A poem ain't gonna change the world. But learning how to create and be comfortable doing it will. Change does not come by repeating what was, but by birthing something new. Creation is a god-like act. It does not just happen. Life is busy, tiring, pressuring. It takes time and energy to carve into our schedule space for creativity. To foster this feeling, to nurture it, so it can nurture us in return and pour over other dimensions of our life and back into the world. Avoiding the social reproduction of the world requires also standing up against inertia, the masses, structural constrains. It requires some level of Courage. There is always some level of risk involved for those willing to put their head above the water to push for social change. Courage to stand up on our own against what is and what needs to change does not happen in a day. We need to learn how to be navigate our fear, work with it, keep pushing in spite of it. Standing in front of a crowd, in public, reading a poem we have created, for many is something out of our comfort zone. Pushing against our fear, one public display of creativity at a time, helps us grow in confidence. Standing on our own, yet not really alone.

To curate a space and structure some time for our students to put these ideas into practice, Alex Stoffel and I organised a poetry activity on Thursday 16 2023 as one of the teach-outs taking place at the London School of Economics during the 2023 strikes over pensions and pay​  This is how we introduced the activity to the students:

"We thought this would be a wonderful opportunity to reconnect and spend some time together outside of the regular setting. The objective is to share our frustrations and hopes for the higher education system. Everyone is invited to come (please don't hesitate to invite others!) and should bring along either poetry you have created or that others have written. The poetry doesn't have to be directly about academia; it can be related to any themes of resistance and creating a different future, individually or collectively."

The activity was completely voluntary. To help students prepare themselves and give them a boost of confidence, we organised a get-together a few days before. 

The event was a blast. As one of the participants shared on Twitter, it was truly a "magical" experience. Yes, we did drop "some nasty rhymes"  but it was also about putting ourselves out there, standing up together and inspiring each other. As another of the participants shared after the event: "Overall, it was simply one of the best things .... to be part of something much bigger than our everyday, mundane life :)"  

Because this is not something many of us had done before and in the context of the global classroom,  where many of our students face pressure regarding censorship from their home country, VISA and scholarship status, we aimed for the activity to be as inclusive as possible. We shared the following with the students prior to the event:

• "Some students may feel comfortable reading poems in public but not writing them. Some students may feel comfortable writing poems but not reading them. Strength comes from uniting our forces. For those who come to the preparatory session, we will do some matching up between writers-only and readers-only students so everyone can play a role and feel comfortable with their participation. If you can’t come for the prep session, just send Alex/I an email with the poem you would like other people to read, or saying that you volunteer to read someone else’s poem.
• Following on the previous point, we would like to more specifically address the concerns of those of you who would like to be involved but have concerns regarding being a speaker during the teach-out session on Thursday 16 because of VISA/scholarship/privacy/censorship concerns. We organise this event to inspire and support each other in believing a world with more creativity and freedom is possible. As a result, we don’t want those of you who need this strength the most to have to self-censor or feel excluded, but we also don’t want to put you in potential harm.  We brainstormed strategies to make you feel safe and as included as you feel comfortable to be. We suggest the following options:

-       The preparatory session will be in a controlled environment where we will ask participants not to take pictures/videos of other students, so everyone feels safe to join;
-       Alex, I and the students who volunteer can read the poems of the students who want to write poems anonymously;
-       I invite all students who have written poems to send them to me after the event so I can publish them as a blog post on my methodological artist blog. Those who want will be able to publish them anonymously;
-       Some students suggested coming up with masks/hats to avoid facial recognition. This would be visually very powerful, especially if a group of you do it. Please don’t feel pressured to do it, but if some of you want to organise a masked intervention you are very much welcome.
-       Whether or not you write poems, you are always welcome to join the teach-out on Thursday 16 as part of the audience."

As one of the students who contributed to the event anonymously commented: "Showing solidarity with academics during the strike actions in such creative forms is memorable. I find the teach-outs and marches very politically awakening. As an international student, it's a precious opportunity to learn how the higher education system works and how the flawed mechanism can affect academics and students. Having been living in an authoritarian context before coming to study in the UK, I haven't had any chance to join a march and protest for myself and make an appeal. I cherish expressing solidarity with you all."

