Abstract
The article traces the authors’ polyvocal work at the interface of poetry, social cohesion, and in/justice in higher education, asking, “How is our poetic knowing artful inquiry?”, “How do we enact poetic artful inquiry?”, “What does poetic artful inquiry produce?”, and “Why does poetic artful inquiry matter?” Eight collective poetic artful inquiries were explored using a multilayered analysis design characterized by a progression of ever-more-concise poetic forms. The study was founded on the reflexive ubuntu principle of connectivity, caring for, and growing with others. Composing and interpreting three layers of poetry—pantoum poetry clusters, tanka poems, and a lantern poem—we identified the interconnected concepts of space, movement, entanglement, ambiguity, and flow, showing why and how collective poetic inquiry contributes to artful knowing in higher education. We offer this poetic conceptualization as a contribution to understanding enactments of artful inquiry, and encourage others to take it in new directions.
Setting the Scene: Choosing Poetry in, as, and for Artful Inquiry
Artful inquiry combines creative arts concepts, attributes, resources, and artifacts with qualitative research. This fusion broadens the academic field and enriches our understanding of the intricate relationship between the arts and knowledge (Barone & Eisner, 2012; Cole & Knowles, 2008; Eisner, 2008). Utilizing a range of genres, including literary, performing, visual, and new media arts, artful inquiry offers diverse perspectives for designing, conducting, interpreting, and communicating research. This integration deepens our understanding of social phenomena and facilitates an imaginative re-experiencing of the world, as emphasized by Barone and Eisner (2012). As the field continues to evolve, more qualitative researchers are embracing artful inquiry to create and challenge knowledge in multiperspective studies oriented toward social justice and decolonial change (Mitchell et al., 2017; Mreiwed et al., 2021; Seppälä et al., 2021).
Within the broad domain of artful inquiry, poetic inquiry stands out as a distinct sphere that specifically leverages the power of poetry and its elements in qualitative research. Drawing inspiration from the literary and performing arts, poetic inquiry (as well as work done more generally in the poetic mode) incorporates diverse epistemologies, vocabularies, and forms, as considered in the works of Freeman (2017), McCulliss (2013), and Prendergast (2009). Central to this scholarship is the concept of “poetic knowing” which inspires researchers to engage imaginatively with poetic language, form, and imagery (Leggo, 2008, p. 166). This imaginative engagement opens up new “textual spaces,” facilitating manifold ways of learning and becoming that expand the possibilities for qualitative inquiry (Leggo, 2008, p. 167).
In practice, poetic inquiry within the artful inquiry realm enriches knowledge creation and exchange by utilizing the inherent creative design elements of poetry—such as “rhythm, balance, flow, language choice, [and] thematic control” (Barone & Eisner, 2012, p. 21). The integration of poetic elements fosters a multidimensional engagement, connecting researchers, participants, and audiences on intellectual, emotional, and sensory levels. By embedding poetic knowing into their inquiries, researchers employ poetic forms, language, and devices to enhance the exploration and communication of complex social phenomena, thus demonstrating the unique contributions of poetic inquiry to the broader field of artful inquiry.
Qualitative researchers who use poetry as, in, and for artful inquiry gather regularly at the International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry (ISPI, see https://www.poeticinquiry.ca/). Our research team’s first poetic artful inquiry presentation was at the fourth ISPI in Montreal, Canada, in 2013 (Pithouse-Morgan et al., 2013). The ISPI attendees were supportive of our embryonic project, in which we, together with several colleagues, looked into social cohesion and in/justice in our South African higher education setting. With this encouragement, we published that 2013 symposium paper in Perspectives in Education (Pithouse-Morgan et al., 2014). Our article was the first poetic artful inquiry paper published in the journal.
As shown by our joint publication portfolio, we have continued exploring the nexus of poetic and artful inquiries, social cohesion, and in/justice in higher education. We have shared this approach in symposia, workshops, conferences, and collaborations with numerous higher education colleagues and students from different parts of the world. These experiences demonstrate how researchers, academics, teachers, and students, who do not necessarily consider themselves accomplished poets and who may never have met before, can experiment together in educative and artful ways with poetic forms and language (Pithouse-Morgan, 2024; Pithouse-Morgan et al., 2014, 2016). Time and again, in different contexts, we have seen how composing poetry alongside others in a mutually supportive atmosphere encourages inventive, complex meaning-making, increasing and connecting self-knowledge, care for others, and social awareness (Pithouse-Morgan, 2024). We have also witnessed the artful experience of creating and performing poetry together awakening imagination, insight, and joy.
