Poetic Awakenings

(Re)imagining Epistemic Justice and Academic Writing through a Black Aesthetic Lens

Abstract

Phillis Wheatley, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton… It was when I met you through your poetry, that I found out… words can lift off the page… and lift me. My heart. My history. My spirit. My consciousness… -Revelation! As an African-American woman, poetry is integral to how I see, understand, and make meaning of the world. My first teacher, my mother, taught me about the world and her/our history through poetry. By extension, my greatest teachers, the scholars to whom I often turn, are artists. Incorporating poetic reflexivity into my research engages a Black epistemology and challenges the rigid notion(s) of what (and who) constitutes academic/scholarly writing. In this essay, I argue that poetry – which I use expansively here - allows qualitative researchers to reveal, distill, and illuminate their thoughts and findings. In the Black MAP research project (www.thebmp.org) - designed as an online historic archive of black aesthetics as healing, resistance, and liberatory practice - poetry sits at the core and fills the soul of the work. My essay will draw from the archive, the assemblage, and the offerings of participants.