Freebirthing in the United Kingdom: The Voice Centered Relational Method and the (de)Construction of the I-Poem

The Use of Poetry in Qualitative Research

In Woman Work Maya Angelou skillfully draws the reader into the life of an unnamed African American woman and provides us with a sense of how it may feel to walk in her shoes. In this example, Angelou demonstrates how poetry can be a powerful way for an author to communicate a message, to voice an experience and to stir the emotions of the reader.

While poetry comes in myriad forms its primary purpose is to connect with its audience. As the poet Robert Frost stated:

There are three things, after all, that a poem must reach: the eye, the ear, and what we may call the heart or the mind. It is most important of all to reach the heart of the reader. (Newdict, 1937, p. 298)

The ability of a poem to stir the emotions is what makes it attractive to some qualitative researchers. Ricci (2003) highlights that “[p]oetry and qualitative research share in their goals of providing meaning, density, aestheticism, and reflexivity. They are also evocative” (p. 590). Poetic inquiry has therefore emerged as a method by which the social scientist can analyze and present their data in a format that “merge[s] the tenets of qualitative research with the craft and rules of traditional poetry” (Leavy, 2009, p. 64). It is also frequently used by researchers to become socially engaged and politically active (see Faulkner, 2019, p. xi). Speaking more broadly on arts-based research, Leavy (2009) argues that the presentation of data in this atypical way can raise critical awareness, promote dialogue and “give voice” to subjugated perspectives (pp. 13–14). It also has the potential to reach a wider and more diverse audience than those within and connected to academia.

Poetic Inquiry

Poetic inquiry does not have a fixed definition (Vincent, 2018, p. 49). However broadly speaking, Butler-Kisber (2016) describes it as:

…the process of using words from transcripts or field notes from our studies and transforming them into a form of poetry. (00:10)

As I-poems use the words voiced by participants during interviews and captured in written form within an interview transcript, they fall within the second of Prendergast’s (2009) three categories of poetic inquiry, namely “Vox Participare” or “Participant-voiced poems” (p. 545). Participant-voiced poems are most typically written by the researcher but can also be created by the participants as a form of data (see Bishop & Willis, 2014) or even by the participants from their own interview transcripts (Lafreniére & Cox, 2012).

Further, I-poems are also a form of “found” poetry as researchers applying this methodology “use the actual words of the participant” (Butler-Kisber, 2016 at 00:10). Typically, found poems take “existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems” (https://Poets.org, “Found Poem: Poetic form,” 2004, para. 1). Found poetry is a large and complex area, which links to wider artistic forms that appropriate, remix and borrow from other writers, speakers, musicians and artists (see for example, Epstein, 2012). Appropriation as an art form has a long history and includes for example collage, photography, and the work of well-known artists such as Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso (Epstein, 2012; Van Camp, 2007).

In the last 2 decades found poetry has appeared frequently in the popular media, often to make political statements. Hart Seely (2003), for example created found poems from the speeches of Donald Rumsfeld, using official transcripts that appeared on the US Defense Department website. In the context of qualitative research, found poetry has been created from the transcripts of interviews relating to a range of studies. This includes for example, the experiences of Holocaust survivors (Rapport & Harthill, 2016) and people living in residential care (Miller et al., 2015).

I-poems are therefore rooted in both literary and qualitative methodological theory. They exist in an artistic sphere that incorporates poetic inquiry, found poetry and appropriation art. As already noted, L. M. Brown and Gilligan (1992) created VCRM using literary theory as one of its foundational bases. This foundational underpinning is demonstrated most acutely in the use of I-poems during the second reading.

Quality and Poetic Inquiry

The presentation of qualitative data in poetic form is not without its critics. Piirto (2002) raises concerns with regard to the frequent lack of literary qualifications of social scientists who create poetry from their research. She laments that in qualitative research, “[t]o write poetry one need not have studied it” (p. 435). Piirto (2002) also makes a point of asking whether such creations are poems or merely “poem-like” (p. 443) thus raising the issue of quality. In reference to witnessing qualitative researchers present their work in an arts-based form she states:

To observe heartfelt efforts by researchers with little or no background in the art being demonstrated was sometimes painful, especially to those who worked in, were trained in, knew, and loved the art being demonstrated. (p. 443)

Faulkner (2007) takes this a step further. She writes:

I am tired of reading and listening to lousy poetry that masquerades as research and vice versa. (p. 220)

Faulkner continues by confessing that she has written such poetry herself and has:

