Caravan Poetry: An Inquiry on Four Wheels

• Published in: Qualitative inquiry Vol. 26; no. 6; pp. 633 - 638
• Main Authors: Helin, Jenny, Dahl, Matilda, Guillet De Monthoux, Pierre
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.07.2020; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Bachelard; caravan; Countryside; Dreaming; Phenomenology; poetic moment; Poetry; Rupture; Rural areas; space; time; Verticality; poetic moment; Bachelard; caravan; verticality; time; space; rupture
• DOI: 10.1177/1077800419843949
• ISSN: 1077-8004; 1552-7565

How can we create possibilities for a generative moment between the research participants and ourselves? In a study about (day)dreaming, we searched for ways of doing our research in which we could meet and jointly explore the becoming of life and important matters through our experiences of dreaming. Inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s phenomenology of dreaming and in particular his book The Poetics of Space, in which he emphasized the importance of small, intimate spaces for poetic moments to occur, we decided to buy a small countryside caravan. Through this inquiry into a new spatiotemporality for our research encounters, we experienced how the caravan offers a rupture from the mundane ongoingness enabling us to reconnect to the moment, the place, each other, and ourselves. This rupture awakens the verticality of time allowing us to be looking anew and making novel connections. What may be seen as self-evident, but it was not for us, is the recognition that in developing research practices for studying dreaming, we had to first start dreaming ourselves.