the effectiveness of poetry to evoke and convey emotion from the dual perspective of both the reader and writer

A book from the American Psychological Association describes Autoethnography as, “a researcher writing about a topic of significant personal relevance, situating their experiences within their own personal context” (Poulos, 2021). Further to this, Méndez goes on to add that ‘the aim of autoethnography is to recreate the researcher's experience in a reflexive way, aiming at making a connection to the reader which can help him or her to think and reflect about his or her own experiences’ (Méndez, 2013). Therefore, in regard to my own experience with autoethnography, this process has significantly aided me in critically reflecting on my personal experience as an audience member of poetry as a media niche. Writing and reading poetry are very different lenses to take on when exploring this forum. Reading poetry takes a ‘selfish’ approach as the reader is only concerned with the words themselves and the emotions associated, to evoke reflection as a result; a very surface-level exploration of the text. However, writing poetry is a more complex means of investigating the niche as the writer is concerned with the content on a much deeper personal level as it relates to their personal context. From here, the author must go further to determine how to effectively adapt these experiences from occurrences to emotions, and communicate them to a general audience, whilst also leaving an impact and eliciting reflection. Using autoethnography as a tool in poetry has allowed for me to develop a deeper understanding of the writers' role and perspective within the niche, leading me to appreciate the readers' output to a significantly greater extent. By participating in the creation of poetry, I have learnt not only its weight in positively aiding the outward expression of internalised thoughts and emotions but also, grown to further respect the power of language in communicating ideas and dispositions. Consequently, this process has improved my understanding of how we receive words and statements, and thus, the impact these can leave on a person’s psyche and frame of mind.  

 

In pursuing this project, I created an online persona in order to remain consistent and stay connected to my audience. This was made up of two identities to encapsulate my entire viewing forum. The first one is, the public persona. This consisted of presenting my most vulnerable side to a published audience, a side that is mostly unknown to others. By doing so, I opened myself up to the emotional risk of this uncertain exposure, highlighting to my followers, the need and normality of doing so when coming to terms with difficult and unfamiliar information and emotions. Thus, opening the forum up as a safe space for expression and connectedness. Lastly, the second and final persona I created was a collective persona. This was derived as a result of the collective sharing of emotions, present within my writing, between me as the author and my audience. The combination of these two identities, aided my research by appealing to all user types within my audience, as it was common for individuals to be able to relate to at least one aspect of my project. The online presence for my research remained somewhat consistent, as I posted original content 2-3 times per week for a series of weeks. This was in an attempt to gain enough following and engagement to be able to gauge an understanding of my audience and conduct an autoethnographic study on them and the power of poetry. As a result, the feedback was strong and I was able to mostly gather the information needed, however, higher engagement would have been much preferred.

 

My autoethnographic approach for this assessment consisted of two main ideas. These being capitalising on my extensive love for reading poetry to answer my research question; which is ‘the effectiveness of how emotion can be evoked through powerful text.’ In addition to writing my own poetry to further explore the complexity of being the creator to discuss vulnerability and convey personal emotions. The applied combination of both of these approaches allowed me to not only investigate my personal experiences as an audience member in my niche but also to expand my expertise and understanding of the field through the creation of personal writing. Furthermore, several ethnographic skills including, approaching, conceptualising, and contextualising were applied to help build my digital artefact in its best form. Approaching was utilised to select the best methods of data collection and inquiry and research; conceptualising helped to focus and redefine my approach to create something that was interesting, tangible, and understandable. Finally, contextualising drew lines between objects, people, and events in the field of poetry, to aid in mapping out my forum for high reward and engagement. By mapping out the most common themes of poetry, the basic aspects of poetry, motivations for writing poetry and key poetic figures that are relevant to my study, it was significantly beneficial in beginning to understand the function of my niche and its key components. Lastly, the overall focus of my digital artefact stemmed from an appreciative point of view. By using this lens and my prior knowledge of the niche, I was able to further shape my DA through the open analysis of my niche through a positive framework; in addition to, strengthening my capacity to generate new knowledge.

 

In conclusion, this project was extremely rewarding in aiding my journey of personal growth, as well as deepening my love and appreciation for poetry, as a style of writing and an outlet for expression. After weeks of conducting an autoethnographic study, it can be deduced from the research question and analysis that followed, that poetry does have significant effectiveness in both evoking and conveying emotion from the dual perspective of both the reader and writer.