…received criticisms from poets and colleagues of sentimentality and/or cuteness, triteness, melodrama, and especially, a “ruthless adherence to research language at the sacrifice of line.” (p. 220)

There is a sense of elitism in both Piirto’s and Faulkner’s comments. This tension has been noted by authors such as Prendergast (2009) who highlight that poetic inquiry concerns itself with “aesthetic issues around quality, qualifications, preparedness, elitism and expertise” (p. 563). She states that in exemplary practices, “poetic inquiry is…indistinguishable from literary poetry” (p. 561). The argument suggested by scholars such as Piirto (2002) is that “good” poetry drawn from qualitative research therefore requires literary education and/or experience in the art.

Such a view sets poetry as a lofty endeavor achievable only by a select few. An alternative view of creativity is that while there is a final output—the poem, the novel, the painting—there is also the journey of creating it. While the aforementioned criticisms focus on avoiding the writing of “poor-quality” poems, and although Piirto (2002) concedes that creativity can be beneficial for the researcher on a personal level (p. 434), they nevertheless fail to acknowledge the benefits of artistic projects to other aspects of a study. The journey of creativity could for example, provide valuable insights in the pursuit of reflexivity. Rolling one’s eyes at the researcher who does not meet a specific literary threshold is to view poetry and art through a very narrow window.

Leggo (2011) approaches poetic inquiry from a different angle when he states “I no longer ask, Is this a good poem? I ask, What is this poem good for?” (p. 147) In this very personal article which contains both prose and poems, Leggo (2011) explains what the writing of poetry means for him as an individual and as a researcher. From a feminist perspective, but in a similar vein, Richardson (1993) used poetry in the presentation of a narrative from a single parent mother living in the American South. Discussing her methodological approach, she states:

Writing Louisa May’s life as a poem displays how sociological authority is constructed, and problematizes reliability, validity, and truth. Poetics strips those methodological bogeymen of their power to control and constrain. A poem as “findings” resituates ideas of validity and reliability from “knowing” to “telling.” Everybody’s writing is suspect—not just those who write poems. In sociological research the findings have been safely staged within the language of the fathers, the domain of science writing. “Louisa May” challenges the language, tropes, emotional suppressions, and presumptive validity claims of masculinist social science. (p. 704)

For Richardson (1993) therefore, the use of poetry makes a political statement within her field of sociology in that it challenges its androcentric epistemology. Whether her poem was “good” by literary standards becomes irrelevant; what matters is the importance to her of using the methodology to undermine her discipline’s androcentric status quo.

Further, attempts to set boundaries as to who is allowed to write, perform and publish poetry based on qualitative research runs contrary to the spirit of creativity. In fact, enforcing rules with regard to the creation of art runs the risk of becoming a contradiction in terms. While experience is likely to improve a researcher’s poetic output, this is no different to all research outputs and indeed all forms of writing.

Poems created within the social sciences can be impactful, even when the creator is not a “trained” or “published” poet. Although the authors in Miller et al. (2015) did attempt to adhere to poetic constructs, they describe two out of the three members of the research team as “non-poets” (p. 415). Nevertheless, the poetic output from their research of people living in “aged residential care” is both compelling and evocative. Created from an interview with 85-year-old Joy, You could scream the place down is particularly impactful:

Further, studies that invite participants to create poetry which researchers then analyze is a less frequently used form of poetic inquiry. In work by Bishop and Willis (2014), primary and high school children were asked to create poems on the theme of hope with a view to creating data that “reflected their thoughts and feelings” (para. 3.2). The authors end with the contribution from one student—who is “not a trained or established poet”—yet whose poem they describe as “beautiful”:

In qualitative research therefore, the literary quality of poems presented as data or findings can frequently become secondary to alternative motivations of the researcher. The context, language and simplicity of Joy’s words in Miller et al. (2015) create impact while the student in Bishop and Willis (2014) captures the enthusiasm and excitement of childhood. Each poem therefore provides value to the social scientist attempting to understand the lived experience or world view of these two study participants and enables a reader to quickly and easily digest these perspectives.