The theoretical foundation for our collective poetic artful inquiry endeavors is the reflexive ubuntu principle we have conceived and enacted with close research partners (Harrison et al., 2012; Pithouse-Morgan et al., 2022; van Laren et al., 2014). Ubuntu, an indigenous Southern African ethical philosophy, situates the self as interconnected with others and places a premium on the interpersonal processes of caring for and growing with others (Mkhize, 2004; Reddy et al., 2014). Ubuntu represents a philosophical belief and an ethical practice for everyday life, offering a way to understand and act within a world interconnected among humans and beyond. Our conception of reflexive ubuntu reminds us to ground our self-care and transformation in trusting, mutually respectful relationships. In South Africa and globally, where poetry teaching often relies on unengaging methods that discourage many from feeling capable of understanding or creating poetry, the importance of inspiring and mutually respectful poetic experiences cannot be overstated (Pithouse-Morgan, 2024).
Combining poetry with qualitative research provokes an ethical response of seeing and responding to poetic artful inquiry as a mode of thinking. This perspective shapes how researchers relate to others and intertwines with both the research process and the lives of participants and those affected by it. To live out reflexive ubuntu, we strive for an ethos of polyvocality, consciously making space for, encouraging, and appreciating diverse voices interacting creatively and interdependently (Pithouse-Morgan et al., 2014, 2015; Pithouse-Morgan & Samaras, 2019). Our concern for polyvocality stems from our knowledge of the many marginalized and suppressed voices in South Africa—a legacy of colonialism and apartheid that looms large in the present and future. Additionally, we see polyvocality as a global imperative for a just society.
Over the past decade, we have observed how scholars in higher education have increasingly infused poetry into their artful inquiry approaches and knowledge exchange. To illustrate, recent poetic artful inquiries into social cohesion, in/justice, and change in higher education include Elbelazi and Alharbi (2020), Guyotte et al. (2024), Kubiak (2020), Mbatha et al. (2021), and Müller and Kruger (2022). These researchers used poetic artful knowing to make visible, analyze, and express their values, critiques, and experiences in higher education in ways that more typical qualitative research approaches and texts may not permit. As a result, poetry becomes a creative medium for communicating the often hidden or ignored constituents of academic life, providing insights into the emotional, cultural, and political aspects of belonging to and being marginalized in higher education spaces. Furthermore, these studies show how poetic artful knowing challenges and expands the epistemological boundaries of what qualifies as knowledge, and who counts as a knower in academic contexts. Poetic artful inquiry offers a multidimensional lens through which researchers in various higher education contexts can see what they can do differently in negotiating educational relationships, policies, practices, and environments.
Despite the growing prevalence of poetic artful inquiry, we have noticed that it still exists mainly on the fringes of mainstream higher education research. It is often employed in small-scale, short-term, individual projects. By linking and analyzing numerous published inquiries, we believe poetic artful inquiry can become more accessible and more widely recognized and utilized. This study marks the start of our meta-analysis initiative, beginning with our own work.
Tracing and Analyzing Our Collective Poetic Artful Inquiries in Higher Education
This study traces and analyzes our collective work at the interface of poetry, social cohesion, and in/justice in higher education. We were motivated by Leggo’s (2008) argument that taking a poetic stance helps us remember that the language we use in and as qualitative research is epistemic and, thus, crucial to how and what we come to know. We wanted to learn more about poetic knowing as it relates to the artful concepts, vocabularies, and processes we use to understand and impact lived experiences of higher education. To this end, we asked, “How is our poetic knowing artful inquiry?”, “How do we enact poetic artful inquiry?”, “What does poetic artful inquiry produce?”, and “Why does poetic artful inquiry matter?” Eight collective poetic artful inquiries published between 2014 and 2023 served as our source material (Pithouse-Morgan et al., 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018; Naicker et al., 2023; Pillay et al., 2017, 2024). This work is the product of a decade of collaborative scholarship as a trio and with colleagues and students.
