Shared reading as an affordance-nest for developing kinesic engagement with poetry: A case study

Abstract

This case study explores how the practice of Shared Reading enables readers who normally find poetry difficult to engage with, to sustain and deepen their attention. We regard Shared Reading as a distinct ecology characterised by the invariant features of text, Reader Leader and group members, that affords processes of situated cognition (distributed cognition as communal meaning-making, embodied cognition as somatic-kinesic-visceral-affective processes). This affordance nest enables the creation of meanings in a transpersonal space consisting of moments of pre-reflective felt sense, personal disclosures and negotiations, and transpersonal interactions around the poem and between participants. The premise is that many readers find it difficult to realise what Terence 2016 terms “kinesic reading”, but through distributed cognition, it can be collectively achieved. Building on Longden et al.’s (2015) emergent concept of “creative inarticulacy”, we identify and describe a non-exhaustive catalogue of nine phenomena that emerge in the evolving process of such communal sharing of meaningfulness. Whereas previous qualitative research on Shared Reading has tended to focus on benefits for the individual participant, we hope that a situated cognition approach can uncover new aspects of the practice.