Embrace the Uncontrolled Nature of Poetry Writing: A Poetic Ethnographic Study on International Graduate Student Mothers’ Intercultural Discourses

Sociocultural and Sociopolitical Contexts for International Graduate Student Mothers From China

International Graduate Student Mothers’ Pregnancy Stories

International Graduate Student Mothers’ Birth & Motherhood Stories

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.