Collaborative Poetry Making: Words, Place, and Decolonisation

ABSTRACT

This article explores how poetry can contribute to the work of decolonisation for faculty development professionals and academic faculty more broadly. It explains how poetry has been significant for the authors in constructing and deconstructing our understandings of place. Through a discussion of literary theorists as well as Indigenous and non-Indigenous poets, it then considers how poetry might provide avenues for the personal and emotional work necessary for decolonisation. We share the process of a collaborative poetry workshop that we engaged in with participants at the 2019 Intercultural Intersections Conference at Thompson Rivers University, providing an overview of the practice and samples of the resulting poems. Through an analysis of these poems and the process itself, we consider the implications of this activity as a decolonising exercise.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous poetry
• collaborative poetry
• decolonisation
• educational development
• self-reflection

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the following participants for generously contributing their poems as examples of those created in the workshops at Mount Royal University and at the 2019 Intercultural Intersections Conference: Gabrielle Lindstrom, Andrea Phillipson, Sheba Rahim, Silvia Rossi, Erika Smith, Alice Swabey, and Julie Vaudrin-Charette. We would also like to thank the peer reviewers for this paper, who provided invaluable insight and guidance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In our experience with Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers, we’ve learned the importance of introducing ourselves. This practice is also reflected in narrative research methodologies. Our intent is not to appropriate this practice, but to offer the openness of narrative reflection and to situate ourselves within our experience.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Angela Waldie

Angela Waldie teaches courses on literature and the environment for the Department of General Education at Mount Royal University. She has published poems in The Antigonish Review, Freefall, and The Goose and is currently writing her first poetry collection, entitled A Single Syllable of Wild. Corresponding author: [email protected].

Michelle Yeo

Michelle Yeo is director of the Mokakiiks Centre for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at Mount Royal University and a professor in the Academic Development Centre. Her research interests in scholarship of teaching and learning include student experiences of learning, scholarship of educational development, and decolonising practices. She has poems forthcoming in Freefall and the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild Pandemic Anthology. Contact email: [email protected].