Accessing the psychodynamics of organisations through applied organisational poetry

This article explores the contribution applied poetry can make to psychodynamic-ally informed qualitative inquiry into the lived experience of workplaces. “What it is like to work here.” The authors propose that, as a different way of knowing, applied poetry complements traditional research methods. The authors explain what applied organisational poetry is, how it “works”, how it fosters self-reflection within the researcher/consultant, and how it functions as a metaphoric “tuning fork” that resonates with clients, interviewees, and group members who share an attuned awareness in their lives awakened in the poems. The authors offer three illustrations of the poet co-author’s applied organisational poems and how, as qualitative research data, they contribute to psychodynamically informed interpretation and intervention in workplaces. The article concludes with a story or “case example” of what the approach discussed here “looks like” in the lived world of an organisational intervention.