. “Hurry up! You are almost 30!” My father-in-law formally talked with my husband: “When do you plan to have a baby?” “顺其自然 (Shunqiziran).”—Let nature take its course. (S-I-L-E-N-C-E) “Don’t take any contraception.” “Um.” “Do you have any kids?” The seventh time I heard this question from my Chinese & American friends, I knew a due date truly existed not just for final papers.
Week 5: The First Prenatal Visit
The baby is 100% Made in USA. But when I got the sweet news, I was in my hometown— Shenyang, a big city in northeast China. “Patient Zhang Kuo, please go to No. 5 consulting room.” called by an electronic voice from the queuing machine. The doctor glanced at my test result. “You are pregnant. Keep it or have an abortion?” My big smile became awkward. Hastily I said, “I want it! I want it!” “Then you can go home now.” As the machine called the next patient, I complained to my mom, “She is so rude and cold!!!” “Why did you say that? Isn’t it the normal way a doctor should be?”
Week 9: Back to America
I didn’t tell the Chicago custom official how my Great Grandpa ploughed in Shandong Province with his foot-bound wife. Nor that Grandpa braved his journey to the Northeast, served as a coal miner, then a local official in the Communist Party. And that my parents, like the phoenixes rising from a chicken coop, became first generation college students after the Culture Revolution, that they settled down in the capital of Liaoning Province. Though the official claimed to know all my stories: Lagos for 8 months in 2010, 4 entries to Beijing, U.S. state of Georgia 5 times since 2011 . . ., and how many more years, months and days I can legally stay.
Welcome back!
He smiled, returned a smuggler’s passport. He didn’t know I was carrying a tiny undocumented immigrant & U.S. citizen in my secret garden. One who’ll speak a language that belongs to
evil capitalists
in my grandpa’s eyes.
Week 11: The First Prenatal Visit in the United States
The front office lady gave me a small white paper package and a transparent urine bottle. “Be sure to wipe before you do it, then put it in the box on the wall.” “Uh, do you mean I should wipe . . . my hands?” “Oh, no.” The lady laughed. She put her hand around her privates. “Wipe here.” “Ohhh! I see.” I laughed, too. But still, I missed the latter part of her words. Holding the bottle full of urine, I searched around the passage. “It is just there, on the wall, inside the restroom.” Another lady helped me out. Later, I told my husband, “I really feel I’m stupid here.” “Don’t worry! It is just the first time.”
Week 20: Boy or Girl?
It is against the law for a doctor to reveal the gender of a baby in China. But if you bribe or know someone who knows the doctor, it’s no longer a big deal. My parents didn’t know what I was until the day I was born. After hearing the “bad” news, my grandma stayed in hospital. A lifelong cold war broke out between my mom and her in-laws. 断子绝孙(duan zi jue sun)— die without sons and grandsons the most venomous curse to Chinese people. I am the terminator who denied my father’s right to be buried in the ancestral grave. “Would you like to know the baby’s gender?” asked by my sonographer. “Yes, please.” The proud sign of a male towered on the screen. “You see! It’s a boy!” My parents-in-law got the “good” news in a Skype call. “Oh! A BIG Grandson!!!” They grinned from ear to ear. “如你所愿吧? (Ru ni suo yuan ba?)”—Is it as you wish? “没有啦。(Mei you la.) Nono, boys and girls are the same.”
Two Days After Week 20: A Phone Call
“Hello, this is Athens Regional Midwifery. You need to make an appointment with Dr. Godwin —a maternal-fetal specialist.” “??? Okay . . . I need to see Dr. Godwin? But, but for what?” “Our doctor rechecked your ultrasound and found some problems.” “Problem??? What problem?!! They said everything was normal!” Well, it might turn out to be normal. But . . . the doctor found intracardiac foci, multiple choroid nexus cysts and prominent kidneys. . . . So, you need to see Dr. Godwin.” (??????????????????????????) “. . . kidney . . .?” “Yes.” “O . . . Okay . . . So . . . what is the time and address?” “It’s at 10 am on Sep. 27th. The address is 700 Sunset Drive, Suite 301.” “Sweet? What is sweet?” “That is the doctor’s room number.” “How do you spell that?” “S-U-I-T-E. Suite.” “Ah . . . Oh . . . Okay. Thank you.” “Do you have any other questions?” (Yes!!! But is it ridiculous to ask her to repeat every word slowly?) “No . . . I don’t have questions.” “Bye.”