I-Poems

Unlike other forms of poetic inquiry and literary poetry, I-poems are not created to present a plot or a narrative. Their purpose is to pick “up on an associative stream of consciousness carried by a first-person voice” (Gilligan et al., 2003, p. 163). This requires that all sentences using the first person “I” within a given passage are underlined or highlighted in some way. In some studies, researchers have also used other pronouns that relate to oneself such as “me” (Kiegelmann, 2007). These sentences are then recorded without altering the order in which they appear in the text (Gilligan & Eddy, 2017, p. 78). The idea is that focusing on the “I” privileges the participant’s position in the narrative. It then enables the listener to focus on any potential shifts in the way an interviewee uses “I” within her interview thus representing different “voices” (Gilligan et al., 2003, p. 163). Consequently, I-poems are a form of data analysis in addition to a way of presenting research results.

I-poems have been employed in a range of studies (for example, Balan, 2005; Miller et al., 2015; Montgomery et al., 2015; Pinto, 2004; Koelsch, 2016; Woodcock, 2016). Some researchers have begun to use I-poems without the accompanying VCRM readings, thus employing this aspect of the VCRM methodology as an independent process (Miller et al., 2015). While VCRM is based on feminist thought, I-poems are not limited to the spoken words of women (J. Brown, 2018) and have for example, been created using atypical datasets such as dissertation proposals (Zamba & Zamba, 2013). Parsons (2017) extended the concept of the I-poem to include the pronoun “we” (Parsons, 2017), while Bekaert (2014) created “she”-poems.

The way in which I-poems are constructed is more restrictive than other forms of poetic inquiry. While some researchers appear within their poetry (see for example Faulkner, 2007; Machado, 2016) within an I-poem the researcher is only present by omission. This means that her presence appears only by her choice of which words to eliminate from the text. Additional words are not introduced into the poem and as the focus of the text is on the voice of the interviewee, there is no overt inclusion of the researcher’s emotional response to the participant’s words. Beyond this, creativity is limited to the formatting of the text with regard to grammar, spacing, the formation of stanzas and the selection of where the poem should begin and end.

The Construction of I-Poems

One of the problems with I-poems is the subjectivity inherent in their creation. For example, Edwards and Weller (2012) create I-poems that stop rather abruptly, in some cases immediately after the verb:

This stripped back or “sparse” (J. Brown, 2018, p. 193) approach is the one favored by Gilligan (Gilligan et al., 2003, pp. 163–164) and serves to “maintain focus on the participant’s subjective experience of her sense of “I”” (Koelsch, 2016, p. 172). What is lost here however, is any sense of context or frame of reference. In Gilligan et al.’s (2003) own examples, there is an occasional allowance for extra words although there is no grammar such as a full stop (p. 163):

In contrast, other researchers have included longer phrasings and grammar in their I-poems. Zambo and Zambo (2013) in their study of students conducting action research, created the following (p. 10):

An extract from Balan’s, 2005 study of women who had been involuntarily displaced from their corporate workplace reads as follows:

Miller et al. (2015) created an I-poem from the words of 86-year-old Jane:

Without context, “sparse” (J. Brown, 2018, p. 193) I-poems run the risk of presenting people as unjustifiably confused. Their narratives can become simplistic and serve to diminish the narrator. Unlike Miller et al.’s (2015) Being 86, “sparse” I-poems (J. Brown, 2018, p. 193) do not always “standalone” and often require explanation before the text. Returning to Maya Angelou’s (2015) Woman Work, literary poetry is self-contained and the poet does not need to provide any context in a paragraph before the poem begins. This is similar to other examples of poetic inquiry (see for example Machado, 2016; Rappaport & Harthill, 2016; Richardson, 1993). “Sparse” (J. Brown, 2018, p. 193) I-poems may therefore serve VCRM’s analytical purposes, but not more general aims of presenting data in a meaningful and understandable way.

On the other hand, too long phrasings can read like a shortened version of an interview transcript. They may lack what makes a series of phrases “poetic.” With such long phrases, it may be difficult for a researcher to represent even basic tenets of poetry such as rhythm and repetition. The length of the poem may also contribute to “full” I-poems (J. Brown, 2018, p. 193) reading like lists more than poetry.

One way in which Koelsch (2016) has approached the creation of I-poems is to alter the presentation of the wording, which is evidenced by the following extract to Trish’s I poem (p.177):

One interpretation of the way in which this poem has been constructed is that the indented lines create a contrast to the non-indented ones or provide a way to emphasize a point. We see the speaker as confused, “I was a senior, no I was a junior.” The author emphasizes that the speaker was “not ready for this” by setting it apart from the line before. Koelsch (2016) applies a similar method to a second poem which can be seen in this extract from Megan’s I poem (p.172):

Even though in an earlier paragraph, Koelsch (2016) states that in reference to the creation of I-poems “words may be omitted, but none should be added” (p. 171), in her own example she has added a word for context: “[him].” Further, as someone who researches the sexual experiences of young women, Koelsch (2016) has also emphasized the narrator’s point regarding “hugging.” This is done by setting the last reference to it away from the rest of the text. Koelsch (2016) appears to be implicitly highlighting the difficulty the narrator has experienced in reconciling her sexual experience with other physical intimacy she may have shared with her peers. Notably, however, this emphasis is created by the author, not the narrator thus creating an additional layer of subjectivity.