We remained faithful to the scholarly nature of the eight inquiries by placing poetry-making and poetry-reading at the center of our creative analytical design. Richardson (2000, p. 9) coined the term “creative analytical practices” in qualitative research. In such practices, including those that use literary concepts, devices, and techniques from fiction and poetry-writing, the writing process and the written text are “deeply intertwined; both are privileged” (Richardson, 2000, p. 10). Researchers who design and enact creative analytical practices acknowledge the interconnectedness of the writer, the writing mode, and the written text as a whole (Richardson, 1993, 2000). This integration allows them to learn about themselves and their topic in ways they might be less likely to discover or imagine using conventional qualitative analytical procedures and writing formats.
We composed poetry to give a tangible, visceral form to the “knowing in the making” (Badley, 2009, p. 108) reflected in the eight poetic artful inquiries. Our guiding questions were explored using a multilayered poetic analysis design characterized by a progression of ever-more-concise poetic forms. The design followed a process we devised with our colleague, Linda van Laren, for an earlier study analyzing the international scholarship of a research special interest group (Pithouse-Morgan et al., 2024). In our previous study, we conducted a similar analysis using different data, which consisted of educational research from scholars in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Iceland, Japan, South Africa, and the United States, featured across five special journal issues. We were interested in how the multilayered analysis design might work to delve deeper into our own poetic knowing as artful inquiry.
Our multi-tiered approach to poetic analysis came to fruition in this new study through shared decision-making, allowing the layers to unfold—building on each other over time. Poetic representation, rhythm, sound, shape, symbolism, and brevity guided us. We did not set out to write aesthetically sophisticated poetry; we wanted simple, succinct poems to invite a broad audience to participate in the research by picturing and responding to our conversations and understandings. Like Leggo (2008), we believe “we are all poets, but sadly many of us have lost our confidence as poets. We have lost our creative energy for living poetically” (p. 170). To engage those who may feel less confident as poets, we selected highly structured, concise poetic formats we find particularly accessible to those new to poetic analysis. These formats provide a supportive scaffold for experimenting with language, facilitating artful engagement with research data. By sharing these modest poems, we hoped to encourage more researchers to try their hand at poetic artful inquiry.
The next section of this article summarizes each of the eight inquiries that provided the source material for our study. After that, we unwrap our poetic analysis, consisting of three layers: pantoum 1 poetry clusters, tanka poems, 2 and a lantern poem. 3 Finally, we circle back to respond to our guiding questions.
The Eight Collective Poetic Artful Inquiries
“Entering an Ambiguous Space: Evoking Polyvocality in Educational Research Through Collective Poetic Inquiry” (Pithouse-Morgan et al., 2014) introduced our collective poetic artful inquiry approach and polyvocal ethos. As a multilingual, multicultural group of five university academics and one graduate student, we composed a sequence of free-verse 4 , found poetry 5 , and haiku poetry 6 to represent and respond to diverse voices: an international student’s stories of painful experiences at our university, our research team’s discussions and reflections, and conversations with a conference audience. The study illustrated how polyvocal, participatory poetic artful research could contribute to personal and professional self-transformation. It also emphasized that how we choose to design and enact research shapes and reshapes what we know and un-know, as well as how we communicate our knowing.
The next study, by a transdisciplinary team of 10 academics from three South African universities, expanded our collective artful poetic inquiry method and conceptualization. In “Learning About Co-Flexivity in a Transdisciplinary Self-Study Research Supervision Community” (Pithouse-Morgan et al., 2015), we explored how “co-flexing” by thinking carefully about and questioning our professional practice and selves through co-composing free-verse found poetry could enhance our learning as graduate student research supervisors. 7 The inquiry showed how theorizing collective reflexivity (co-flexivity) in poetic knowing increased our understanding of the social justice imperative and the complexity of listening to and appreciating different voices and viewpoints as research supervisors.
For “‘Sink or Swim?’: Learning From Stories of Becoming Academics Within a Transforming University Terrain” (Pithouse-Morgan et al., 2016), we—as a team of four scholars and one graduate student—guided 12 early-career colleagues in collective poetry-making. Their free-verse poetry explored the challenges of academic life at a research-intensive university in a corporate environment. Our analysis of these poems using free-verse and tanka poetry highlighted how both early-career and established academics can contest hierarchies and work together in the academy to value our interdependence for mutual growth.