Week 23: Dr. Godwin
Not all pregnancy stories have a happy ending. But when the sun started glowing, inside a half-ripen fluffy melon, you can hardly connect it to something abnormal. For three weeks, I touched the gentle but strong kicking and teared at night I hated hearing “Congratulations,” felt so hurt to see my Korean friend holding his little girl’s hand downstairs I dig into the Internet for all the worst Edwards syndrome, stillborn . . . and presented a fake smile in the Skype meetings I must be ice-cold and ghost-like when I lay on Dr. Godwin’s table “You see this big white area in his head?” “Yes.” I looked at the screen. and my heart sank to somewhere abysmal Isn’t funny I suddenly remember this GRE word? “I didn’t see anything significant. All the cysts have disappeared. IT’S A HAPPY BOY!!!”
Week 30: Antenatal Education
No music. No story. You use Bakhtinian dialogism to babble with Vygotsky. You make me feel less guilty to sleep too much. We catch up on the papers, and celebrate co-authorship. You kick a rhythm in class discussion, and draw a hill inside my belly. I know you love the professor’s voice and arts-based inquiries.
After the Taiwanese New Parents Heard About the Baby Shower
How can we shower the baby when he/she’s still in the belly? Should we wait until the birth’s ten-fingers-ten-toes, and Mama’s safe? I see, but who’ll hold the baby shower? Is it weird to ask for gifts? Oh, it feels impolite to open the gifts immediately. We would say, at least one time,
No, no, no. You’re too courteous!
instead of Thank you.
That’s so sweet!
And how should we repay people’s love? A big party later? Interesting! But we’d rather not have one. That’s not our culture. We’ll cook youfan (glutinous oil rice), one chicken leg and two boiled red eggs, the symbols, you know, for boys, and cakes for girls. (In fact, nothing for girls in the past. But now people are also happy to have girls.) We’ll send the food to friends’ homes, in exchange for their best wishes and red envelopes (of course! Haha!), as the baby turns one month old. That’s what we call a full moon celebration.
International Graduate Student Mothers’ Birth & Motherhood Stories
Nonnative
Bulldogs are non-native to Georgia. The house is non-native to the land, where bushes of Japanese knotweed grow and European rabbits run. Sunshine is non-native, forever, to earth. Rice is non-native to rice cookers. A wife is non-native to her husband, who is native only to his mother. Smartphones are non-native to fingers, which are native to a beloved’s face on the screen. I am non-native to English, just like I am non-native to childbirth, but I say “Oh, my God!!!” when they told me “Push!”
After Delivery
In the wheelchair, I hold a newborn, accepting applause and “Congratulations!” all the way to Mother/Baby Unit, as if I heroed, injured in a glorious battle, awarded a Rose Gold trophy. I had become a legend for not using Epidural— a 3.5-inch needle inserted into the arched spinal cord, threaded a catheter of IV fluids into the back, blocking the nerve impulses from the lower spinal segments. Let mothers rest and relax during labor! But I primitived, endured the pain, imprinted on every inch of the separation, that’ll never be reunited. It is the same way Mom birthed, still so common in China.
Lactation
Congratulations on the naturally grown sexy cups, of which you’ve always dreamed since a teen. The rocklike touch secures food stock, a rich harvest from peanut and pig feet soup and white carp broth. The little cannibalistic monster’s still sleeping, his harmless face, a camouflage. At 3:00 am, you’re in trance, again, with the dead milk cow, accompanied by a snoring anthropologist called Daddy.
