Open Access“Am I Telling the Story Right?” Poetry, Community, and Trauma
Author(s) -
Lori E. Koelsch,
Susan G. Goldberg,
Elizabeth Bennett
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
the qualitative report
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2160-3715
DOI - 10.46743/2160-3715/2020.4328
Subject(s) - poetry , active listening , sociology , agency (philosophy) , reading (process) , interpersonal communication , psychology , gender studies , pedagogy , social science , literature , law , art , political science , communication
The Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (USA) is a once vibrant community that experienced socioeconomic decline through urban renewal polices and related factors. This article presents poems constructed from interviews with women who considered the Hill District to be their home. Interviews were completed as part of an undergraduate-level community-engaged learning course in collaboration with a local agency. One component of the course was a public reading, during which the poems were shared with members of the community and the University. The poems were created through use of the Listening Guide, a feminist relational method. These emotionally resonant poems, known as I poems, attend to the subjective experience of each participant by focusing on her use of “I” throughout the interview transcripts. While individual in nature, these poems are inseparable from the historical trauma the Hill District has experienced. Seen through the lens of root shock, interpersonal and intergenerational traumas are also the trauma of the Hill District. Poetic inquiry provides an avenue for connecting individual experience with the larger community story.