Ethnography plays an important role in focusing on the natural surroundings of cultural systems like community, society, groups, and organisations. Without academic ethnographic research, we could not study as accurately the behaviours, norms and beliefs that make up human patterns and human phenomena, expressed in practice. (Shagrir, 2017)
For me, Essays for Spoken Word was an ambitious Digital Artefact project. The content is lacking, but I’m going to highlight the strengths of my research project into Olivia Gatwood’s spoken word poetry.
Olivia Gatwood is a poet, writer, activist, sexual assault educator and feminist voice that has emerged out of live Button Poetry events in middle America. She brings action and change to serious topics affecting women, including that of gendered violence. My autoethnographic analysis looks at the impact of Olivia Gatwood on feminist, spoken word poetry culture, and fans. To show this, I’m researching my own audience experience consuming her work.
My initial goal was to research three to four Button Poetry artists as an audience member and delve into what my experience was as their fan. When it became apparent that I could not handle the workload, Olivia Gatwood was the poet whose impact I needed to write about.
I relate harshly to Gatwood’s life and work. Since being 16, her stories have shed great, compassionate wisdom onto me, and have inspired my style of spoken word poetry writing, and performing. When I performed God in 2019, it was in devotion to lessons she taught me – in overcoming shame and circumstance, we must name our reality. During research for 241 this semester, I have reflected on her poems and performances that have inspired me during the last 5 years.
When I perform a love story that has empathy for relationships, it is because of both Gatwood’s poetry chapbook The Life of the Party and her Button Poetry performance I wrote my essay on: Alternate Universe in Which I am Unfazed by the Men Who Do Not Love Me.
I chose Olivia Gatwood’s Alternate Universe Poem to write about here because, at face value, it spoke to where I was at with a relationship in my life. Secondly, Alternate Universe speaks greatly to a young woman’s experience in current Western culture and society. In turn, the feedback on my essay showed Gatwood’s strong-soft words resonated with young women. I have been analysing my own experience as a fan of her spoken word performance, and as a creator of an essay for spoken word fans, through autoethnographic journaling and notetaking.
Evidence of autoethnography
Autoethnography has put strong research behind why I feel the way I do, as I investigate Gatwood’s poem through a social and cultural lens. As a researcher, I have needed to pay attention to my experiences, thoughts and emotions, and understand that they do affect my interpretations, conclusions and research outcomes. (Shalaksy and Alpert, 2007)
Autoethnographic research has encouraged me to look inside the emotive experience of being a fan with academic-based vigor to reflect, and then create original content. I have been handed a responsibility to dissect Gatwood’s feminist work; to share and learn about my experience with validating relationships and using compassion as a tool in life.
The work of feminism is far-reaching and can be highly impactful on individual lives. We need feminist voices in art spaces to deconstruct society’s teachings – because it is feminism that allows us to analyse patriarchal systems, the constellation of values, ideas and beliefs that reinforces the unjust treatment of women. (Starhawk, 2002) Gatwood’s contribution to society and culture is that she is a new-age feminist storyteller that speaks life into her audience of predominately young women. “I used to want to change the ideas of bigoted men, but I realise the more important work is in making young girls feel less alone.” (Gatwood, 2018)
In an autobiographical analysis, I have journaled using personal diaries and notebooks. A lot of pages in these three books are filled with informed poetry from being a fan of Gatwood.
I have journaled about the way her feminist stories has affected my own personal journey and written an essay on it here:
My essay about Gatwood’s Alternate Universe aims to analyse the cultural and societal meaning of the poem. Through her teachings; from (her book Life of the Party, her TedTalk We Find Each Other in the Details, her series of poems on Button Poetry, and her other live performances like Write About Now) – I have learnt the careful language that informs my introspective journey with her poetry. Because of autoethnography, I have a deeper connection with Gatwood’s spoken word and written work, and a greater understanding of the female experience in the Western world through looking at my own experience.
Personal journaling has been a pillar of strength in the documentation of my autoethnographic research. What did I learn in my personal, autobiographical journaling was:
- I crave the presence of queer and feminist role models in my life
- I find personal strength in the body positive language
- I crave to learn about anti-shaming
- I find personal strength in relating to the stories of queer poets
- I have learnt compassion for my ex-relationships
- I have learnt how to write lovingly about a relationship that caused me pain
- I have learnt growth and healing by reading how Gatwood does it
- Gatwood has inspired me write about lovers, and different loves of life through a sweet, nostalgic lens. There is power in transforming pain into lesson, love and wisdom.
