Words I should have used

The choices and justifications we grapple-gasp with, as poets and/or ethnographers, can be all-consuming. There is a revolving series of micro balancing act(ions), of meaning-making, with and between several overlays of experience. These can include the original encounter itself, the unfoldings of our records/notes and memory, the absorption in several moments of word crafting and writing, and perhaps even a re-engagement with the original encounter, in-between. And then, the seeming fixity of a “final” text (before it is even got to the reviewers). This poetic essay unpicks one such encounter and presents a particular multi-vocal poetic method, aiming at sharing some of the choices taken and reasoning behind them. This essay is an auto-conversation, with the possible affordances of what a poetic ethnographic approach may release and illuminate in terms of multi-vocality and ultimately transient temporality. The intention is not necessarily to “de-mystify” the art of poetry or ethnography, because inherently from my perspective, at the very core of precious poetry and ethnography, are always traces of the unfamiliar or unknown, as unsettling as this may be. My curiosity with poetry and ethnography, is that both are concerned with understanding knowledge, as a becoming, with partial truths. The American poet, essayist, and translator, Jane Hirshfield, whose hobbies include “horses, gardening, and wilderness,” according to Encylopedia.com, writes that poetry should offer “an enlargement of being, the slowed and deepened breath that comes with the release of fixed ideas for the more complex real” (Hirshfield, 2008, 33). You might want to read that again, it is delicious. She writes about the balancing of the known, alongside the foolery of hiddenness, uncertainty, and surprise as generative energies in human learning and becoming. I think this could also be a definition for the type of ethnography that brings me joy. Poetic ethnography is part of the wider endeavor within anthropology, often referred to as “creative anthropology” (Maynard & Cahnmann-Taylor, 2010). That is, a methodological concern with arts-based practice and ways of knowing through the artistic forms/expressions themselves in relation to understanding a specific group of people. The work I present in this essay can also be situated in the field of ethnographic documentary poetry (see the work of Caroline Bergvall's (2014) “Drift”). Essentially, what a merging of poetry and ethnography (writing ethnography through the art form of poetry) enables is an enriching of the “mode of representation in anthropology” (Maynard & Cahnmann-Taylor, 2010, 3). A poet may write more to what one does not yet know; an ethnographer (at least in the classic and positivist sense) writes more to what one already knows. The ethnographic poet and the poetic ethnographer must do both. That is, like the author of historical fiction, the ethnographic poet must try to be faithful to external historical experience while reaching beyond or through it to an equally true, artful reality, a sense of aesthetics that enhances literal “facts” rather than diminishes them (Maynard & Cahnmann-Taylor, 2010, 12). Poetic ethnography affords attentiveness to the sensory, tacit, intuitive, and, in some instances, sacred aspects of human experience (Angeles, 2017; Maynard, 2009; Weeber & Wright, 2022). Some ethnographers will identify as poets, and others not. Some will focus on the form, aesthetics, and creative writing qualities, whereas others will focus more on the emerging art-making, provocations, and co-creation. Both have value, and of course, can be present at the same time. The encounter I wish to document, serving as an example to explain my poetic method, was an online webinar, a seemingly innocuous event. It was the Scottish Universities Press launch of Conversations with Tim Ingold: Anthropology, education, and life, co-authored by Tim Ingold, Robert Gibb, Philip Tonner, and Diego Maria Malara. The webinar was 11.00–12.00ish (UK time) on October 24, 2024. It was billed as a “fireside chat” celebrating open-access publishing. In honor of Tim In-gold, (he might as well be lit up in lights) and his seminal work, I intended to be a silent participant (no camera, no chat), present and noting what I saw, heard, felt, as well as reflections in the moment, based on an “emplaced” sensibility to my work. I will outline emplacement in a moment, but first, let me explain the ethical stance. In terms of ethics, the primary focus of this micro study is on reflexive praxis. As an ethnographer, can I share some of the choices I make and explain why? The secondary ethical gaze and concern is a connection between two people: an ethnographer and a partial participant, Tim Ingold. Partial, because in this instance I am not methodologically concerned with co-creation