Disposable Diapers’ Story
From Day 1, we’re responsible to guard the most private and mysterious garden. We’re so proud for our gentleness, flexibility and 24/7 service, but our client often cries to complain the unique flavor of our home-made beers & mustard sauce— the secret food for our 500 year lives! Our client’s grandma didn’t like us: “We only had jiezi in the past! What a waste of money!” “Oh, those rags from old clothes? Nobody uses them in the U.S!” Her daughter argued. What a pity! I guess jiezi must love beers, too. We can “Cheers” before drinking.
An International Student Mother’s Concerns
How can I choose a daycare center? Church school, development lab, Montessori, in-home care? When I don’t have anyone else’s story to remember. The chubby cheeks and cherry mouth are clever to match the curve of my neck, while he clings like a koala bear. It’s a crime to drop him in a daycare center. I was the kid who kicked, refused to enter, cried too much. My teacher locked me in the bathroom, “Fair to other kids!” A terrible story to remember. I want him to learn English from a native-speaker, but also worry about his Chinese. With yellow skin and dark hair, it’s hard to find Asians in Georgia daycare centers. The shameless administration’s a lavish spender of my monthly salary, while they keep me waiting at the door, full of expectations. A contradictory story to remember. “The children were pricked, fed wasabi, stripped naked,” from a Beijing newspaper. It can’t happen——right? Not over here? It’s so hard to choose a daycare center, if you have so many stories to remember.
Shumei Told Me What Happened During Her Son’s 15-Month Checkup, But My American Friends Didn’t Believe It
When the nurse pushed the dose into my son’s thigh and said “You are all set for today,” I realized something must be wrong. “But we’re here for the 15-month checkup! What’s the shot? Is it called this?” I shivered to show her “Pneumococcal” in my cellphone, a name too complicated to pronounce. “Oh yes!” “But he already got it last Tuesday!” The nurse was shocked. She checked her computer, rushed to report. The doctor came in. “We’re so sorry! The blonde girl who did records made a mistake. We won’t let her work here anymore! And your boy will be fine. He may get a bigger bump. Don’t worry.” I still felt angry, wanted to say something more. But I nodded, thanked him, and just let it go.
Biweekly Routine
When your baby has a 104 degree fever, poor sleep, no appetite, fussy and scorching, you feel you aren’t ready to be a mother. Daddy’s busy. Too sick for daycare. Babysitter, a risky luxury. Wrap the 20 lbs to classroom teaching, when your baby has a 104 degree fever. You’d better videotape the vomits, otherwise stammer embodied, to the pediatrician, like performing in a pantomime. No, you aren’t ready to be a mother. The tall blond female American doctor suspects Kawasaki Disease. Emergency rushing when your baby has a 104 degree fever. Traffic jam, terminology, tests. Terror! Almost the midnight, still waiting and praying. You don’t want to be a STRONG mother. Those sad stories always linger: a broken stroller in car crash, leukemia, Rett Syndrome, drowning . . . When your baby has a 104 degree fever, you’ll never be ready, but learn to be a mother.
Intimacy
My husband doesn’t believe his parents have ever had sex, because they’re always like revolutionary comrades in Chairman Mao’s times. His mother always calls his father his family name + given name. I think that’s too formal and weird even in China. When they visit our home, we must be cautious: No touch, No hug, No kiss, No flirting—— all disrespectful and disgusting! We stop calling each other husband and wife, only given names are acceptable. Or sometimes I call him Daddy (of our son), and he calls me Mommy. When my two-year-old boy was clinging to my chest, gently pressing his cherry lips onto my right cheek, That’s ugly. Grandma said. My boy shrank, hesitated, finally climbed down, ran to his swarm of toy cars.
