Poetry as Creative Documentation

Group work on the Locations of Culture course took us to an after-school club called Gnistan. We talked about laughter. Conjured up its feeling when it’s inside us, bursting to come out. We wondered what it would look like, if we could see it? And where it might go, when it’s released to the world. Then we built laughs.

This was an opportunity to use a poetic text as documentation. The whole text was entitled The Hand, The Eye, The Heart – our teacher Helena Cavada Fernandez’ intruction was to interact with all three. Below is the section referring to the laughter workshop.

“The hand, the eye, the space around the heart

we go into our ribcages at Gnistan

calling forth the buoyancy of laughter

wondering what it could look like

where it goes

Descartes called wonder a guiding emotion

children are professional wonderers

laughing and screaming at outcomes”