Freebirth and the Construction of I-Poems

When creating I-poems from the narrative interviews conducted with women who had freebirthed it was important to carefully consider which approach to take. The following short paragraph from Elsie’s interview provides an insight into the different ways that the I-poem could be created and constructed. The relevant quote reads as follows:

They didn’t tell me that before, so at this point, I was livid because we’d been there for so long, and I was like, “I can’t believe this.” So, I kind of, I don’t know why, I agreed to do it for a bit. So, I lay down on the bed, and as I lay down on the bed, I was like, “It’s just really uncomfortable. I’ve had enough.” So, I did about 10 minutes and then realized how ridiculous this was. It was getting late. I was tired. I was getting more and more antsy and I just wanted to go home.

An I-poem that is “full” (J. Brown, 2018, p. 193) would read as follows:

An I-poem that is “sparse” (J. Brown, 2018, p. 193) would read as follows:

Stripped of grammar (Gilligan et al., 2003), the I-poem becomes:

Once the I-poem is constructed in a manner reflecting Koelsch (2016), we see:

This last version enables the reader to see the conflicting voices. On the one hand, Elsie is angry and does not want to do what is being expected of her. Yet, on the other, she does in fact carry out the required act. This could be interpreted as an “assertive” versus an “uncertain” voice. The separation of the various voices in the text emphasizes this difference, but the interpretation of this is of course the researcher’s own.

Taking Koelsch’s (2016) approach one step further and bringing in some creative thought to provide a final version, the use of the lower case “i” with regard to the “uncertain” voice could be seen to provide greater emphasis. There has also been a reintroduction of some basic grammar (two full stops) to indicate a shift in thought. The spacing between the main body of the poem and the last line highlights what is driving Elsie: she simply wants to go home, and she is attempting to navigate that by alternating between agreeing to what maternity staff want from her and challenging them. Finally, in a similar vein to Miller et al. (2015) the use of a title provides some context to the poem, while also enabling the data to be formatted in a way that is more typical of poetry.

A second example highlights when an I-poem may not work as satisfactorily. A passage from Fionnuala’s interview reads as follows:

Um, and I’d been really upset by that email ‘cause I thought-, unfortunately, I felt, for me, that during this beautiful pregnancy, where I didn’t have to deal with, um, ignorant, um, rude, um, misogynistic, err, healthcare professionals, um, I-, what I did have to deal with was my fear around social services involvement, and that’s not fair that I had to, I felt I had to even think about that, when it’s my human right to be able to do this. Um, but-, so I sent this email to the Head of Midwifery, and about four hours later I got a response, which I was gobsmacked at, um, and she said something like, um, “Thank you for informing me about your choices, um, which are of course your choices and ones that I respect.” Um, and she said, “You’re very welcome to contact us at any point and look round, um, don’t hesitate-, don’t hesitate to contact me.” Um, which I was like-, I couldn’t believe it. So, that really-, you know, that should have been her response, but it was surprising, nonetheless, um, and yeah, it, it did give me a real peace, um, about it all.

This paragraph demonstrates an important moment in Fionnuala’s account. She is the only participant who informs the Head of Midwifery of her freebirth plans and is fully respected in her decision. As this is a more complicated paragraph, it is worth demonstrating the methodology by highlighting the sentences that directly relate to Fionnuala’s position:

Um, and I’d been really upset by that email ‘cause I thought-, unfortunately, I felt, for me, that during this beautiful pregnancy, where I didn’t have to deal with, um, ignorant, um, rude, um, misogynistic, err, healthcare professionals, um, I-, what I did have to deal with was my fear around social services involvement, and that’s not fair that I had to-, I felt I had to even think about that, when it’s my human right to be able to do this. Um, but-, so I sent this email to the Head of Midwifery, and about four hours later I got a response, which I was gobsmacked at, um, and she said something like, um, “Thank you for informing me about your choices, um, which are of course your choices and ones that I respect.” Um, and she said, “You’re very welcome to contact us at any point and look round, um, don’t hesitate-, don’t hesitate to contact me.” Um, which I was like-, I couldn’t believe it. So, that really-, you know, that should have been her response, but it was surprising, nonetheless, um, and yeah, it, it did give me a real peace, um, about it all.