In “‘Knowing What It is Like’: Dialoguing With Multiculturalism and Equity Through Collective Poetic Autoethnographic Inquiry” (Pithouse-Morgan et al., 2017), we (as a trio) looked at published autoethnographies by three South African academics to learn more about diversity and equity in higher education. We wanted to learn from our fellow academics’ experiences of prejudice and marginalization based on race, sexuality, and physical health. We connected with these experiences intimately and profoundly as we composed a series of tanka and renga 8 poems. The analysis highlighted how poetic artful involvement with stories of lived experience in higher education can strengthen our commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion.
In the subsequent study, we created poetry as a trio to document our transformational resistance to neoliberalism in higher education. “Self-Knowledge Creation Through Collective Poetic Inquiry: Cultivating Productive Resistance as University Academics” (Pillay et al., 2017) used a sequence of pantoum and tanka poems to tap into the generative thinking expressed in interviews with three academic colleagues. We addressed self-knowledge’s critical materiality to challenge the status quo and foster creative resistance. This ubuntu-inspired study emphasized relationality and care as optimistic and necessary choices in reshaping higher education.
“Unfolding the ‘Mysterious Truth’ of Emotional Entanglements in Supervising Self-Study Research: A Collective Arts-Informed Self-Study” (Pithouse-Morgan et al., 2018) was conceived and enacted by six Southern African academics to expand our previous poetic analysis of graduate student supervisors’ experiences (Pithouse-Morgan et al., 2015). Visual interpretation of an expressionist painting and free-verse poetry helped us navigate supervision’s emotional complexities and vulnerabilities in a contained and responsive way. The analysis highlighted how co-creativity and co-flexivity in trusting, supportive research communities could contribute to a more just and equitable higher education landscape.
In “Revisiting Collaborative Editorial Initiatives to Learn More About Our Academic Motivations: A Collective Poetic Self-Study” (Naicker et al., 2023), our trio looked back at seven years of collective work as editors of scholarly books and themed journal issues. We made sense of our complex editing experiences by composing pantoums, tanka, and lantern poetry. This study revealed the intellectual and motivational significance of our editorial efforts. Our analysis revealed that although editorial work is often undervalued in academic evaluations, it plays a vital role in fostering dialogues and discursive practices that include diverse voices and challenge boundaries—methodological, theoretical, disciplinary, and contextual. This, in turn, contributes significantly to social change and transformation.
Finally, at an arts-based symposium, 24 academics from six South African universities created assemblages (three-dimensional collages) of found items. The assemblages inspired us as a trio to undertake a new exploration: “Different Together: A Poetic Reading of Arts-Inspired Creations as Embodied Explorations of Social Cohesion” (Pillay et al., 2024). As symposium co-facilitators, we wondered what we could learn by reading the assemblages poetically, using pantoums and tanka. The poems show how supportive, inclusive, and imaginative research spaces can challenge and enhance understandings of others, ourselves, and our work in higher education, helping us to heal social, political, and historical wounds and contest injustice.
A Multilayered, Multiperspective Poetic Analysis
This section presents an analysis of these eight poetic artful inquiries, responding to our guiding questions about poetic knowing as artful inquiry. The analysis consists of three layers: pantoum poetry clusters, tanka poems, and a lantern poem.
The First Layer of Analysis: Pantoum Clusters
As a research trio, we bring together varied backgrounds and expertise. Our distinctive yet complementary focus areas in higher education research have enriched our collaborative studies. Consequently, to build the first analysis layer, we took a multiperspective stance by reviewing the eight poetic artful inquiries from our interest areas of academic identities (Daisy), educational leadership (Inbanathan), and methodological inventiveness (Kathleen) in dialogue with our guiding questions. As individuals with diverse backgrounds and varied interests, often holding differing viewpoints, our distinctive voices combine through our polyvocal work, creating a new, complex whole that reflects our unique contributions.
