Poetic Resonance

This thematic thread presents experiments, exercises, and reflections stemming from a two-day collaborative, practice-led workshop with ‘poetic resonance’. The concept of poetic resonance grew out of a research interest in, and a need for, an ethnographic investigative approach capable of capturing the intangible yet palpable forces of emotions, moods, atmospheres, and tensions that reverberate within and across spaces, bodies, and interactions. Drawing on broader conversations in poetic inquiry, we approach the ‘poetic’ as a sensibility. An embodied, reflexive form of attention to field encounters that resists the urge to pin down singular meanings and encourages analytical surprise. To support this, we designed a flexible protocol that guides researchers in selecting puzzling data, noticing how it ripples through the body, and writing poems that hug multiplicity rather than resolve it. The contributions gathered here extend these experiments, each exploring what becomes possible when ethnography can resonate, and we offer them – along with the protocol – as an invitation for readers to try their own poetic experiments.

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