Below are the poems of the students who volunteered to share them on the blog-post. Some of the poems come with a bit of context (at the end of the poem) that the students wanted to share with us, for example when the poem is centred around a specific reference to LSE or their experience.

I hope you'll enjoy reading the poems and participating in this creative journey as much as we did 😍​

By Audrey Alejandro, the Methodological Artist
Here is the video of me reciting the poem the day of the event. Thank you Pilar Elizalde for the recording.

Once upon a time in a land far way
In the wild I was born.

Through the earth, through the air,
Through the shadows, through the sea
Life and work got me here, in the intellectual concrete
Some call L.S.E.

Hired I became. Cooking for my students
Prepar-ing for them my wee-kly potion:
1 Litre of analytical wit to sharpen the mind
1 cup of courage to help grow a strong spine
1 spoon of unknown for the imagination
A few words of magic for the transformation
How sweet is the taste of the witchy witch poison.

I’m cooking, I’m cooking 
… but something‘s going on.
Do you hear anything?
Let me pay attention.
A mutter in the sky, a murmur in my heart.
I hear a word: despair.
Where is it coming from?

Thousands of admin files laced in regulations. They shriek.
Neo-liberal eyes, red and dull, modern abomination. They speak:

“Her ideas are quite weird 
She doesn’t brush her hair.
She wears too much colour. 
She won’t go anywhere.”

Witch-hunters in disguise. They come.
They try to hunt me down.
But what did I expect?
I signed my name in the book of the beast after all, didn’t I?
Dehumanisation monster, factory for the mind,
All that for my pay-check.
Life undead, depletion, exhaustion spells.
Where can I go for help?

I look inside.
Sekhmet, Hecate, Chhinnamasta, Cerridwen.
Goddess of wisdom and change.
We call upon you, 
I the crazy weird witch and the children of the new.
Give us courage. Give us strength.
Show us the path and guide us through.

Silence. Then the goddess softly says:
“Rise poets. Rise.
Rise from these dreadful ashes. 
I bless a reform for this institution.
Consume none. Provoke many.
Rise into the brave inspiring adults you were always meant to be.”

By Miyuki Shiraki

Beaver the weaver
See her build and burrow
Strong-willed and thorough
Thrilled to claim space
As if there’s no tomorrow

Meagre branches
See her
She dances
Bring the twig
Tease her
She advances
Mapping margins
Stacking in the gardens
Hard work pays off
Believe her
She’s Beaver the believer

Then
In the Eden
Where the beaver is eager
Time stops
A sudden seizure
Crime stomps
​On her future
The beaver feels weaker
Annoyed and devoid
With a void deployed

Delusional is the institutional
Imputable, not excusable
Today, a long wait
The days elongate
It’s like an endless hike
This current strike
Casualisation, pay gaps, and withdrawing from Stonewall
Deceiver, can’t you see her?
Why leave her?
Keep her,
Beaver the believer

“To know the causes of things”
You know what dramas that bring,
Deceiver, you leave her
Beaver and the teacher
Teach her, the creature,
​Beaver the believer
To be the achiever

Context: The beaver is LSE mascot. The poem uses the beaver as a metaphor to express what it feels like to be a willing and hardworking students in the current system.

by Walter Schutjens

And the men who hold high places 
Must be the ones who start 
To mould a new reality 
Closer to the heart 
 
But now high places have high salaries 
And thus think themselves apart 
These high places are these glass towers 
That grow further from the heart 
 
LSE's founders forged into much older stained glass 
And thus, unto us impart  
A demand for social justice through knowledge 
Made directly from the heart 
 
Knowledge derived from knowing the cause of things 
our motto: Rerum cognoscere causas if you're smart 
Knowledge of real working conditions 
Using both our heads and heart 
 
To move away from this progressive political legacy 
And let neoliberal technocrats freely play their corruptive part 
Would mean losing our direction and humanity 
The substance of the heart 
 
Their casual casualization of effective education  
Will force future generations to restart 
In their slow progress to freer societies 
That lie nearer to the heart 
 
