Creative engagement with the voices of person-centred therapists: Using poetic illuminations to overcome data fragmentation and to highlight the nuances of lived experience

Abstract

Increasingly, creative forms of data representation are being utilised within qualitative research as a way of gaining deep, varied and nuanced knowledge of a phenomenon (Amos, 2019; Johnson et al., 2013). A poetic illumination (Scott, 2024) is an analytic and representational technique whereby the words of participants are condensed and transformed by the researcher into a poem (Glesne, 1997; Ohlen, 2003; Sanders & Lamm, 2022; Shinebourne, 2012; Sparkes & Douglas, 2007). Using poetry to represent the person can support researchers in creating intricate representations of human life and lived experience whilst also offering the potential to explicitly recognise the engagement of the researcher in the data (Amos, 2019; Johnson et al., 2013; Glesne, 1997).  In this paper, we reflect on the first author’s experiences of using poetry to highlight the nuances of lived experience and to overcome data fragmentation (Blundell & Oakley, 2023). It draws on data from the first author’s doctoral research into the lived experiences of person-centred therapists who work with primary-aged children in school-based counselling services.