Poetic research
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An outline
Poetic research, well, that's a rather woolly title really. It can probably be grouped under creative research but not from the point of view of research into creativity (though it does include this) but more usefully as how a creative practice creates research knowledge and outcomes - what I like to think of as knowledge objects. This could also include the application of creative practices and methods to other forms of research practice. It has been said that poetry is a means of explorations that can 'inspire, stimulate and develops the research project' (Darmer, P 2006).
Poetic research uses poetic models as its basis. Exemplars of this include the writings of Gaston Bachelard and the material thinking described (and practiced?) by Paul Carter. Terry Rosenberg's essay on poetic research models has also been useful and I'd include Greg Ulmer's general pedagogical project as largely operating within a poetic register of sorts. I think of poetic research as speculative, it allows for and encourages risk taking in the practice of research and in the sorts of artefacts that it might produce. It can have an emphasis on the reflexive, metaphorical and material nature of thinking, in particular it pays attention to the materiality of the media that is being used to produce knowledge objects as a consequence of research.
Poetic thought
The creative process of poetic research is largely driven through a centrifugal force - exploring possibilities which are currently unknown in order to expand opportunities and create new ideas. This is counteracted by a centripetal force which stabilises that which we already know - ie. cementing research which has already been done in the field. Hence, poetic research pushes the boundaries, to creatively produce new knowledges.
This is not writing poetry. Rather think of the way in which poetry might be thought of as operating with language as a material thing. Rhyme, for example, is a material quality or property of language, of course it is about meaning and sense, but it is also driven, or informed, by this other register. A register that is about the facticity of language as a sound, as a material object. Similarly with the way poetry cares about where the words appear on the line, line breaks (unlike writing an essay, essayists don't usually get upset about where the line breaks occur), and in some cases (for example Apollinaire's well known concrete poems) also treat the page and type as formal and material elements of a poetic practice.
Obviously if we treat poetry as our model then metaphor becomes important, though I'd argue that there is something in poetic and creative practice, certainly in its materialist senses, where metaphor gets treated literally. Or if I were paying homage to Barthes (who's late essays also make a contribution into this domain) then in poetic research what we might think of as connotation becomes denotative. This literal application of metaphor and similie is a form of concrete logic, where the metaphoric value is retained, but is also made concrete in some manner in the work or practice. (A poem about an animal that never quite states what the animal is but uses words and sounds that also approach the animal. A poem that describes rain by making splishing sounds. Or of course chooses to look like rain on the page.) Here the metaphor, the depth of meaning of ambiguity and the fluidity of meaning is celebrated and embraced, but it is also realised formally in the work, which in my terms is a making concrete, a rendering literal, of this metaphor. "See, it looks like rain." "Listen, it sounds like rain." Though to be literally literal would risk the jejune.
Outside of poetry we could broaden our scope to think about most forms of art practice where these elements are often present.
Models of poetic research
Centripetal and centrifugal force
Terry Rosenberg (2000) adapts Mikhail Bakhtin's ideas of centripetal and centrifugal as tendencies in creative design practice to describe the balance struck by poetic research.
Centripetal force is the impulse to draw in to established research practice and make connections with an established body of knowledge. "The program of the centripetal is to make fast, secure and stabilize. Its tendency is to ground or establish a grounding for design research. It is a program creating certainty through normalization of method and through an aim to establish if not truths then justifiable statements." (Rosenberg 2000)
In contrast, centrifugal force is the impulse to draw away from orthodox methods and accepted knowledge and to escape certainty. It is the drive to enter the unknown and be immersed in and driven by uncontrolled forces, such as creative impulses or hunches.
A designer who plans her composition according to the rule of thirds is driven by centripetal force, whereas a designer who uses her instinct to draw her composition is driven by centrifugal force.