Promise
A promise to a child isn’t hard to keep. Even if what he yearns for is something funny, you can’t bear to see him weep. You can promise every day: cheap stickers, an ice cream cone, more swing time. A promise to a child isn’t hard to keep. Then promise bigger, promise deep love, and company, and Grandma’s gold ring for a future beloved. All yours Boy, don’t weep! Promise Captain Marvel, a Wrangler jeep. He doesn’t like Sun Wukong, your Monkey King. Fine! A promise to a child isn’t hard to keep. Go ahead, promise Ivy Leagues, mountains steep as Qomolangma, cosmic travel. Just kidding! He knows. He knows. He ceases to weep. Finally, promise a room, always a place to sleep, no need to book. And some dumpling soup— a parent’s promise isn’t hard to keep, though it may be hard (for you) not to weep.
What If My American-Born Son Asked Me What Elementary School Was Like?
One day I just forgot it, the red scarf we wore every day. I believed it was a piece of the national flag, dyed by the martyrs’ blood. I begged my mom to buy a new one at the school gate, otherwise I’d be caught by the Students on Duty who wore red armbands. They seized the ones who talked or ran in the hallway, who failed to make a right angle turn at the landing in stairs. They patrolled on the pedestrian overpass and roads outside the school. If someone bought candy floss, tofu skins, flavored chicken brittle bones, or deep-fried skewered mutton, they immediately took out the armbands from their trouser pockets: “I am a Student on Duty!
Tell me your name, class and grade.
Let’s go to the Discipline Office!” I hated them, but also dreamed of becoming one of them, who had nothing to be afraid of. In front of my chest, I tied my newest red scarf (the sixth one I think). As loudly as everyone else, I swore:
Fight for the cause of communism. Always prepared!
Embrace the Uncontrolled Nature of Poetry Writing: Interplay of Poetic Inquiry and Ethnography
All the poems referenced in this article are from a larger poetic ethnographic dissertation study exploring the lived experiences of international graduate student mothers (IGSMs) during their journey of pregnancy, childbirth, and early years of motherhood, especially how they learn the new interlinguistic and intercultural “language” of motherhood through social interactions. Spanning across 4 years, this ethnographic study involved 11 IGSMs from Chinese mainland and Taiwan who gave birth to their first child during their programs of study in U.S. higher education. I collected data through prescreening questionnaire, in-depth individual interviews, observations, and social media chatting records. I examined how IGSMs interact with institutional gatekeepers with regard to their pregnancy/birth/motherhood experiences, reflecting on their embodied second language and culture learning among the divergent traditions, beliefs, and various kinds of authoritative discourses between home and host culture. This study not only aims to explore the lived experience of IGSMs—this underrepresented group of people—but also delve into the many potential opportunities for second language and culture learning and intercultural dialogues in social contexts, and therefore contribute to the understanding of IGSMs’ experiences as a social, cultural, and educational phenomenon.
Poetic inquiry has been employed as a kind of data analysis method as well as presentation of the research findings. Based on my personal poetic account that I had kept since my pregnancy in Fall 2016 as a second-year international doctoral student, I continued my poetry writing after the births of my children, as I negotiated with people as a new mother in various social settings, read literature on diverse mothers’ stories, interacted with other mothers, and conducted interviews with other IGSMs. Therefore, the poems are full of my own stories as well as my responses to other mothers’ stories. I didn’t create a series of individual’s stories, but a conflated discourse that has flowed through all the participants and myself—receiving, reproducing, and transforming the discourse. I dialogically mixed and combined both personal and participants’ discourses, on which no one person would be an authority, and connect them to broader sociocultural issues. The speaker “I” (if it appears in my poem) may refer to different person (and even some non-human artifacts). As our language is always half someone else’s (Bakhtin, 1981), the voices of others populating in my poems may be cited directly or indirectly in accordance to the form and meaning-making process in each poem.