“It is argued that participant observation is not merely a method of anthropology but is a form of production of knowledge through being and action.” (Shah, 2017) Participant observation on the main Olivia Gatwood content forum – YouTube – has allowed me to relate to her fans. I notice that they are impacted in the same way I am. Ultimately, reading fans YouTube comments has helped me confirm my experience as an audience member, and assisted me in gathering knowledge about the effects of Gatwood’s poems on women in society.
“To accept sensuousness is.. to lend one’s body to the world and accept its complexities, tastes, structures, and smells… sensuous scholarship is ultimately a mixing of head and heart. It is an opening of one’s being to the world – a welcoming.” (Stoller, 1997)
Sense-based ethnographic research has allowed me to stay in touch with my overwhelming human senses while consuming Gatwood’s poetry. Through sense-based ethnographic research, we can pinpoint the body’s response to new information. I have documented the physical senses and experience below.
The maintenance of my online presence and public persona was amplified through the support of my 114 DA, @2000slovepoetry, an Instagram poetry account. I promoted my Gatwood essay here and got the audience of my 114 DA to engage. Throughout the semester, I have noted that it’s been incredibly helpful to have both my 241 and 114 poetry DAs working together. Even researching more of Gatwood’s performances helped me to write more poetry content and posts for my other DA.
The benefit of my 114 DA is that my public persona for 241 could be performed on my Instagram poetry account, holistically. I’ve learned that in growing original content for audiences, the act of performing my persona has been a rich tool. I have found Goffman’s ideas about persona to be most influential, “The performance of a persona is shaped by prior knowledge, and is continually reassembled and performed.” (Goffman, 1959)
Conclusions: I created original content through ethnography by analysing the effect of Olivia Gatwood’s impact on my life. The way of the world, and some findings about the female experience is highlighted in Alternate Universe. I have sorely learned from it.
My ethnographic journey has allowed me to dismantle my praise of Gatwood’s poetry and look/find for a way to see the poem through a societal and cultural lens. Olivia Gatwood’s poetry is inherently the work of a strong, feminist spoken-word character, and I have benefited greatly from incorporating her vision of life into my own. It seems like most of her fans are impacted in great ways.
I recognise that I needed to create more content to achieve a well-rounded, full DA. I also recognise that a combination of mental health issues and personal matters made it more difficult to perform. I found issues of social anxiety, need for anonymity and fierce awareness of my digital footprint – all definite barriers to promoting my essay on my personal Instagram. Although this promotion would have achieved a bigger audience for my DA and more feedback, I acknowledge it was just part of my ethnography journey that I couldn’t fufil. I really enjoyed that 241 has given me the opportunity to reflect critically on the impact Olivia Gatwood has on my life.
References
https://www.instagram.com/oliviagatwood/
Boyle, K 2019, #MeToo, Weinstein and Feminism, Springer International Publishing AG, Cham. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central.
Gatwood, O., 2017. Olivia Gatwood – Alternate Universe in Which I am Unfazed by the Men Who Do Not Love Me. [online] Youtube.com. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ8W522jPyk>.
Khan, S., 2020. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959). Public Culture, 32(2), pp.397-404.
Mirriam-Goldberg, C. and Starhawk, 2002. Visionary Activist. The Women’s Review of Books, 20(3), p.11.
Shah, A., 2017. Ethnography?. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 7(1), pp.45-59.
Shagrir, Leah. Journey to Ethnographic Research, Springer International Publishing AG, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uow/detail.action?docID=4722277. Created from uow on 2021-11-13 17:19:13.
Shlasky, S., & Alpert, B. (2007). Ways of writing qualitative research from deconstructing reality to its construction as a text . Tel Aviv: Mofet Institute.
Sparkes, A., 2009. Ethnography and the senses: challenges and possibilities. Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise, 1(1), pp.21-35.
Stoller, P. 1997. Sensuous scholarship, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Williams, R., 2021. Olivia Gatwood’s Alternate Universe: In Which She Is Unfazed By The Men Who Do Not Love Her. [online] internet kid. Available at: <https://poetryinthestreets.video.blog/2021/09/29/olivia-gatwoods-alternate-universe-in-which-she-is-unphazed-by-the-men-who-do-not-love-her/>.
internet kid 