My publication, in Sport, Education and Society, sticks with me (okay, so it’s just been a little over a year). The data (or pedagogical encounter) which produced that paper clung to me, affecting my reactions, the participants’ involvement, and the surrounding context of our research. From the moment this pedagogical encounter took place, I needed to write about it – explore further.
Many memos, drafts, and conversations later, it became a published manuscript (read it here). Even as a ‘finished’ manuscript, there was much I could not include –though it influenced that ‘final’ product. One of these things was a poetic transcription, which I showed to Will and Cesar (the two fitness professionals involved in the pedagogical encounter). It is mentioned in the paper (p. 561), but not discussed further. For this entry, I explore this poetic transcription, its use in an interview with Will and Cesar, and its affects in more depth – (re-)presenting possibilities to look at, think about, and ‘play’ with data.
First, a short background (in case you did not read the manuscript). I promise my feelings will not be hurt.
On one week of my dissertation research, four young people, two fitness professionals (Will and Cesar), and I engaged in an hour and 45-minute conversation about health and fitness. This was the pedagogical encounter (Tinning, 2010). Towards the end of that encounter, Will turned to the youth and asked them:
What is your current perception of health and fitness in the world today – meaning how do you view it?
The question produced a series of responses from the youth and affects between all of us that day (and after). The young people provided us (‘experienced’ health and fitness professionals) with honest, raw answers that moved our bodies to reflect, think and act differently (Safron, 2020).
Triggered by the words, emotions and shifting relations that swirled within, around and from this encounter, I ended up creating poetic transcriptions from the young participants’ responses. I first did this as an experiment for myself. I enjoy writing (sort of), value writing through different approaches, and see writing as an embodied process which I hope can affect others. The poetic transcriptions, produced from the young people’s words, seemed to do that.
This poetic transcription has been a continual reminder of the complexities (consumerism, culture, family, race, body size, doctors) that affect the ways in which health and fitness is produced – or mediated by many entities. It provided openings to share some of my research with other youth, educational scholars, colleagues, friends, and family. Finally, the poetic transcription became an extension of the research process itself when, a year after the encounter, Will, Cesar and I sat down once again.
As part of a follow-up interview, I presented Will and Cesar with a hard copy of the poetic transcriptions. We were meeting in a small room at the commercial fitness center in which we all worked at the time. People were slamming weights as obnoxiously loud dance remixes blasted through overhead speakers. Then, when Will and Cesar first held their copies of the participants’ words and began to read, noisy surroundings were replaced with eerie silence. Even though we had discussed the encounter through informal conversations, Will and Cesar had not seen the participants’ words on paper – or in this form.
Will and Cesar absorbed the poetic transcriptions silently, hesitating to offer any immediate verbal response. There was fidgeting – Cesar lifting his baseball hat up and down to think, then sighing deeply aloud. Will, at 6’5” and 285 pounds, hunched over in a flimsy plastic chair as he studied the young participants’ responses to his question during the encounter. When the two fitness professionals began to speak, it was in reaction to the affective power of the poetic transcription.
Will spoke first and softly said, “This triggers the whole conversation. It’s like I’m in that room again.”
Cesar, as well, was triggered by the poetic transcription. He could not always articulate his emotions and thoughts – in response to this particular text, in response to remembering the encounter, in response to connections to his own culture as a Dominican male – but he asked to hold onto the paper with the poetic transcriptions after that interview. He has continued to reflect (and act differently) when he thinks about health, fitness and young people.
The combination of (re-)presented texts, the young people’s identities, our own (fitness professional) identities, and the lingering affects from the pedagogical encounter brought Will and Cesar back into our interactions on that day – resulting in continued movement and openings for change.
This was a brief excerpt from the follow-up interview with Will and Cesar and their responses to the poetic transcriptions. It is part of a much longer discussion that I hope to explore more (at some point). For now, I end with one suggestion, and then two examples to consider when it comes to (what I discovered) in ‘playing’ with poetic transcriptions.
First, I suggest that a creative approach, such as poetic transcription, allows for additional possibilities and questions in research and practice (Glesne, 1997). By drawing on writing as inquiry (Richardson, 2000) and crystallization (Ellingson, 2009, 2014), poetic transcriptions evoke aesthetic, sensory understandings that complement and problematize more traditional approaches. The poetic transcriptions may not have made it into the publication, but they remain an important part of the process that affect any ‘final’ product.
As such, I hope that others can find ways to use creative approaches – that may bring something different to your research and practice, even if they do not ‘make it’ into a publication. Poetry and creative forms of writing have been used by scholars in HPE (Fitzpatrick, 2012, 2013; Lambert, 2020; Sparkes et al., 2003) to enhance ethnographic work through evocative means.
For me, it began as an experiment – to respond and try to do some justice to the participants’ words so that others (youth, colleagues, Cesar, Will, families) may also see, hear and feel affects produced from the encounter. However, I will leave that up to you as I end with two examples of ways in which I (re-)presented participants’ words through poetic transcription.
The first is the written form of the poetic transcriptions that I handed to Cesar and Will during our follow-up interview. The second is a short video created (for fun) as I continued to play around with the idea (entangling text, sound, images and affect), while struggling with my limited technology skills.
Through these two examples, I acknowledge myself as implicated in (and part of the process) and end with two questions:
- What affects does the poetic transcription produce?
- How does it move thought, action, or (human and material) bodies?
Example 1: Written poetic transcriptions
Example 2: A video – affect and poetic transcriptions
(make sure your sound is on!)
References (for further engagement):
Ellingson, L. (2009). Engaging in crystallization in qualitative research: An introduction (Sage (ed.).
Ellingson, L. (2014). “The truth must dazzle gradually”: Enriching relationship research using a crystallization framework. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 31(4), 442–450. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407514523553
Fitzpatrick, K. (2012). That’s how the light gets in: Poetry, self, and representation in ethnographic research. Cultural Studies - Critical Methodologies, 12(1), 8–14. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708611430479
Fitzpatrick, K. (2013). Critical pedagogy, physical education and urban schooling. Peter Lang.
Glesne, C. (1997). That rare feeling: Re-presenting research through poetic transcription. Qualitative Inquiry, 3(2), 202–221. https://doi.org/10.1177/107780049700300204
Lambert, K. (2020). Re-conceptualizing embodied pedagogies in physical education by creating pre-text vignettes to trigger pleasure ‘in’ movement. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 25(2), 154–173. https://doi.org/10.1080/17408989.2019.1700496
Richardson, L. (2000). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 923–948). Sage.
Safron, C. (2020). Health, fitness, and affects in an urban after-school program. Sport, Education and Society, 25(5), 556–569. https://doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2019.1625318
Sparkes, A.C., Nilges, L., Swan, P., & Dowling, F. (2003). Poetic representations in sport and physical education: Insider perspectives. Sport, Education and Society, 8(2), 153-177.
Tinning, R. (2010). Pedagogy and human movement: Theory, practice, research. Routledge.