I say a little prayer for me: Poetry as spiritual self-care in the ethnographic field

Abstract

How do we make sense of our place in the field as researchers and as sexual, spiritual beings? Ethnographic fieldwork is central to several disciplines, including geography. It involves the researcher encountering and gathering stories and meanings through interaction with people's lived experiences in settings that are often not the researcher's own. Although rarely strain-free, fieldwork is seen as a transformative experience, both from the personal and the academic point of view. This paper, situated at the intersection of geography, queer/ing practices, and ethnographic methodology, explores poetry as a form of self-care in the field. In recent years, poetry has emerged as a creative and productive mode of representation and (co-)interpretation of qualitative data. Based on my own spiritual experience(s) while conducting fieldwork in Spain, I consider prayer cards as a poetic form and a means through which issues of self-care and spiritual self-preservation are made visible, particularly when experienced within a social environment that is hostile to LGBTQ+ lived experiences of faith.