praxis; rather, the focus is autoethnographic. The third ethical optic is the wider setting and context during the webinar, including the other participants and speakers on Zoom. I sought consent from Tim Ingold, explaining what I was planning to do and sharing some initial ideas. He consented, as you will see. I did not seek consent from the wider speakers because I anonymized any minimal references in the poems, and I did not refer to the wider participants in the poem at all. If either of these groups were to have been brought into the process directly, then I would also have sought their consent. However, the intention was only to unpick a specific encounter with myself and one individual. Therefore, a micro study that is not part of a wider ethnographic inquiry did not necessitate that level of consent. During my doctoral research (Huxley, 2023), I considered concepts of embodiment, specifically concerning “emplacement” (Pink, 2011), and the online possibilities of embodiment through synchronous video conferencing encounters (Stanley, 2001). This led me to consider being “here and there,” and to acknowledge both online and in-person body–mind–place interactions. Pink's notion of emplacement (2011) calls for a shift in embodiment theory to move from focusing solely on the body (embodiment) to understanding how bodies are situated within and interact with their environments (emplacement). This shift emphasizes the importance of place, spatiality, and the sensory relationships between people and their surroundings (Leander et al., 2010). This foregrounds relationality, which acknowledges that people are constantly interacting with and being influenced by their environments, material objects, and other people. This includes the idea that images, people, materialities and technologies are all inter-twinned. When this is considered alongside “voice” in poetry, it calls into light, whose voice(s) are we hearing? Can we unpick the many voices (or multi-vocality) in a poem? What does this open up/expand with ethnographic writing? I will return to these questions after I present the webinar, and the poems generated from it. A final theoretical aside, before turning to the webinar itself. I seek to embody, as much as I can, every day, with the praxis (Freire, 1972) of “fun-ing” (Huxley, 2024). This includes embracing contradictions, viewing seriousness as authenticity, and encouraging moments of spontaneity. I value, like Anjaria and Anjaria (2020), the intentional act of foregrounding emotions, affect, and sensations into practice as research—the assumption being that these attributes of tacit knowledge are integral parts of our relational ways of knowing and being in the world. October 25, 2024; 18.36 Good evening, Tim, I watched your webinar with Scottish Universities Press earlier this week. I loved it—thank you. I am an interdisciplinary social anthropologist (and poet), fascinated by participatory arts and embodied learning. I wanted to capture the event as a poetic ethnographic encounter. Below is the draft poem, crafted from the event… Sarah November 02, 2024; 15:25. Dear Sarah, Many thanks for your mail; and my apologies for having taken a few days to respond. Your poem is lovely! And of course you have my consent to use these words of mine… Tim -------------- I was on time for the webinar, a relief. Using an INSEA biro, with a pleasing click topper, I scribbled handwritten notes intermittently during the event. Listening, looking, occasionally glancing out my window, or adjusting my seating position, I have a tight left shoulder. Here is an excerpt of those notes, now typed up as a block of prose: Think on your feet; I did not say it then; they were re-written as there were a lot of transcripts, chaotic text, words I should have used. Do you want to add? (Tim). Keep ourselves to a manageable level, more confined (H)…writing as thinking (D). I surprised myself…I would never have imagined moving to engage with issues of God (Tim). Reflections: slick discussion, do not say sorry, open access rallying call, noticing the headset, colored curtains like a diner's, orange and yellow squares, handmade pots, and photo frames. The idea of inheritance does not make sense; it goes across generations, as a life process (D). The digital is simply unsustainable, and the myth of academic authority. How to write well? It must be rigorous, disciplined, alive (Tim). The next day, I was compelled to write a first draft of the poem. I typed out key phrases that resonated with me, cutting them up, and laying them on my carpet floor. I made three rows: one for Tim's words, one for the other facilitators/speakers, and one row for my reflections. I then moved, mixed, and added/edited. See Figure 1 for this in motion. I now turn to the poems themselves. Figure 2 shows the first draft; Figure 3 shows the second draft. In