As a starting point for the analysis, each of us worked individually to develop a “poetry cluster” (Butler-Kisber & Stewart, 2009, p. 4) on the theme of poetic knowing concerning our research interest area. We individually selected and arranged phrases from the research articles and chapters into eight found poems using the pantoum format (Butler-Kisber, 2005). Each pantoum was inspired by one of the collective poetic artful inquiries. Our individual sets of eight poems comprised a poetry cluster. We anticipated that these 4-stanza “research poems” (Furman & Dill, 2015, p. 43) would open windows onto the scope and complexity of the poetic artful inquiries and offer a concise, contained way to express our subjective re-readings of this collective work. Further, the pantoum’s format of recurring lines allowed for identifying central concepts and imagery in a research text (Furman et al., 2010).
During a 2-hour video-recorded online meeting, we shared our pantoum clusters. We listened and observed how each team member had poetically responded—juxtaposing ideas, imagery, and insights from the published texts. Even though we had used the same eight works as our base material, we approached our poetic reviews of the content from different angles. To demonstrate, the pantoums below offer our three perspectives on the Pillay et al. (2017) article.
Academic Identities and Poetic Knowing (Daisy)
Collaborative creativity, making visible subjective responses. Joyful acts of self-knowledge creation, a turning point of reflexivity. Making visible subjective responses, intensifying creativity and plurality. A turning point of reflexivity, communicating self-realization. Intensifying creativity and plurality, deepening distinctiveness, complexity. Communicating self-realization, nurturing productive resistance. A turning point of reflexivity. imaginative being and becoming, Nurturing productive resistance, collaborative creativity.
Educational Leadership and Poetic Knowing (Inbanathan)
An ambiguous space. Taking risks, reimaging possibilities for leadership, we need to walk our talk. Taking risks, addressing difficult or hidden issues, we need to walk our talk: Human rights, dignity, equality and freedom. Addressing difficult or hidden issues, questioning our professional practice. Human rights, dignity, equality and freedom, transforming the status quo. Questioning our professional practice, achieving new kinds of existence, transforming the status quo. An ambiguous space.
Methodological Inventiveness and Poetic Knowing (Kathleen)
The method is critical, different, fluid, illuminating our stories in theirs: Entangled, evocative, imaginative, evolving, unfinished, provisional. Illuminating our stories in theirs, reshaping knowing and becoming, evolving, unfinished, provisional, in joyful, nurturing resistance. Reshaping knowing and becoming, we experience poetry as creation. In joyful, nurturing resistance, we find moments of risk-taking and care. We experience poetry as creation of relational selves and narratives. We find moments of risk-taking and care. The method is critical, different, fluid.
A joint reading of the pantoums led us back to our guiding questions around poetic knowing as artful inquiry. We took different threads from the eight inquiries and interwove them in many ways as we explored the poetry clusters.
The Second Layer of Analysis: Tanka
Our discussion of the pantoum clusters yielded understandings we each captured and articulated in an “interpretive poem” (Furman & Dill, 2015, p. 46) during the weeks following our online meeting. This next round of individual poetry-making served as a second layer of analysis. In this stage, we chose the 5-line tanka form, with its characteristic minimalist syllable pattern per line. Additionally, we adhered to the traditional structure of tanka content (Poets.org, n.d.)—a change in viewpoint in the third line, which progresses from observing an image in the first two lines to a personal response to it in the last two. We opted for the concise structure of the tanka to convey the essential ideas in a few lines. The condensed nature of the tanka meant we had to select carefully from the recording of our 2-hour discussion inspired by the pantoums. Choosing which concepts, images, and insights to emphasize and which to downplay required considerable time and thought (Furman & Dill, 2015). We also played with the tanka format to explore expressive options. Below, we present the tanka and summarize our interpretations.
Academic Identities and Poetic Knowing
Permeable space Fluid pattern of knowing Ambiguous self Give form to in-between space Ubuntu way of thinking
In collective poetic knowing, “permeable space” denotes an openness where academic identities and knowledge are flexible and responsive to interaction. Permeability emphasizes how crucial adaptation and flexibility are to creating and sustaining inclusive, polyvocal environments. A “fluid pattern of knowing” encapsulates the evolving character of poetic artful knowing, which resists static definitions and stimulates ongoing growth and discovery. It also reflects our emphasis, as facilitators of collective artful inquiry spaces, on non-linear and unconventional approaches. The “ambiguous self” challenges the idea of a single, stable self—highlighting how poetry expresses identities as complex and contingent. “Giv[ing] form to in-between space” reveals poetic artful inquiry’s imaginative power to generate new ways of knowing and being from the cracks between pre-existing categories. “Ubuntu way of thinking” moves us towards understanding and valuing relational identities and learning—encouraging social justice and cohesion by recognizing our mutual interdependencies.
