Poetry on the Wall: Inviting, Seizing, Intensifying, and Transforming Literary Engagements

Activity: Talk or presentationConference presentation

Description

The paper explores an example of Poetry on the Wall and its potentials for and contributions to educational contexts. Considering that the literature on poetry in education has emphasized a need to rethink how poetry can be approached and taught in educational contexts (cf. Creely, 2019), the study explored the idea of using an arts-based approach of visualizing “Poetry on the Wall.” By engaging with the poem “Reading List” installed in 2020, created and painted as a wall mural by artist-poet Vidha Saumya, the study aimed to explore the performative potentials of engaging with Poetry on the Wall for poetry pedagogy. The study is positioned within a performative research paradigm (Østern et al., 2021) and uses arts-based research as the methodological approach. The data encompass the artwork, a dialogue between the artist-poet, two researchers/teacher educators of L1, a visual artist-researcher, and a visual art educator, as well as the researchers' embodied engagements with “Reading List”. In the analysis, the authors used a thinking with performativity approach (cf. Jackson & Mazzei, 2012) by plugging in with the concepts of intra-action and negotiation. Based on the analysis, the potentials of Poetry on the Wall were proposed to encompass
inviting, seizing, intensifying, and transforming literary engagements. The study suggests that Poetry on the Wall can be understood as a rethinking of poetry, contributing to the movement that explores alternative ways that could reinvigorate poetry in education.
Period17 Jun 2022
Event titleThe 13th Conference of International Association for Research in L1 Education
Event typeConference
Conference number13
LocationNicosia, CyprusShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational