Table Of ContentStudies in Arts-Based Educational Research 3
Laura Apol
Poetry,
Poetic Inquiry
and Rwanda
Engaging with the Lives of Others
Studies in Arts-Based Educational Research
Volume 3
Series Editors
Barbara Bickel, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, USA
Editorial Board
Kakali Bhattacharya, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA
Pam Burnard, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Walter S. Gershon, Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA
Peter Gouzouasis, University of British Columbia, North Vancouver, BC, Canada
Andrea Kantrowitz, State University of New York at New Paltz, New Paltz, NY,
USA
Kelly Clark-Keefe, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA
Alexandra Lasczik Cutcher, State University of Southern Cross, East Lismore,
NSW, Australia
Morna McDermott McNulty, Towson University, Catonsville, MD, USA
Richard Siegesmund, Northern Illinois University, Dekalb, IL, USA
Arts-Based Educational Research continues togarner increasedinterest anddebate
among artists, arts writers, researchers, scholars and educators internationally.
Further,themethodologiesandtheoreticalarticulationsassociatedwithArts-Based
Educational Research are increasingly employed across the disciplines of social
science, education, humanities, health, media, communications, the creative arts,
design, and trans-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research.
This book series offers edited collections and monographs that survey and
exemplify Arts-Based Educational Research. The series will take up questions
relevant to the diverse range of Arts-Based Educational Research. These questions
mightinclude:WhatcanArts-Basedmethodologies(suchasArts-BasedResearch,
Arts-Informed Research, a/r/tography, Poetic Inquiry, Performative Inquiry, Arts
Practice-Based Research etc.) do as a form of critical qualitative inquiry? How do
the Arts (such as literary, visual and performing arts) enable research? What is the
purpose of Arts-Based Educational Research? What counts as Arts-Based? What
countsasEducational?WhatcountsasResearch?HowcanArts-BasedEducational
Researchberesponsiblyperformedincommunitiesandinstitutions,individuallyor
collaboratively? Must Arts-Based Educational Research be public? What ways of
knowing and being can be explored with Arts-Based Educational Research? How
canArts-BasedEducationalResearchbuildupondiversephilosophical,theoretical,
historical, political, aesthetic and spiritual approaches to living? What is not
Arts-Based Educational Research?
The hinge connecting the arts and research in this Arts-Based Educational
Researchbookseriesiseducation.Educationisunderstoodinitsbroadestsenseas
learning/transformation/change that takes place in diverse formal and informal
spaces, places and moments. As such,booksin this series might take up questions
such as: How do perspectives on education, curriculum and pedagogy (such as
critical, participatory, liberatory, intercultural and historical) inform Arts-Based
inquiries? How do teachers become artists, and how do artists become teachers?
How can one be both? What does this look like, in and beyond school
environments?
Arts-Based Educational Research will be deeply and broadly explored,
represented, questioned and developed in this vital and digitally augmented
international publication series. The aesthetic reach of this series will be expanded
byadigitalonlinerepositorywhereallmediapertainingtopublicationswillbeheld.
Queries can besent viaemailtoMindy Carter [email protected].
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13575
Laura Apol
Poetry, Poetic Inquiry
and Rwanda
Engaging with the Lives of Others
123
Laura Apol
Michigan State University
EastLansing, MI,USA
ISSN 2364-8376 ISSN 2364-8384 (electronic)
Studies in Arts-Based EducationalResearch
ISBN978-3-030-56561-9 ISBN978-3-030-56562-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56562-6
©TheEditor(s)(ifapplicable)andTheAuthor(s),underexclusivelicensetoSpringerNature
SwitzerlandAG2021
Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsaresolelyandexclusivelylicensedbythePublisher,whether
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ordissimilarmethodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped.
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
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An artist and an activist are not so far apart.
—Ava DuVernay
Series Editor Foreword:
A Poetic Inquiry of Withness
In2014,IwasinthemidstofproposalwritingforanewbookserieswithSpringer,
Studiesin Arts-BasedEducational Research (ABER), now in itsfifth year. Iasked
LauratoproposeabookbasedonherpoeticinquiryresearchinRwanda,asIfeltit
wouldbeanexemplarABERbooktoinclude.Iwasmorethandelightedwhenshe
agreed. Thus began a six year relationship of author and editor, with intermittent
pauses along the way, as Laura honored the rich cycle of her poetic inquiry (un-
knowinglybirthedfromherfirsttriptoRwandain2006)intertwinedwithherown
complex life. This book is one outcome of her fourteen-year engagement with
Rwandaandthecommunitythere—anevolvingexperiencemovingherasteacher,
poet,investigator,vulnerableobserver,andwitness,culminatinginthispublication
and letting go.
The publication of this book, for me, is a remembering of my entry into this
book series, aswell as aclosingmarkerin letting go ofmyrole asEditor-in-Chief
oftheseriesbeforeIrotateoutandontotheEditorialBoard.ItisfittingthatLaura’s
book brings my tenure serving as Editor-in Chief for this pedagogically and arts
research-rich international series full circle.
I first heard Laura present her poetic research on Rwanda at an American
Educational Research Association conference in 2013 in San Francisco. I was
moved by her project and resonated with her experience of poet as witness, while
simultaneously in awe of her compassionate and ethical way of being with Tutsi
genocidesurvivorsandtheirstories.Ispokewithheraboutartistandpsychoanalyst
BrachaEttinger’smatrixialtheoryandEttinger’sconceptofwit(h)nessing.Ettinger
herself is a first-generation survivor of the Holocaust. Her matrixial theory articu-
lates a relational process of co-becoming that unfolds through the aesthetic, to the
ethical, and lastly to the political (in that order). It is a theory that articulates well
the ethical, caring, and compassionate research Laura carried out within the
Rwandan community—research preceded by and foundationally impacted by
Laura’s many years of teaching and practice of writing as healing. Research that
“turnedover”herlifewith conflicting questions ofhercolonial heritage asawhite
American woman raised in the Christian church and the impossible possibility of
returning to a place of amnesia in her life. Carrying always with her the weight of
vii
viii SeriesEditorForeword:APoeticInquiryofWithness
awareness, poetry was herguide and teacher,from theearly scribbling ofnotes on
herfirsttriptoRwandatothecleararticulationofthepowerfulpoeticinquirypath
in the pages of this book.
The compassionate foundation that lies under this book is writing as healing.
Reading can also be healing and transformative, especially when the words are
written by a seasoned, articulate, and wise teacher. In my first encounter I was
startled by the push into confrontation with the raw lived genocidal experience
crafted by the poet’s aesthetic plan. I was fragilized by the self-fragilization of the
poet andhercompanionssopresentinthepoems—poemsrevisedagainandagain
tomeettheaesthetic,ethical,andpoliticallineofthepoet,teacher,researcher,and
activist. Following Laura’s model of honoring one’s capacity to listen while
emotionally managing the unimaginable truth, I allowed myself to step back and
prepare more fully to be with the truth-telling so poignantly placed with love and
careontothepagesofPoetry,poeticinquiryandRwanda:Engagingwiththelives
of others.
Thisbookisaheart-rending teaching,apost-traumaticaesthetic map laiddown
with clear and poignant theory and praxis to extend, serve, and guide poetic
inquirers and the growing field of poetic inquiry. Emerging and seasoned poetic
inquirers committed to interweaving the social, political, and historical aspects of
life relationally, aesthetically, and ethically will be called to action by this book.
Through direct and deliberate poetic voice, Laura Apol reveals to us how, as she
puts it, we “cannot look; [and] cannotlook/away”from thehorror of genocidenor
any other human-created atrocity in the world.
