What is Collective Poetry?
What Is Collective Poetry?
Why poetry?
The simplest answer is why not?
The first thing to make clear is that this is not about creative writing.
It has nothing to do with learning about rhyme or rhythms or figures of speech. It is not about expressing oneself in a flowery way. Indeed it’s important that the views expressed aren’t interfered with in any way other than perhaps to put them in an order, such as grouping positive and negative comments together or alternately.
It is a tool for gathering people’s views in a way that adds greater depth to our understanding of what people feel about their communities.
There are a number of reasons for utilising communally written poetry as a tool for gauging people’s views.
Usefulness As A Tool
A variety of advantages quickly became clear about using this as a tool
From the start it was clearly useful for engagement.
It is very easy to use.
Everyone who participates has their voice heard.
Contradictory opinions can sit together.
It also provides a useful format for presenting individual comments/stories in a much more visible way ensuring they don’t disappear into the detail.
As we developed it as a tool we also realised
The collected statements have a certain clarity and power.
It creates a cohesive spirit amongst participants.
It provides a highly effective first step in focusing subsequent and more detailed discussion.
Most importantly it allows the expression of feelings.
In doing various forms of research into communities and their issues, those tools that are available tend to focus on the factual and the statistical.
Recently a colleague and I created a community profile of Drumlithie and the following is what we produced in it to describe the then current state of public transport.
While working on this we spoke to an elderly resident who needed to use public transport for getting anywhere who told us
“I canna get to ARI unless there’s an appointment at twelve and then it takes aa day to get there and back. It would mak you greet.”
That clearly and powerfully sums up what it took a page of statistics to present and in a form that was out of date as soon as it was written.
Statistics, lists of facts and graphs are useful but don’t tell the whole story.
People’s feelings about an issue, any issue they might have, are an important part of understanding a community.
Communal poems can capture these feelings and present them in a focused and powerful way.
The tool can be used in more than one way. It’s important to be clear from the start the purpose of using it in particular situations.
In Edenholme it was used to collect views on a subject and there was thereafter an audience for the collected statement of views. That audience can vary too, from a case study, to informing an area profile, to reporting on issues to a body which has requested this, to helping a group focus their own thinking on what are their needs and indeed many others.
In certain circumstances, particularly if the purpose is to explore the reasons for a particular group feeling disaffected, it can be used as a way of opening an issue/s up, not so much as merely an icebreaker but as a catalyst to meaningful engagement.
It can also be used to create a wee collection of poems.