One noticeable problem is reported speech. At times, the use of “I,” “us,” “me” and “you” becomes complicated as these are not the words of Fionnuala. Consequently, a choice was made to exclude them. Here again the subjectivity of the researcher plays a role.

Table 1 above demonstrates the different iterations of Fionnuala’s I-poem.

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Table 1.

I-Poem Iterations.

“Full”	“Sparse”	Grammar Removed
I-Poem	I-Poem	(Gilligan et al., 2003)
I’d been really upset by that email	I’d been really upset	I’d been really upset
I thought-,	I thought-,	I thought
I felt,	I felt,	I felt
For me,	For me,	For me
I didn’t have to deal with	I didn’t have to	I didn’t have to
I-,	I-,	I
What I did have to deal with was	What I did	What I did
My fear around social services involvement,	My fear	My fear
I had to-,	I had to-,	I had to
I felt	I felt	I felt
I had to even think about that,	I had to	I had to
My human right to be able to do this	My human right	My human right
I sent this email to the Head of Midwifery,	I sent this email	I sent this email
I got a response,	I got a response,	I got a response
I was gobsmacked at,	I was gobsmacked	I was gobsmacked
I was like-,	I was like-,	I was like
I couldn’t believe it.	I couldn’t believe it.	I couldn’t believe it
It did give me a real peace about it all.	It did give me a real peace	It did give me a real peace

What is lost as the poems progress from left to right is Fionnuala’s assertive anger. In the poem, she is “upset” but her language in the original quote suggests more than that. Much of the plot has been removed and it becomes unclear what is actually happening. We know that whatever has happened Fionnuala has mixed emotions: she is upset, fearful, gobsmacked and relieved. She feels compelled to both do something and not do something; she has human rights and she acts to defend them.

Constructing the I-poem in a different format (Koelsch, 2016), does not serve to emphasize Fionnuala’s message or enable her conflicting “voices” to be recognized as well as in Elsie’s poem. In the following, a title has been created, some grammar has been reintroduced, the active voice is highlighted, and the poem is separated into three stanzas:

In the final example below, it can be seen how the success of an I-poem can depend largely on the narrator and the passage selected. To make the point, a “sparse” (J. Brown, 2018, p. 193) I-poem from Marion’s interview will be presented first, and then the passage from which it was taken:

As the poem is quite disjointed and unclear, it is difficult to create stanzas or recognize specific voices. Consequently, creating a unique format becomes unworkable. The poem also feels forced and in parts reads as a list of unrelated first-person pronouns and verbs. This relates to a personal decision as to how much of the narrative to remove to ensure that Marion’s voice is not eclipsed by a focus on the plot. Consequently, it is hard to understand what we are learning from Marion. In the I-poem, there is no real point being made and unlike Elsie’s and to a lesser extent Fionnuala’s it does not conclude satisfactorily.

The quote from which the I-poem was created reads as follows:

So, I was, like, vomiting. I was, like, laying on the floor on my side, ‘cause I didn’t want to be on my back on the floor. I was trying to avoid, at all costs, being on my back. So, I was on my side. I had someone, like, holding my leg up, on my side. I was, like, vomiting, vomiting, and poor [Amanda] was just, like, mopping up my sick, putting another towel under, mopping it up, putting another towel under. She was brilliant. They were all brilliant, like really brilliant, and, err, I was just, like, laying on the floor, shouting, just like, you know, yeah. I was-, I think-, I don’t think I was-, I don’t think I was-, I wasn’t crabby with anyone at any point, and I was really proud of myself for that. I’m pretty sure they would say the same thing. Yeah, ‘cause I asked them afterwards. I was, like, “Was I rude to anyone?” and they were like, “No.” So, I was really happy about that because, like, ‘cause I went through, like, [Natalie] being, like, really rude to me, but that’s okay. I don’t-, I’m not saying I blame her for that, but I’m saying I really didn’t wanna do that, and I was really pleased that I didn’t, and, um, yeah. We kept-, it was pretty, like-, ‘cause also, [husband], my bloke, he can, like, he can crack a joke in any situation.