your reading of them, they will become something else again, imbued with your recollections, interpretations, and re-imaginings. Each reading is an imprint of a partial truth. In the spirit of all writing, I returned to the poem today, November 8, 2024; 14.50, a few days later, to rewrite and ed-it. It. What is it? Whose voices? Whose words? What should I add? What should I take out? What I love, yes love, about absorbing poetic inquiry (Penwarden & Schoone, 2021) is how it lets you (me), perhaps we, play, salt of the earth play, with how we choose to re-present our humanness and relationality through the nature of text, words, thoughts, feelings, and sensations. You may encounter your gut-ness. With this very moment, enjoying the glow of my desk-top screen on this darkening autumnal evening, I tinker with a second iteration of the poem. When I returned, I felt a different writer, and other frames of reference were in my thoughts now, including how Tim's work on inter-generational connections (Ingold, 2024) is central to how we make sense of the world. When I wrote this version, my personal experience with my now deceased father became alive in this conversation in a way it did not in the first iteration. Poetic inquiry (Penwarden & Schoone, 2021) confronts ethnographic questions regarding multi-vocality and temporality. In the first iteration, as a tool of writing, I wanted the ethnographer to stay in the background. Whereas in the second iteration, I allowed a deeper exploration of Tim's subject matter on inter-generational connections to permeate the poem (see the balance of yellow highlight (Tim), and pink highlight (me) between the two). It is not that either poem is inherently “better” than the other; they serve different purposes. If they were part of a final ethnographic inquiry, then I would choose the one based on which message/foregrounding needed to be put forward. Both are partial truths, with different emphases. What is lost and what is added is also likely to be a subjective experience, for you as a reader, depending on your resonance or otherwise with the subject matter. Indeed, the poems could stand alone in their own right; however, in terms of exploring method, they are inextricably a partnership. I imagine now that Jane Hirschfield is walking in a giant redwood forest in California, and Tim Ingold has finally made it back to the pine forests of Finland. I wonder, if they were to meet, what type of conversation they would have? As I catch a spider on the window, I ponder if I should have used other words—or other textual trajectories. But I cling to Jane Hirshfield's phrase, “creative discoveries are made by generative re-combination: disparate elements brought together in a way not previously seen, then recognised as making a useful whole” (Hirshfield, 2008, 47). I am not sure about “wholeness.” It resonates and lands with a slight sense of fixity, certainty, and constraint. I am already thinking about a further iteration, as possibly are you. However, my gut tells me that this type of documentary poetic ethnographic approach invites an enlarged sensory and multi-vocal unfolding of experience. Words can sometimes become shared echoes among individuals in groups. Sometimes, a throwaway utterance by one individual has deep meaning for another, or a phrase gets attached to an individual, who may even forget it. As ethnographers and poets, we can change our minds, and then change our words. That is, a needling provocation of being with, and unsettled by, the artistic crafting of poetic ethnography as never more than, or less than, a partial truth. Learn more about Conversations with Tim Ingold: Anthropology, education, and life here: https://www.sup.ac.uk/news/sup-announces-first-books. I am not affiliated in any way. The webinar was recorded on the SUP YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@ScotUniPress. As an online ethnographer, I am often interested in the seemingly small encounters that occur when we join Zoom seminars online. On this occasion, I wanted to explore positionality alongside poetics, which I felt would honor the work of Tim Ingold. For me, ethnography is as much about capturing the moments that make up a whole encounter, as it is an overview of an extended or so-called “long” time frame. I am unlikely to meet Tim Ingold, and so, in effect, the moment and the extended nature of time collapse into each other; they exist together. Just as “reality” and “imaginary” have an equality of meaning and resonance for a poet. I am so very grateful for Tim Ingold's generosity of spirit in letting me use his words. I am also grateful to the power of words themselves. This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under Grant AH/T008164/1 of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funding body. The author declare there is no conflict of interest.