Educational Leadership and Poetic Knowing
Fosters inclusion Not about the position An artful process About entangled voices Imagining something new
Poetry-making’s participatory nature “fosters [the] inclusion” of multiple voices. Everyone is seen as having something valuable to contribute, irrespective of the “position[s]” we occupy. There is heterarchy, where the leadership of poetry-making is fluid, shifting to whoever inspires creativity at a given moment. As “an artful process” it calls on the collaborative to be imaginative in the poetic co-creation. The diversity of “entangled voices” matters because they challenge each other to enrich the shared thinking and choices in poetry-making. It is about artfully connecting many voices to counteract exclusion and marginalization. The purpose is “imagining something new” in the product and the process. Through poetry-making, we enact our ubuntu as we find each other and connect through ongoing, relational, and dialogic processes of becoming.
Methodological Inventiveness and Poetic Knowing
Moving, listening Finding a rhythm or flow Ambiguities Uncertainty, not knowing In a caring, trusting space
“Moving, listening” represents poetic artful knowing emerging through physical, sensory actions—moving, cutting, pasting, rearranging—with awareness of tempo, patterns, and sounds, much like dancing with words. “Finding a rhythm or flow” depicts how the process, whether solo or collaborative, finds a rhythm through dancing with words—transforming an abundance of words, thoughts, and images into a lucid, concise, creative expression. The tanka’s turning point, “ambiguities,” emphasizes the openness of artful inquiry, inviting numerous readings, allowing meanings to shift and insights to arise unexpectedly. “Uncertainty, not knowing” accentuates generative uncertainty, which is an optimistic journey into the unknown with no guaranteed outcomes but with confidence in the methodology and responsiveness to different ideas. “In a caring, trusting space” conjures the compassionate and supportive environment essential for imaginative, poetic collaboration.
The Third Layer of Analysis: A Lantern Poem
In the third round of our multidimensional analysis, we met online for two more hours to read and discuss the three tanka poems. Then, we worked on a lantern poem to illuminate our shared thinking in this even more succinct poetic form. After that, we allowed several weeks of deliberating and writing time and then met again to trace our multilayered, multiperspective analysis process and discuss our interpretations of the lantern poem. Below, we present the lantern poem and then draw on our third recorded discussion in considering how each facet of the lantern brings to light the artfulness and educative value of collective poetic knowing.
Illuminating Collective Poetic Knowing Core Concepts
Space Moving Entangled Ambiguous Flow
Space
“Space” symbolizes imaginative room within higher education research, allowing for exploration beyond conventional academic constraints. Literal and metaphorical space is essential for nurturing novel ideas and perspectives, enhancing the artful practice of collective poetic knowing. Our conversation around space emphasizes its importance as much as the textual content itself, highlighting the significance of paying attention to what lies between the words in poems and between the poems themselves. Space signifies an expansive approach to knowing that values the pauses and gaps as sites of meaning and insight. The focus on space within poetic artful knowing relates directly to why this matters in higher education research. Academia can become more inclusive of varied voices and ways of knowing by creating spaces that enable less conventional and more exploratory thought.
Moving
“Moving” evokes the dynamic nature of poetic artful knowing, where ideas and processes are not static. The multilayered analysis illustrates this notion through the iterative process of creating pantoums, tanka, and eventually the lantern poem—each stage adding layers of depth and understanding. Moving in poetic artful knowing is also about transitioning between and connecting creative art concepts, qualities, and resources. This dynamic movement across boundaries showcases the artful nature of collective poetic inquiry, integrating emotions, sensory experiences, and intellectual insights. The significance of moving in higher education research lies in collective poetic artful inquiry’s ability to produce different knowledge and ways of knowing—pushing the boundaries of what is understood and accepted within academia.
