Introduction: Qualitative inquiry through a critical lens

This chapter talks about ways to understand, conceptualize, explore, and expand our notions of poetic ways of seeing and knowing. It concentrates mostly on found poetry and identity poetry, other styles of poetry. The chapter begins with dialogue and reflection on poetry to magnify lived experience. Qualitative researchers are expanding the repertoire of techniques used in data representation, analysis, and interpretation as we capture the lived experience of our participants. For example, the use of found data poems (FDP) that is, poetry found in the narrative, spoken, or visual text may transform data from the researcher’s reflective journal, the interview transcripts, and any site documents used in a given study. Qualitative researchers are now finding ways to use and design poetic inquiry. Aristotle argues that poetry is truer than history; writers have been using poetry to depict life as we experience it. Identity poetry is good fit for the qualitative researcher it used in many places in a narrative report.