Barbara Bickel
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, IL, USA
Preface
I first went to Rwanda in 2006 to plan, with U.S. and Rwandan educators and
mental health professionals, a collaborative project using writing as a way to
facilitate healing among young adult survivors of the 1994 genocide against the
Tutsi. The project involved creating, delivering, and training others in a writing
workshopmodel.Duringthecourseoftheproject,ImadeseveraltripstoRwanda,
andwhenIworkedwithsurvivorsandlistenedtotheirstories,Icouldnothelpbut
turnwhatIwasexperiencingandlearningintowritingofmyown.BecauseIwasa
poet, that writing took the form of poems.
WitheachreturntoRwanda,Ididmorewriting,andeventuallymypoemswere
published as a full-length collection, entitled Requiem, Rwanda (Apol, 2015).
However,thepoetrythatgrewfrommyearlyexperienceinRwandawasnot,atthe
start,intendedtobemadepublic.Rather,initsearlyiterations,theprocessofwriting
poetry of my own played a more personal role: it increased my ability to listen
deeply, to understand myself and others, to process what I was learning, and to
respondtothetraumaofsurvivors.Itallowedmetodocumentmyownexperiences
andresponsesandtobuildandmaintainrelationships.Itallowedmetotellastory,if
only tomyself, ofwhat was changingover time—both inme andaround me.
In my subsequent returns to Rwanda, I came to understand my writing as “re-
searchpoetry”or“poeticinquiry.”Theseaspectsoftheworkemergedinthedoing
of them. I was inquiring into my own “lived experience” of Rwanda, conducting
poetic reflections on my own learning and on the relationships that were devel-
oping, prompted by my need to communicate my understandings to an audience
that was at first primarily personal but that later reached beyond myself and close
others.
The work brought together several aspects of my identity: myself as a poet,
myselfasaninquirer,myownethicalcommitments,andmyselfasacollaboratorin
relationship with others. These facets both enriched and complicated the work in
myriad ways. Always in tension, the poetic, the investigative, the ethical, and the
relational aspects of the writing challenged what I knew about aesthetics, about
scholarly inquiry, and about personal and professional interactions.
ix
x Preface
This book is the story of that work. In Chap. 1, I begin with an account of my
manytripstoRwanda,theirpurposes,andtherelationshipsandreflectionsthatthey
made possible across time. In Chap. 2, I outline the process of using arts-based
research (in this case, research-poems) to tell the story of my learning—the
increasing engagement and my own experience of and in post-genocide Rwanda.
Chapters 3–6 use poems to demonstrate some of the priorities that arose and the
complications that occurred in my use (and expanding understanding) of poetic
inquiry: attention to aesthetic aspects of the poem (Chap. 3); the investigative
demandsofinquiry(Chap.4);theethicalself-awarenessofthepoet(Chap.5);and
therelationalaccountabilityinherentinthework(Chap.6).Chapter7identifiesthe
waytheseaspectsofpoeticinquirygainbothrichnessandcomplexityaspoemsare
movedintothepublicrealmthroughpublic/ation.Chapter8providesacloserlook
at the intersecting obligations of trustworthy research practice, sensitivity to com-
peting demands in inquiry, my own commitment to poetic craft, and an acknowl-
edgment of the need for awareness, responsiveness and respect when working
across cultures. The final chapter (Chap. 9) revisits the various affordances and
tensionsinherentinpoeticinquiryandexploreshowanengagementwiththepoetic
—bothinresearchandinart—complicatesandstrengthensunderstandingsofeach.
Iconcludebyadvocatingforpoeticattentionassocialaction,and,throughthework
in Rwanda, propose broader implications for arts-based research writ large.
Throughout, my examination of poetic inquiry is grounded in my own lived
experience and my commitments as a poet, as an inquirer, as an activist, and as a
witness to the experiences and stories of others. I have used my own poems to
demonstrate mygrowingunderstandingofmyself, ofpoetry,andoftheprocessof
poetic inquiry as each evolved across visits and across years.
Laura Apol
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI, USA