This management is an affront to LSE's history 
And yet they seem to make it into their art 
To laissez fairly undermine its very foundation 
And drive stakes through this beaver’s heart 

Context: This fact may strike people as unlikely nowadays, but it is no coincidence that the same people who founded the Labour Society were also the founders of our LSE. These people were the Fabians and they inscribed in its very motto the critical dictum that it retains today: rerum cognoscere causas 'know the cause of things', this dictum is in its nature progressive at it promotes understanding of society by its roots, much like the method of the reformist socialist project they initiated in the early 20th century. In the back of the Shaw Library on the 6th floor of the Old Building one can find a stained glass window that was made on the day of LSE's opening, at the top of this modern interpretation of classical liturgy one finds the biblical dictum: 'Remould It Nearer to the Hearts Desire' - it captured the socialist social scientific project LSE was to embark on; but what has come of it when a modern LSE doesnt respect the basic workers rights of its employees. This poem is a reflection on LSE's heritage and what has changed. The first stanza is lent from the classic Rush song: 'Closer to the Heart'. 

by Gabby Unipan

​I stand alone
In a foreign country
Far from friends, family, and home
Am I alone?
I feel so far away

I find myself waiting, watching, yearning
For an unrecognizable reality,
a home, a school, a society
I have never known.

I stand alone
Grieving an experience I could have had,
Should have had.
Stolen out of my grasp
By an invisible, seemingly invincible, divisible force
We all recognize but fail to kill

It smothers us, blinds us, 
Snuffs out our senses
This force, this system
Robs our autonomy
Reduces individuality to marketability

I stand alone,
Forcibly deprioritizing the things I value most
Community, connection, creativity
In favor of my profitable qualities

I stand alone, screaming into the void,
Counteracting the commodification of my experience,
Of my labor,
Of my learning,
Of my teachers,
My classmates, my friends, my family,
My creativity.

Do you stand alone?
Will you stand with me?

by Ruth Boardman

How can it be that the very institutions given the power to educate,
Those who want to learn and strive for a better future,
Those who aim to better not only themselves but future generations,
Those aiming to create a safer and more respectful culture.
 
How can it be that those very same institutions publish research on equality,
Civil, social, economic, health, political.
Research that is used in different sectors of industry,
Leading to outcomes that twenty years ago would have been thought of as miracles.
 
How can it be that these very same institutions who cite values of integrity and diversity;
Claiming to build sustainable futures for people alike,
Leave their staff fearing for their jobs,
Causing them to strike.
 
How can it be that these very same institutions whose research leads to miracles,
Has a third of academic staff on temporary contracts who are hourly paid,
These are the academics facing job insecurity,
Unsure if they’ll be returning to work or facing the blade.
 
How can it be that these very same institutions who seek to drive positive change,
Have decided to accept a negative change in its staff’s pensions,
With a guaranteed loss in retirement incomes.
Are you not aware of this condescension?
 
How can it be that these very same institutions preaching diversity,
See ethnic, gender and disability pay gaps.
Ironically publishing papers on gaps in other industries,
Whilst falling themselves dangerously into the trap.
 
How can it be that these very same institutions,
Who myself, my friends and those who study here,
Have paid thousands of pounds to learn from your academic staff,
Are suffering due to your inability to make these inequalities disappear?
 
How can it be that these very same institutions,
Are failing their staff and students?

by Hongli Liu

Maybe we can be excellent in teaching,
But we lack the energy.
 
Maybe we always show up in class,
But we lose the passion.
 
Maybe we work endlessly to get job done,
But our time and work are not respected.
 
Maybe we understand education systems change,
But we never thought our situation would be on the margin.
 
Maybe we want to give our best to students,
But our real-life situation drains us.
 
Maybe … we are all fragile human beings,
But we have been treated like superheroes.
 
Maybe we just want to show our resistance via strike,
But nobody listens.
Or,
If anybody is listening...
 
So, we look up, where does our help come from?
Does it come from those who sit in these tall buildings?
No, our help comes from those who listen and acts upon our words.

by Macquarie
​
You say the rainbow ugly,
I see we shining in your dictionary;
You say we deviant and silly,
I see we writing down your obituary.
 
