This activity gives participants the opportunity to gather reflections and distill/synthesize learnings through creative and lateral thinking. It can add humor and be a springboard for sharing insights.
This method asks participants to reflect upon a specific topic, issue, experience, or learning by distilling reactions into a short poetic form. This distillation process can be way to imaginatively, intuitively, and playfully respond in a way that disrupts habituated language and thought patterns. This method can create space for people who naturally process or express information in non-linear ways and challenges those who are used to traditional linear forms to stretch their capacities. Limiting the number of words and creating structure can stimulate creativity.
This can be combined with metaphorical thinking. Example, writing a poem from the perspective of a mountain about your project or about the topic.
Use a form of “found poetry” in which words from existing texts (or post-its and meeting notes) are re-organized to form new meanings.
https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/teaching-strategies/found-poems
The international Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) has a tradition (since 2001) of summarizing key papers in Haiku. Example: Renee Weber’s summation of the paper “Thermal Moonquakes: Implications for Surface Properties” Sunrise and sunset | Cracking, creaking, and rumbling | The Moon never rests
Haikubes can be a useful way to get things started
Reassure participants that the Haiku structure doesn’t have to be followed rigidly - it is intended as a limiting factor to spark creativity.
Prendergast, M. (2006). Found poetry as literature review: Research poems on audience and performance. Qualitative Inquiry, 12(2), 369-388.
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