Poetry

Poetry has been used as an alternative form of representation in evaluation reporting. As an educative tool, poetry can communicate complex findings in ways that create a learning dissonance for the readers of the report. Evaluations that use poetry in this regard seek to provoke critical dialogue among evaluation stakeholders about a particular phenomenon under investigation. By constructing a poem and creatively using the language from the narrative data obtained during the inquiry, evaluators can enhance the conceptual utility of an evaluation report, advancing understandings about an experience in a program or the influence of a policy.

Poetry can move people into conversations beyond the case at hand. As the poetry in an evaluation report influences the meanings and values held by the different stakeholders regarding an evaluand, higher moral, social, and political issues for reflection can surface. In and of itself, the presence of poetry in an evaluation report can promote discussions among readers about processes and products of evaluative inquiry. Poetry as a form of evaluative representation has the potential to create dialogue about what is and what is not an evaluation and why this is perceived as so. It can serve as a useful springboard for discourse about higher ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions associated with evaluation.

Including poetry in an evaluation document can also be thought of as a strategy for making the evaluation report more accessible to audiences who may not be drawn to reading a technical piece of writing. For some report readers, poetry is an engaging way of thinking about evaluation findings. Poetry can be a useful medium for including diverse audiences who may not otherwise be attracted to participating in the reporting phase of an evaluation.

Poetry can be fashioned for an evaluation report in different ways. Poetic transcription is a specific form of analytic writing that combines the voices of the evaluation participants with an interpretive analysis conducted by the evaluator. The constructed evaluation findings embody a new collective third voice. Evaluation participants can also be asked to submit poetry that communicates their meaning of experience about a particular issue. Likewise, evaluators can reflect on the thoughts, feelings, or perspectives of evaluation participants and transform them into their own words.

An evaluation report is likely to be more vulnerable to questions of credibility when poetry is introduced. Whether an evaluator infuses another's poetry or adopts the role of poet in his or her own report writing, it is important that the narrative fidelity of the poem is attended to. As with any assertion that is embedded in narrative ways of knowing, an evaluator is responsible for exploring the verisimilitude of the poetry with the audience it is intended to represent and the audience of readers it has been created to influence.