How poems go beyond: Advocating the use of poetic representation for therapeutic practitioner researchers in qualitative research

Abstract

This article focuses on how poetic representation of research offers therapeutic practitioners distinct ways to engage audiences, leading to a deeper, more dynamic and relationally-based understanding of the lived experience of another than other research outputs allow. Methodologically, it advocates that using poetic representation presents practitioners with an accessible, flexible, and therefore more viable way of presenting research findings that can encourage research confidence and engagement. It briefly describes the use of Gee’s (1991) psycholinguistic framework in creating poetic form from unstructured narrative interviews with therapists who work with psychological trauma. This framework allows the researcher to readily draw out content that represents the most meaningful aspects of interview material. Using extracts from resultant poems, it explores the ways in which this form of data presentation offers the ability to connect with readers deeply and evocatively, ultimately leading to potential change in the reader’s world as a result.