Trying to tell it all to you

Creating Queer Spaces Through Poetic Organising

Bibliographic Data

ID6446982
AuthorsAli Rostron (0000-0003-1803-720X, University of Liverpool, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume20
Issue3
Pages348-365
Publication date2025-03-25
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueQualitative Research in Organizations and Management An International Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1746-5648 • E-ISSN: 1746-5656
PublisherEmerald Publishing Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1108/qrom-08-2024-2807
OpenAlexW4408849989
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited47

Purpose In this paper, I examine what “queer spaces” might constitute, and their value to queer people and to organisations. I propose that “queer spaces” might be based on the concept of “poetic organizing”, and the poetic commitment of “trying to tell it all to you”. Design/methodology/approach The paper is theoretical, autoethnographical and poetical. Findings Poetic organising is not the assertion of one’s own experience but the attempt to share it with another in ways that the other can make sense of, and connect in some way to their own experience. It invites us to both disrupt and to be disrupted and, in the mutuality of such co-disrupting, to find ways to better live with the other, and to accommodate one another. I outline the grounds and key principles of poetic organising, and how it queers how we normatively organise, including how we organise difference. Originality/value The paper extends previous incorporations of poetry into MOS by moving from looking at organisations through a complementary poetic lens (how can poetry make us look/see differently?), to the more radical practice of organising poetically (how can poetry make us do and be differently?). This also has implications for queer theory and practice as queer people or Allies in allowing our queerness itself to be queered, and recognising how what we seek to queer for our own “liveable lives” has implications for those lives of others

Aesthetics · Art · Literature · Media studies · Poetry · Queer · Sociology · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Music History and Culture

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