"I’ve already resisted that scholarship is not creative and poetry is not part of my scholarly self. I think the idea of autoethnography allows for that cultural divide between the creative and academic to be really disrupted."
"The following autoethnographic poetry represents the experience of being a casual academic negotiating the workspace."
Ulla-Maija Matikainen·
All ContentAutoethnographic EssaysAutoethnographic PoetryEducationFrom the EditorsVolume 3, Issue 2 (2023)
··4 min read A tsunami of words, images, learned and pushed feelings and thoughts go through us every day. Poetry is a way to find our own voice.
This collection of poems is a glimpse into the lives lived on the margins, where the laws put in place to protect basic rights and bodily autonomy cease to apply.
The dynamic taking place in these poems was autoethnography, a hybrid of my investigation of the 1960's coupled with my personal experience.
You will find ten poems by ten Albanian poets (mostly women poets) from Kosovo and Albania and our diaspora, translated into English by me.
Humor acts as a defense mechanism, a pressure release valve, a teaching tool. As a heart surgeon, I have used laughter for all these reasons.