Black Poetic Inquiry

The poems in this project were written within a 24‑hour period of each other and are presented in order of their appearance for the month of January 2024.

Written as a call and response to each other, the poems are at times direct responses in content and form, or a mediation on what the offering triggered in the other. Using poetry writing as a methodological engagement with the reflective and reflexive attributes of autoethnography, this project offers an examination of lived experience and will provide a critical expansion of poetic inquiry. An example of "collaborative spirit‑writing," this text uses a dialogical exchange of responsiveness, excavating the lived experiences of the two authors (a Black man and a Black woman) with complex intersectional identities. Using poetic writing as both form and function, this book provides a performance of remembrance and resistance.

Students and researchers working with qualitative inquiry and in areas from performative writing to Critical Race Studies will find this book a useful addition to their research. Teachers will also find this book facilitates pedagogies of engagement.

Bryant Keith Alexander is Professor and Dean of College of Communication and Fine Arts at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles.

Mary E. Weems is an independent scholar, imagination‑intellect theorist, poet, playwright, performer, and author of numerous books and journal articles, and five chapbooks.