(In)Habitings

Abstract

Conceiving poetic inquiry as a space for exploring, perceiving, and imagining, I present poetic (art-making through lyric and figural languages) and simultaneously inquiry (a research-method) through a series of autoethnographic (in)habitings. Weaving poems, lyrical narratives, metaphoric, and speculative reveries, I cast a loose net of inquiry (a method theorized and practiced as orb-weaving) into multi-dimensional spaces to examine the affective intensities of longing. Through temporal, imagistic, and spatial slippages (the openings in the net of entanglements), spaces are left open to experience the sensations of being in the world. A demonstration and discussion of an architectonics of structure and language-in-use theorizes metaphors to support poetic inquiry-in-the-making—web, hinge, and circumambulations—and poetry’s resources—a poiesis of unspoken and kinetic gesturings. Endnotes provide explanations of the conceptual metaphors employed and notes on research processes and influences. Freed from the bonds of explanation and findings, this poetic inquiry is crafted to engage readers in multi-dimensional spaces of sensory, shape-shifting, and (re)cognition of the open beauty of (re)searching—exploring the poetic, ephemeral, and shimmering data of live/fe worlds. The ultimate goal is to create (in)habitings that are multi-verses of feeling, longing, and love. Longing—a kind of ache in both method and subject—resides in the spaces of in-between-ness.