Poetry in the Academy: A Language of Possibility

As a poet, researcher, and teacher in the academy, I have pursued my vocation with an abiding commitment to both creative and critical discourse. I inquire into my autobiographical experiences as a poet, researcher, and teacher in the institutional contexts of a Faculty of Education by creating a performance of poetry that seeks to honour imagination, heart, and intellect. My goal is to offer a hopeful testimony to the value of giving curricular and pedagogical attention to the significance of critical creativity in education. In the performance I weave poetry, personal recollections, reflections, and quotations from writers who have inspired me. In this article, I present a performative text that is both poetic and full of poetry. I invite readers to receive this article like a long poem, full of resonances and gaps, fragments and sparks. I engage in testimony, in witness, in presenting prose and poetry that are enthused with an educator’s delight in the creative playfulness of words

Living Language: What Is a Poem Good For?

I read and write and teach poetry because I hold a long commitment to the efficacy of poetry for transforming our hearts, imaginations, intellects, conversations, and communities. I promote a curriculum of poetry as a curriculum of possibility for learning to live poetically in the world, for learning to live in the ecotone, the fecund place of tensions where conflicts are integral to vitality, education, and transformation. I often hear the question, Is it a good poem? I think we should ask, What is a poem good for? I am eager to bear witness to poetry, to invite a conversation with poets I have lingered with, to spark a little enthusiasm among others, to remind all of us that poets are pursuing their art and living with keen desire. So, in this paper I ruminate on possibilities for responding to the question, “What is a poem good for?” In my ruminations I do not attempt to be definitive; I am only eager to continue a conversation that is ongoing. I present a performative text that is both poetic and full of poetry. I invite colleagues to receive this essay like a long poem, to see with the eyes of the heart, and to hear with ears that are attuned to resonances and silences, and to linger with language and memory and hope

Holding Fast to H: Ruminations on the ARTS preconference

When Susan, Barbara, Diane, and I began planning for the ARTS Preconference, we quickly decided that the event ought to be different from most conference gatherings. Early on, we suggested that the event ought to be a “happening.” My main way of ruminating, investigating, and questioning is to write poetry. In the process of writing poetry I slow down and linger with memories, experiences, and emotions. In all my writing, I am seeking ways to live with wellness. In poetry I seek new ways of knowing and being and becoming. I write in order to invite conversation about what it means to be human on the earth in the twenty-first century. I write with the hope that others will share their stories, too. I write with the anticipation that we will discover together how to make difficult and critical decisions for living, the kind of decisions that will sustain the ecology of our countless interconnections with all the sentient and non-sentient creation. I write poetry and essays as a way to hold out my hands in both gratitude and invitation, always seeking to make connections, as we learn always to live with courage, spirit, and creativity