Home Institution
Brown University
Publication Date
Spring 2016
Abstract
Cape Town has long been the site of conflicts over urban space. This study explored the potentials of a place-based poetry workshop as a tool for critically engaging with the urban environment. With the assistance of a well-established local poet, the researcher facilitated a poetry workshop that brought three young and emerging poets to contested public spaces including District Six, Company Gardens, and Church Square. After the workshop, poets submitted their writing to the researcher, who compiled and narrated a poem that showcased the voices of these poets while drawing attention to salient ideas evoked by the poets’ work. The researcher also wrote reflexively during the entire research process and included reflexive writing samples in the book of poetry that contained the longer narrative poem. The poetry written by participants and researchers alike, as well as the researcher’s observations from the workshop, indicate tremendous potential for place-based poetry workshop methodology. Participants engaged in a critical, self-reflexive process in which they learned about their own identities in relation to contested public space. Their poetry represented a form of democratized, interdisciplinary qualitative research, producing knowledge marked by critical engagement with memory and a focus on human and geographic bodies. The group writing process allowed participants to find commonalities that transcended their differences in identity and illuminated a common ownership of history and public space. This methodology shows promise as a tool for personal and social change in any urban locale, and should be adopted by researchers, activists, and artists alike.
Disciplines
Interpersonal and Small Group Communication | Poetry | Politics and Social Change | Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies | Social and Cultural Anthropology
Recommended Citation
Lin-Sommer, Sam, "Navigating Cape Town: A Poetic Cartography" (2016). Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection. 2363.
https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection/2363
Included in
Interpersonal and Small Group Communication Commons, Poetry Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons, Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons
Program Name
South Africa: Multiculturalism and Human Rights