In this scene in Marion’s story, she has entered a period where she is laboring hard, and similarly to other women in this cohort she has begun to vomit. Her partner and friends are supporting her through this difficult stage of labor. However, the reason that this poem does not work is that Marion moves from scene to scene and from point to point very quickly. In one short extract she refers to four different actors and three events in her story: labor, post-birth when she asks whether she was crabby, and to a previous incident with Natalie. This section of the transcript therefore does not create an effective I-poem.

Rigor

One noticeable omission in I-poetry literature are the thoughts and feelings of interviewees with regard to the poems that have been created with their words. As far as can be discerned, researchers typically do not present their I-poems to participants before publication. While there is no requirement to do so within the VCRM methodology, sharing I-poetry with interviewees may provide an opportunity for public and patient involvement. Further, it may also aid rigor if interviewees confirm their support of, for example, a researcher’s presentation of her words or the creation of a title. However, thus far, the academic literature pertaining to I-poems remains silent on this point.

What should also be borne in mind is that the creation of I-poetry is only one step in a four-step process. Output from each of the four readings required of VCRM are brought together during the final reading in order to compose an analysis (Gilligan et al. 168). While some researchers do approach I-poetry as a standalone method, adherence to VCRM requires a synthesis of all four readings. Consequently, ensuring rigor when using VCRM poses the same hurdles and requirements as any other qualitative approach.

Examples of I-Poems From Freebirthing Women’s Narratives

As has been highlighted, not all aspects of a transcript are suitable for the creation of I-poems. All the following I-poems were created from very short sections of transcript, the shortest being 55 seconds and the longest 2 minutes 40 seconds. Notably, listening to the audio recording of an interview while carrying out the second reading aided in the location of passages best suited to the creation of I-poetry. This was due to the natural rhythm of women’s speech patterns becoming more noticeable on the audio. Nevertheless, on average it was only possible to create one to three meaningful poems per interview, with each interview lasting between 1 and 2 hours. This leaves the majority of a transcript unsuitable for I-poetry. However, as VCRM enables a researcher to look at the data from a number of angles, the remaining aspects of the transcripts may be better suited to alternative readings.

The following examples contain we- she- and I- poems, with the latter including words pertaining to oneself, i.e. my, myself, me. In a similar vein, one we-poem extends to the pronoun “us.” As the author of this paper does not have a background in English Literature the work was undertaken with the aim of demonstrating the way in which the methodology can be used to uniquely understand and present participants’ perspectives of various aspects of their stories. Consequently, there is no expectation that these I-poems match the quality of the professional poet. In creating them, the only goal was to produce poetry that engages, stirs emotion and enables the reader to momentarily “viscerally experience” (Miller et al., 2015, p. 416) the interviewees’ lived experiences. Beyond those three criteria, no claims are made regarding the poetry’s literary quality.

A decision was made to add titles to these I-poems as the chosen approach leans more toward that taken by Miller et al. (2015) than to Gilligan et al. (2003). Using titles means that the poems can be standalone, performed orally and more easily referenced. Further, as already noted, interviews with freebirthing women included understanding their previous maternity experiences. Consequently, some I-poems presented below relate to prior interaction with health care professionals and maternity services.

While it is not the purpose of this paper to discuss the results of the wider study per se, what the I-poems do is present the experiences of these interviewees in a stark and illuminating way. Immediately, the reader has a clear sense that women who make this decision have often had complex or negative relationships with health care professionals or the maternity system. Wider social, legal and bioethical issues become apparent, such as the role of informed consent/refusal in maternity care; the importance of continuity of carer, respect and autonomy; the power relationships between HCPs and pregnant women; and the impact of obstetric violence and birth trauma on women’s future birth decisions. Notably in this project, interviewees had access to their own I-poems and twelve provided feedback on the presentation of their words in this format. Four interviewees volunteered to take part in feedback sessions which took the form of individual one-hour telephone conversations. This feedback has informed and reinforced the researcher’s interpretation of women’s experiences, aiding methodological rigor.

The presentation of the data in this way also means that an interviewee’s impactful experience can be communicated powerfully in a few short lines. Further, as other VCRM researchers have done, the I-poems can be combined with additional artistic forms such as animation (see for example, King’s Cultural Community, 2015). Nevertheless, the use of an arts-based presentation of I-poetry is still in its infancy and the full range of possibilities and their impact remain as yet unexplored. In the freebirth study however, there is scope for women’s narratives to reach a wider audience beyond academia and for the overall results of the research to be disseminated in a novel way.