Conventional research and poetic research
Conventional research is primarily centripetal, starting with a question and planning a strategy to determine an answer before integrating the answer with existing knowledge, possibly challenging or displacing any existing theories that contradict the results. Conventional research sets a narrow "focal channel" to determine what facts are relevant to the research, and anything that falls outside this channel is not of interest. Influences outside the focal channel are considered undesirable and needing to be controlled for, to exclude any influence they may have on the research findings. The idealised conventional research paradigm is a simple computation with a binary outcome: an input (the hypothesis) is processed in a specific way (the research process) and is either proved or disproved (the findings); this should be repeatable for any researcher anywhere in the world at any time and produce the same output, insulated from external variables.
Poetic research, by contrast, defines no focal channel and predetermined process but rather a broad "focal territory" which may be approached from a variety of unrelated perspectives and explored with no predefined goal in mind. The objective is simply to explore the unknown territory - in design, for example, this could be your personal creative impulses.
Both conventional and poetic research begin with centrifugal inspiration and end with centripetal reflection, drawing back and integrating research findings with existing knowledge. The difference is in the process itself. Conventional research proceeds from a centrifugal spark in a centripetal manner, always conscious of the need for the findings to be conventional, repeatable and relatable to the established body of knowledge. Poetic research dives into the centrifugal impulses and follows them wherever they lead, free to break off one line of inquiry and begin another from a different perspective; it turns to a centripetal perspective only at the end of the process, in reflecting on the experience of the research process, what was discovered along the way and how that might relate to established knowledge. There is no expectation in poetic research that the experience should be repeatable, but it is valuable if the eventual findings are relevant or add something to established knowledge.
Conventional research is analogous to the voyage of an explorer setting out to determine the existence of a hypothesised place, such as Columbus' voyage in search of a westward trade route from Europe to Asia. Poetic research is analogous to an explorer setting out just to follow the currents and see what is out there, as in (presumably) the Vikings who settled North America.
The Reservoir
Practice
Imagine you were asked to write a poem. You might even be given a formal structure ("a haiku") and even a topic ("absence"). Yet even with these quite formal constraints it is clear that as you write your haiku what it might be, what it might become, is probably very loose. If you are a good writer, and not just a naive practitioner, then in the writing of the haiku language will speak back to you (in design this is close to Donald Schön's 'back-talk' which marks design skill) and will influence the form of the work. You don't exactly know where it is going. Your intention is in a relationship with the contraints of genre and topic, but also with (in our example of a haiku) with language itself.
Now, when we expand this to something that is perhaps less structured, then we can see that in the practice of doing (which in the case of poetry is also a writing practice) this gets even looser so that ideas may come in the process itself that shift the work in strange and unexpected ways. That the language pushes back, offering its own resistance, even perhaps in the very materiality of scratching pen on paper. In poetic research strategies that embrace this materiality of a thought within the action of making are utilised. It is no longer just getting ideas into language as if this were some sort of translation exercise where we struggle (through some lack of our own) to get our ideas out and onto paper.
In poetic research ideas are followed. Knotty problems aren't placed to the outside but embraced, ambiguity might be admitted, and there could be some sense in which we are not certain just where the research will lead. Or why. Poetic research can be an excellent method when you are not writing a thesis. It offers a way to think about the materiality of your media as a thinking form, or a thinking within particular ways of doing, where this doing is always a conversation between your thought and the thinking of your medium.
Knowledge objects
Examples
Gaston Bachelard has written a series of books that utilise a combination of close reading, phenomenology, and poetic research. For example his Poetics of Space is a seminal text in much architecture studies where he treats space as something with psychological importance that informs writing, poetry, and experience.
References
Carter, Paul. Material Thinking: The Theory and Practice of Creative Research. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2004.
Rosenberg, T. (2000) "The reservoir": towards a poetic model of research in design. Working Papers in Art and Design, 1.
Darmer, Per 2006, "Poetry as a way to inspire (the management of) the research project", Management Decisions, London, Vol 44, Is 4 pp.551-561