Entangled
“Entangled” suggests a complex intertwining of experiences, perspectives, and people—a core aspect of collective poetic artful knowing. This complexity can be seen in the eight inquiries and our multilayered analysis, where diverse academic motivations combine to enrich and expand understanding. This line of the poem also speaks to the artfulness of knowing that weaves disparate strands of thought and experience into a new, poetic whole that remains open to multiple interpretations. The artistry comes from creating connections that are not immediately obvious, enabling new insights and unanticipated outcomes. Our collective practice of reflexive ubuntu interweaves our critical self-awareness and personal growth with interactions marked by care, trust, mutual respect, and generative resistance to oppressive and discriminatory policies, actions, and situations. Entangled knowledge represents and responds creatively and ethically to the multifaceted nature of social cohesion and in/justice contestations and concerns in higher education.
Ambiguous
“Ambiguous” underscores the necessity of welcoming uncertainty and multiple meanings within collective poetic artful knowing, reflecting a more open-ended, plural perspective. Ambiguity fosters a space for a multiplicity of interpretations and responses. The artfulness of ambiguity in poetic knowing lies in its invitation to embrace intricacy and nuance concerning socially and culturally layered subjects. Embracing ambiguity matters in higher education because it encourages reflexive, imaginative thinking and complexity in making meaning of subjects that often do not have clear-cut or one-dimensional answers.
Flow
“Flow” encapsulates the expressive integration and growth of compositions and interpretations in collective poetic artful knowing. This concept reflects the fluid nature of artful inquiry as it passes through and into different interpretations and forms. The artfulness of flow in poetic knowing is demonstrated by its ability to generate and maintain multiple lines of sight, shifting across various forms and media. Fluidity is vital for creative interaction, fostering intellectual, ethical, and emotional expansion and adaptability. In higher education, such flow energizes learning and research that are not limited to accumulating facts but are also about developing multifaceted, creative understandings and responses.
How Is Our Poetic Knowing Artful, and Why Does This Matter?
Circling back to our guiding questions—“How is our poetic knowing artful inquiry?”, “How do we enact poetic artful inquiry?”, “What does poetic artful inquiry produce?”, and “Why does poetic artful inquiry matter?”—this study pushed us to take a fresh look at the possible meanings and effects demonstrated in the eight inquiries. We revisited our work with a creative analytical design using a multilayered, multiperspective, poetic progression. Through a series of iterative steps involving composing and interpreting poetry, individually and jointly, we identified the five interconnected concepts of space, movement, entanglement, ambiguity, and flow as foundational to the artfulness of our poetic knowing, how it is enacted, and what it produces.
We now understand better why and how we do this work and why it matters to us and to others in many different contexts who are committed to social justice and change in higher education. We offer our collective poetic artful process and conceptualization for further expansion and invite others to take it in new directions.
When we started on this journey a decade ago, we had no idea where it would lead. We were curious about how and what we might learn from poetry as research in higher education. But, it was not without trepidation and resistance that we dipped our toes into poetic waters. Looking back, we now see how the challenging and stimulating experience of space, movement, entanglement, ambiguity, and flow propelled us forward and kept us dancing with words. We have never seen ourselves as accomplished poets but as people who play with poetry for serious purposes (Badley, 2024). We do not believe poetic artful knowing requires exceptional talent, but it does call for courage, commitment, curiosity, and care for self and others. Our experiences demonstrate that artful knowing flourishes in environments where both newcomers and seasoned practitioners of poetic inquiry, whether familiar or unfamiliar with each other, collaborate within a trusting and supportive atmosphere. Collective poetic artful inquiry extends beyond what any individual could envision or accomplish independently. Although our research is rooted in a South African context, the higher education challenges and contestations we explore have global resonance. The broader significance of our paper is its potential to enrich the enactment and impact of artful inquiry within and beyond the field of higher education. We also see the potential for enhancing the development of new qualitative researchers and seasoned researchers who may be new to artful inquiry. So, you are invited. We dare you to dance with us!
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
While preparing this work, the authors employed ChatGPT to summarize transcripts of recorded online meetings, QuillBot and ChatGPT for paraphrasing to enhance clarity, and Grammarly for language polishing. The authors meticulously reviewed and edited the content following the use of these tools and assume full responsibility for the publication’s content.
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) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research was supported by the Leverhulme Trust, through the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant: SRG2223\230601.