I began my data analysis of poetic inquiry by searching for poetic ideas through closely reading the interview data. I particularly looked for those evocative, critical, and dramatic moments, which Cahnmann-Taylor and Hwang (2020) have referred to as “Kapow!” moments, as an imitation of the comic book action figure to express the surprise, the most shining points and “hot spots” where a poem is working. It is important to note that the evocation is made rather than “birthed” as big and dramatic events. The poems can make the seemingly ordinary becomes “Kapow!” and help the readers see the interesting from the mundane. I selected these “Kapow!” moments from the transcript, copied all the relevant data referring to each moment into a new document, which became the first draft/prompt of poems. This draft/prompt of poems was “chronologically and linguistically faithful to the transcript” (Glesne, 1997, p. 207). For the second round, I drew from other sections of the data and took more license with words (Glesne, 1997), investigated the heterogeneous voices, connected to relevant literature and broader sociocultural issues, and transformed the first draft/prompt into a poem. For the third round, I would seriously consider the aesthetic merit of these poems, keep revising them through reading, rereading, and poetry writing workshops with other poetry writer friends.
Just as the IGSM’s pregnant body crosses thresholds of what is “personal” versus “professional” in the academic settings, the poems intrude the professional. They appear in an academic study much like the belly showing in the second or third trimester for an IGSM on university campus—the unexpected surprise. Poetry, in itself, is also full of surprise. As Faulkner (2009) put it, we “often don’t know what trying to say until the poem is written . . . We discover much of what we mean to say as we write” (p. 3). As I wrote poems along with my research study, I had met so many poetic occasions when I was driven by some mysterious power and felt the urge to write a poem. It could be a time after I nursed my infant at 3:30 a.m., or after hearing a story told by my research participants, or thinking of some dialogues with my children, and/or doing some readings in literature. However, during the process of writing, the poem may go wild as new metaphors start to dance, new rhymes jump out, new ideas sprout, new enjambments create additional layers. Then, the poem ends up with another poem, a poem that is not originally designed in my mind, a poem that is completely a surprise to myself. It may no longer be “true” to what my participants told me in the interviews, or what I had experienced myself. Instead, it becomes aesthetically and evocatively “true” as part of the large “T” truth, which showcases “the depth of feeling and music in the original situation” (Cahnmann, 2003, p. 33).
The surprise or uncontrolled nature of poetry writing often makes its legitimacy and reliability become questionable in academic research. However, can we really “control” our ethnographic study and academic prose writing? Do we often surprise ourselves as we read across various kinds of data and write up a paper from a new perspective? Do we keep getting informed by new approaches as we read and write? Is the element of surprise vital to the quality and enthusiasm of both arts and academic research and language and culture learning? In this study, I have infused poetry as a way to embrace the unexpected surprise under a poststructuralist landscape, where “the stories become layered, new truths unfolding and evolving” (MacKenzie-Dawson, 2018, p. 8). While I cannot force poems to some research directions and specific themes that required by my language and literacy education orientation, I would commit to academic prose to address the planned and controlled aspect of the study which does not easily lend itself to poems that require the poet-researchers to remain committed to surprise and evocative resonance.
As Vincent (2018) describes, poetic inquiry is not used to “avoid the stringent nature of scientific studies or to diminish the need for thorough, well-supported studies,” but “as a method to realize new or different ways of knowing with the potential for variety of views and voices” (p. 51). In comparison with the academic prose writing, the poems in my study invite more open interpretations and contain much broader themes, such as government policy, family history, cultural origin, gender discrimination, family relationship, and intercultural parenting. These fragmented but important themes are not easily included or deliberately analyzed in the prose writing, because a research study always need to focus on one or several specific central themes related to a certain academic field, which is language and culture learning in my case. However, the stories of IGSMs would become more partial and limited without noticing these broader themes. As Butler-Kisber (2002) emphasizes, poetic inquiry provides a more holistic representing, which helps “disrupt the hegemony inherent in traditional texts and evoke emotional responses that bring the reader/viewer closer to the work, permitting otherwise silenced voices to be heard” (p. 230). Görlich (2016) further describes poetic inquiry as an “invitation to explore ambiguity, nuance and contradiction and is polyvocal, dialogic and democratic” (p. 532). In this study, I use poetry to showcase the heteroglossic and dialectical nature of the same story and similar experiences.
