Abstract

This practice-led study explores the experiences of four poets in relation to specific landscapes and its inspiration on the creative practitioner. The research study focuses on tactile perception and its influence on the artistic process as both experiential and interpretative tool. It utilizes the idea of the ‘haptic intuitive’ (Di Giovine, 2015), specifically the finger pads, for a qualitative phenomenological study framed by fieldwork in nature and expressed in a 3D poetic canvas. The Flaneur methodology was applied to the approach made in the field and developed. This poetic style of walking which is historically associated with Baudelaire is chiefly applied to research in urban settings (Frisby, 1998) However, in this research study, the concept of a “Forest Flaneur” was developed as the scope of the fieldwork involved rural settings and encouraged movement (walking) in random directions primarily linked to tactile attraction in natural landscapes. The methodology developed focused on case studies of four walking poets’ inspirational landscapes (Wordsworth, Whitman, Machado and Snyder). The notion of the “Forest Flaneur” which has been developed in this study is a poetic walking style in nature, highlighting tactile memories, in rural settings. The contribution to knowledge focuses on a method of revisiting the experiences of poets in relation to their specific inspirational landscape and refining that method through exploring the tactile dimension of experience. This method of separating the tactile from the non-tactile has relevance for the creative practitioner, Furthermore, when undertaking this research I allowed a period of 15+ day’s gestation period between the haptic work in the field and the creative response to that experience on the poetic canvas in the studio. This relationship to time and what I have called ‘the looping of experience’ became a second key part of the research methodology. This methodology uses the memory of a visceral emotive ‘in situ moment’ as a stimulus - a memory formed in the somosensory cortex as a response to the 15+day gestation period. The cognitive process that is a consequence of the time lapse, or ‘time looping’ between the two events, synthesizes in the brain with the recall activity undertaken in the studio during the creative process. The research suggests that haptic experience (tactile perception) tends to enrich the creative process in both visual art and poetry.