Dancing coord,
Singing pulse;
Unnamed color,
Unbuttoned coat;
You say we are nothing,
I see we are everything.
 
I see you watching,
I see you listening;
Stop raping my mother tongue,
Stop murdering my sisters young.
 
“The Child is father of the Man,”
But all you do is wear your masks deadpan;
Dude, we are making it real,
We shall bear no child to be our Achilles’ Heel;
We are the last generation,
We’ll shout that out loud on your coronation.
 
Your voice is unequivocal,
My tears are political;
Because in love I see all the possibilities,
In love, I see all the divinities.
 
I see les feuilles tombent en dansant,
Le soleil se couche en éteignant,
Le cœur se brise en saignant,
Le cheval rouge court en suant,
La mer déferle en rugissant,
La chanson finissant en continuant,
Le petit prince part en disant adieu tendrement.

by Alex Stoffel
​
My first day on a picket line,
It was cold and rainy.
A bus honked in passing,
And a friend said to me,
“Solidarity feels like you’re turning inside out.”

We spoke about teaching,
but about marking and metrics,
and a bus honked in passing.

We spoke about research,
but about submissions and citations.
while another bus honked.

Three more years on the picket,
It’s cold and rainy.
We speak about academic struggles,
about holding them,
like prized possessions,
turning inwards on ourselves.

My fourth year on the picket,
the bus drivers have won their dispute.
We speak about winning,
about turning outwards into politics.
We smile in anticipation,
As a bus honks in passing.

It’s cold and rainy,
but I say to my friend,
“Solidarity turns you inside out.”

如果作为学生，你曾被告知：你的研究“描述性太强”，你需要“更具分析性”；
 
如果作为一名教师，你曾告诉你的学生：你们的作业“描述性太强”，缺乏“分析深度”。
 
那么，你应该来读读这篇文章。

事实上，尽管我们普遍鼓励让作业和研究论文“更具分析性”，但老师可能从未让学生知道，什么是好的分析标准。分析，可以说是社会科学殿堂中的一头大象，包括所有的那些带有“数据分析”字眼的相关课程——例如我所开设的“话语分析”。

分析是一个转化的过程：原始数据和信息本身并不具有意义，是我们通过分析的过程赋予其意义。
 
分析也是一个创造的过程：我们通过分析所创造的是，关于世界的新话语，它帮助人们以不同的方式感知世界，从而理解他们在阅读我们的研究之前，不知道或不理解的事情。
 
但分析是如何生效的呢？分析又是如何使世界变得有意义的呢？笼统地说：分析，通过聚焦、整理、命名以及建立范式与关系，来帮助其他人建立对这些范式与关系的感知，从而以不同方式理解世界。
 
有一个关于分析的比喻很好，那就是天文学家和其他观星爱好者识别星座的工作。天空布满了星星，但是尽管如此，有些人还是在天空中画出了图案，给这些图案命名，甚至围绕着这样形成的形状创造了一系列故事。这种感知天空的方式代代相传，被人们传授并写在书上，了解过这些知识的人在看星星的时候，都会不自觉地注意到星座。

以下，是来自方法论专著中的两个关于分析的定义：
 
“从字面上看，分析是将复杂的东西‘分解’成较小的部分，并以这些较小的部分的属性和它们之间的关系，来解释整体” (Robson 2011: 412)
 
“分析是给数据带来秩序的过程，它将已存在的东西组织成模式、类别和描述性单元，并寻找它们之间的关系；‘解读（interpretation）’涉及在分析中赋予意义和重要性，从而解释模式、类别和关系...”（Brewer 2000: 105）
 
这些定义，突出了分析工作中的双重过程。一方面，分析工作是对复杂混乱的现象进行分解和简化；另一方面，分析工作会在选定的元素之间建立模式，以产生一种解释世界的新的混合思路。
 
在研究的实际操作中，一个小时的访谈，转录记录可能会多达40页纸，而10个访谈的转录记录，就相当于400页纸。我们需要将我们的材料分解成可管理的部分，并专注于某些元素而放弃其他元素，以便我们能识别出隐藏在这些数据中的最有趣的知识。