Poetry also helps to promote the critical and political lens in my study. Poet Jay Parini (2008) argues that poetry is political when poets
offer a kind of understanding that is distinct, as well as useful, but creating a language adequate to the experience of their readers. In this sense, poetry matters because it can waken us to realities that fall into the realm of the political. (p. xiii) (as cited in Faulkner, 2018, p. 2)
In comparison with prose writing, poetry provides me a more comfort zone to talk about political issues and how they deeply influenced IGSMs’ education, culture, languages, values, understanding, choices and what kind of mothers they would become in intercultural settings. I use poetry as inquiry to explore the sociopolitical nature of language acquisition and identity construction, as well as the co-existing competing ideologies, that IGSMs negotiated in and beyond the ivory tower.
Poetic Inquiry in High-Stakes Research Projects: Quality, Qualification, and Criteria for Evaluation
For high-stakes projects (such as dissertations and theses), a major concern of poetic inquiry and arts-based research in general goes to its quality, qualification, and criteria for evaluation. Piirto (2002) discussed extensively on the question of quality and qualification associated with poetic inquiry. While she welcomed more artist-educators to explore the exciting possibility of bridging both the domain of the art and the domain of education, she also warned that “let us not confuse the quality of and their qualification for rendering, making marks, embodying, and distilling. Let us not confuse the seekers for the masters. Let us not confuse the poetasters for the poets” (Piirto, 2002, p. 444). Specifically, Piirto (2002) developed two criteria for permitting her students to do arts-based research for high-stakes projects: (a) The students must have at least an undergraduate minor or major in the relative domain of art; (b) if the student hasn’t formally studied the domain, he or she needs to have peer-reviewed exhibits, shows, and products (p. 443). Piirto’s (2002) criteria are helpful to address the necessity for higher-level requirements for arts-based researchers. However, no matter how high we set up the entry threshold, we still cannot guarantee that a certain arts-based study is truly arts-based and successful.
Another major debate related to poetic inquiry centers on what criteria we should follow to evaluate research poetry. Should the criteria for a good research poem be different from the criteria for a good literary poem? In her study on writing inferior poems as qualitative research, Piirto (2002) commented on one of her own successful research poems and explained why she believed it was an inferior poem according to literary criteria. She criticized that several lines in her poem, such as “a prestigious school/that trains government officials” (p. 439), are not poetic lines. Likewise, Barone (2001) stated that “the research may be characterized as arts-based rather than as full-edged art” (p. 25). In contrast, many other researchers are opponents to such statement by suggesting that research poems should not “be judged by more forgiving criteria than poetry at large” (Maynard & Cahnmann-Taylor, 2010, p. 12). As Prendergast (2009) put it, “although a certain amount of contextualizing may be necessary for the fullest appreciation of poetry in a research setting, it is my contention that the best examples of inquiry poems are good poems in and of themselves” (p. 545).
In my opinion, it seems invalid to debate on how good a research poem is good enough without considering who our target readers/audiences are. In other words, who will read our research poems? What kind of impact do we try to make on our readers? What do our poems mean to them, and why should they care? Cahnmann-Taylor (2018) proposed four principles that may serve as a useful guide for arts-based research practice: (a) public good, (b) ethical good, (c) aesthetic good, and (d) scientific good. Public good means that researchers should explore topics with complexity for more multifaceted understanding and clearly articulate the relevance of their subjectivity to the community and larger audience. Ethical good requires arts-based researchers to review the principles of sound, ethical practice when other (non)human agents are involved, such as considering “human subjects’ voluntary and informed consent, as well as the risks and benefits of others’ participation” (Cahnmann-Taylor, 2018, p. 250, emphasis in original). Aesthetic good is relevant to the researchers’ “mastery of technical skills in the arts (e.g., brushstroke, meter, dialogue, etc.), originality of concept and form, the mediums used, emotional complexity, timing, and social consensus” (p. 252). Finally, scientific good refers to that researchers should articulate why their arts-based works matter in certain academic fields such as education, anthropology, ecology, and medicine.
