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Poetic Gestures of Life

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Poetry And Imagined Worlds

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture ((PASCC))

Abstract

This chapter is an exploration of how personal life and family history interact with the experiences of being a visiting student and researcher in a foreign place. The author describes the role of writing poetry and being educated on her family background through stories. She uses her own experience of becoming a mother as a frame for the chapter and discusses her experiences in urban and rural Gujarat, India, where she has spent extensive amounts of time researching families with infants and small children. Some of these experiences that changed her life are described in detail and illustrated through poems written during this time. She concludes by reflecting how her own motherhood enables her see new connections to her research participants.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Clarification by a cultural insider: This is a very frequent action, often used with children NOT TO BE misunderstood as actually physical abuse as has been by so many.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tilburg center for Cognition and Communication, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Monika Abels

  2. Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Seewiesen, Germany

    Monika Abels

Authors
  1. Monika Abels
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Fylke, Norway

    Olga V. Lehmann

  2. Lady Irwin College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India

    Nandita Chaudhary

  3. Catholic University of Salvador and Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil

    Ana Cecilia Bastos

  4. Department of Psychology, Ramapo College, Mahwah, NJ, USA

    Emily Abbey

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Abels, M. (2017). Poetic Gestures of Life. In: Lehmann, O., Chaudhary, N., Bastos, A., Abbey, E. (eds) Poetry And Imagined Worlds. Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64858-3_14

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