A pedagogy of liminality: towards visual poetry as a practice in decolonising creative writing pedagogy

ABSTRACT

This article explores what we perceive as a lack of visual poetry studies in creative writing classrooms, largely due to its characteristic incompatibility to familiar literary devices, analytical tools, and ways of reading. While our inquiry initially sought to provide an approachable visual poetry curriculum for creative writing teachers, our doing so prompted us towards theoretical frameworks that take seriously subject matter oft-misunderstood as unfit for traditional educational practices, turning to how decolonial theorising might inform our pedagogy. From there, our priorities stayed rooted in decolonising pedagogy, working to de-center traditional forms of literary knowledge and support lesser-known, borderless, ‘in-between’ spaces – spaces effectively considered in visual poetry’s liminality between visual art and written word. Working to equip ourselves with new poetic conceptions of language and image, we aim to consider visual poetry in a way that renders it more approachable and theoretically considered for the higher education classroom setting.

KEYWORDS:

• Creative writing
• pedagogy
• decolonising pedagogy/education
• visual poetry
• poetry
• higher education
• borderland rhetorics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marisa Tirado

Marisa Tirado is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Program for Writing & Rhetoric at University of Colorado-Boulder. She is also a published poet, having received her MFA and certificate in literary translation at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Marisa is interested in poetry pedagogy, pop-culture in poetry, and creating equitable secondary education writing courses.

Megan Davis Roberts

Megan Davis Roberts is an instructor and doctoral candidate in English Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her classrooms focus on creative writing, contemporary poetry, and dialogic processes of learning. Meg is interested in poetry pedagogy, poetic inquiry, and practices that invite poetics more effectively and wholeheartedly into classroom spaces.