Considering the audience for poetic inquiry might consists of scholarly researchers, art critics, research participants, community members, and the general public, it is important for poet-researchers to decide whom to write to most sincerely. Inspired by Cahnmann-Taylor’s (2018) four guiding principles, I would like to introduce three major groups of potential audiences who would greatly influence the evaluation of my poems.
First of all, the audiences I write to most sincerely are my dissertation committee and scholarly researchers in arts-based inquiries in education, because this is a significant high-stakes project for me to pursue my doctoral degree and the entry to academia. For this group of audiences, they mainly require ethical good and scientific good in Cahnmann-Taylor’s (2018) four principles. The evaluation criteria of my research poems should be consistent with the criteria for evaluating the quality of qualitative research, such as the eight “big-tent” criteria proposed by Tracy (2010): (a) worthy topic, (b) rich rigor, (c) sincerity, (d) credibility, (e) resonance, (f) significant contribution, (g) ethics, and (h) meaningful coherence.
The second most important group of audiences for me is international student mothers, immigrant mothers, university student parents, international students, mothers in academia, and all parents in general. For this group of audiences, the requirements echo the public good and ethical good principles. The evaluation criteria are their empathic understanding, emotional response, the guidance/lessons they could gain for solving real-life challenges, their awareness of the opportunities for language and culture learning, and identity construction through intercultural and interlingual interactions. In order to achieve these goals, my research poems need to be evocative, accessible, explicit, practical, and illuminating.
My third most important group of audiences is literary/poem magazine editors and the audiences of literature and poetry, who uphold the highest standards for artistic quality. Their major concern is the aesthetic principle. To fulfill their evaluation criteria, I have prepared to establish poetry readiness as part of a research study. I registered four graduate-level poetry writing and arts-based research courses, which inspired substantial discussions on the value and validity of arts-based inquiries for understanding culturally and linguistically diverse learning communities, and provide numerous opportunities for intensive writing, critiquing, and revising workshops on each individual’s poems. I regularly attended poetry readings, poetry writing workshops to practice my poetry writing skills, and kept reading, writing poems, and providing feedback to other poetry writers. I strived to develop my maturity in my lyrical decision-making and take time to acquire the language of poetic craft (Maynard & Cahnmann-Taylor, 2010), such as the various poetry forms, the choice of subjects, details, metaphors, tones, and the meter, length, stress, rhythm, repetition, alliteration and rhyme in each line. To test the power and aesthetic value of my poems, I have kept submitting individual or group of poems to literary magazines and academic arts-based research journals. By the time of submitting this article, I have published 17 of 23 dissertation poems in literary and academic journals.
Conclusion
This article provides poetic findings on IGSMs’ experiences, reflections on the uncontrolled nature of poetry writing in academic study, and discussions on quality, qualification, and criteria for evaluation associated with poetic inquiry. I aim to provide insights for the use and evaluation of poetic inquiry, as well as other forms of arts-based study, in high-stakes research projects and academic study in general. It is important to keep in mind that poetry, as a kind of genre itself, is not a magical panacea. As Paley (2004) compares poetry and science,
Poetry is not always transcendent and emancipatory. Science is not always literal and oppressive. Poetry does not necessarily “defamiliarize”; science frequently does. Poetry does not invariably challenge conventional ways of thinking: it may instead confirm them, and be more inclined to resist cultural and political change than to promote it . . . They have both represented the voice of oppression. They have both represented the voice of emancipation. (pp. 117–118)
In other words, the use of poetry cannot naturally lead to the success of an academic study, nor can it decides the nature and depth of our research. As suggested by Faulkner (2007), there is a greater need for criticality when undertaking academic studies using poetic inquiry. We need to keep considering how poetry matches and contributes to the research topic, how we can better prepare our poetic readiness, why our research poems matter to our audiences, how we should embrace the uncontrolled nature of poetry writing, and invite poetry to add to the efforts we have spent in the field and our reflections on the research process and positionality.
Footnotes
Author’s Note
Kuo Zhang is also affiliated with Western Colorado University, Gunnison, USA.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
