The ecology of personal and professional experience: A poet’s view

Abstract

Because so much of my teaching, writing, and researching emerge from the intersections of the personal and the professional, I contend that autobiographical writing is always both personal and professional, and that we need to write autobiographically in order to connect with others (see Irwin & Springgay, Chapter 9). I live in the world as a poet. The word poetry is derived from poiein, "to make." As a researcher I am a poet or maker. I do not stand outside experience and observe experience like a video camera recording an objective reality. Instead I seek to enter lived experiences with an imaginative openness to the people and activities and dynamics at work and play. I seek to make a story in collaborative dialogue with others, always aware that the story is one of many stories, one of many versions of the story.