Found Poetry: Reimagining What is Present and What is Absent Through the Journals of Her Life

Abstract

This article maps an emergent qualitative research process of writing found poetry to give voice to a long-term care patient who was slowly losing her physical capabilities to supra nuclear palsy. Through an initial chance encounter, the poem Thank you was written from the patient’s scribed journals and then performed in variety of settings for a variety of audiences. First, an academic conference proceeding, followed by a video recording performance, and finally, it was performed for health care providers at the patient’s annual case conference. The performances gave this elderly disabled woman, my mother, her voice.