Metropoems: Poetic Method and Ethnographic Experience

Abstract

Discussions of the use and significance of poetry as a research tool have raised the question of poetic technique and craftsmanship in ethnographic poetic outputs. In this article, the authors look explicitly at a contemporary poetic form, the “metropoem” originated by French Oulipian poet Jacques Jouet, 1 arguing that it presents a potentially valuable new tool for qualitative research for four reasons. First, the “metropoetic” form enables the taking of a position that neither turns inward toward the ethnographer’s self nor outward toward an empathic relation with the ethnographic other, but is focused in the moment, in place, and in motion—which resists the temptations of nostalgia and Romanticism that have attracted criticism of “research poetry.” Second, it imposes a discipline that is derived from a specific activity, which embodies the rhythms, time, and space of that activity, distinguishing metropoems from poetry that recollects or represents. Third, it demands attention to technique, to poetry as a craft, which underscores calls made by recent critical work in this area. Finally, despite being practically, empirically, and metaphorically enformed by the mobility of contemporary urban social experience, it offers a method that can usefully be adapted to encapsulate other forms of social life.