Poetry in motion: in search of the poetic in health and physical education

ABSTRACT

This article uses poetry to show how we might reimagine the body and movement in ways that speak back to and subvert dominant and neoliberal conceptions of health and physical education (HPE). Drawing on the notion of poiesis and Arnold's conceptualisation of physical education as ‘in through and about movement’, I explore possibilities for poetic responses to the body and movement. These responses aim to unearth the emotional and political elements of movement experiences and highlight how much we lose in positioning movement as transactional, and HPE as only justifiable through extrinsic outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Poiesis
• movement
• neoliberalism
• Arnold
• physicality
• aesthetics
• pedagogy

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the reviewers who provided very helpful and constructive critical feedback on earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 A vaka is a Tongan canoe used to sail in the Pacific and journey between places.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was made possible with the support of a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand; see http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/programmes/funds/rutherford-discovery/awardees/2014-awardees/katie-fitzpatrick/.