作为社会科学家，从我们的数据中创造任何意义和话语是可以的吗？我说过，分析是一个创造性的过程，但这是否意味着可以创造一切？
 
答案当然是否定的。意义不是原始数据所固有的，而是研究者在培育经验材料的过程中，与其共谋的结果；因此，这一观点并不意味着从社会科学的目的出发，我们能从数据中随意创造任何话语。
 
针对我们需要怎么做才能实现良好的分析的问题，我们需要制定一些明确的标准，才能帮助我们确保我们的分析目标处于正轨。总结一下就是说：分析的目的是在基于经验数据的基础上，产生一个令人信服的证明，以描述、解释和解读一个社会现象

实际上，上述定义的每个词都有其重要性。在下面的“车轮状”示意图中，我对分析的这个定义进行了详细的阐释，以明确良好分析的标准。

让我们进一步解读这些标准：

• 描述：

​即为讲述清楚发生了什么事？记得确保在描述证据之前不要妄下结论。

• 解释和解读：

对经验材料的描述是分析工作的一个必要层面，但这还不够。读者需要我们再往前走一步，向他们解释正在发生什么。根据我们的研究问题，举个例子，它可能是情况背后的原因、它们出现的条件、行动者如何在不同情境中对其进行意义的解释等等。我们需要超越简单地描述数据中的内容，通过将我们的材料与现有的理论和文献联系起来，综合解释和解读我们所审查的议题和情况。

• 具体的研究对象：

通过选择相关材料进行分析，为研究问题提供答案。我们需要的，只有与分析相关的材料！我们有一个目的，就是我们的分析需要坚持与研究对象相关。我们的数据中会有一些有趣的东西，但并不直接回答我们的研究问题，此时，我们必须无情地牺牲掉它们！意大利面非常好，但如果我们是要去烤蛋糕，我们就不要把意大利面放进蛋糕里，否则我们就会把蛋糕弄坏，前功尽弃。总结一下就是说：我们的数据中可能有一些非常有趣的东西，但如果它们脱离了我们具体的研究主题，它们就需要被淘汰。

• 为别人的论述：

分析工作，不是我们为自己写数据总结，它是我们传达给别人的东西。它需要清晰和具有吸引力，它是一项论证工作，我们需要说服读者；想象一下，我们正试图说服我们认识的人!

• 呈现：

实现令人信服的分析工作的一个非常好的方法，是呈现我们分析的严谨性，创造一些不仅仅是能让人产生深刻印象的东西。我们需要超越择优挑选的轶闻般的案例，争取使我们的论证变得透明和可追溯，使读者能够理解我们是如何得出我们的解释的。我们需要对假设、程序和步骤提供一个清晰的说明，从而努力实现一个系统性的论证。我们还需要制定有步骤的分析策略和程序，并始终如一地遵循，这也意味着我们要用同样的分析框架和同样的问题来处理我们的所有数据（例如我们的所有访谈记录）。


我们每个人都有天然的优势和劣势。例如，我们中的一些人在清晰地表达他们的论点方面没有问题，但在使他们研究课题环环相扣方面却很费劲；也有人擅长提供丰富的解读，但却不太能呈现他们是如何得出这些结论的。我们需要做的，首先是了解清楚哪些分析维度是我们的弱点，或者哪些维度是我们经常会忽视的，随后，将我们所意识到的我们的劣势作为优先事项而加以努力。
 
“车轮状的分析过程示意图”，或许可以作为一个罗盘来指导我们的工作，使其“更有分析性”，而使用这个示意图检测我们研究的关键时刻，是在我们完成第一稿之后。我们可以把车轮中所标注的流程作为一个检查表，把它的不同要素与我们迄今取得的结果进行比较。我们是在提供解读，还是仅仅描述数据中的内容？我们是把我们的分析作为自己的总结来写，还是作为旨在说服听众的论述来写？我们需要在这个车轮状的示意图与我们的分析之间反复检查

This article is also available in English here, and as pdf.
Puede leer el artículo en español aquí.