“The Pill. Angry chuckles.” Exploring contracepting through poetry
by Marie Larsson
Image 1. Visual record produced by Cassandra Harrison
It can be scary to try something new and go out of your comfort zone. It takes vulnerability and a willingness to explore things from new perspectives and to be open to being uncomfortable or even challenged. Yet, this vulnerability is sometimes essential for generating new insights and inspiration, and imagining that things could be different. As someone who has been researching contraceptive experiences and practices for almost 10 years, primarily using “traditional” qualitative methods, stepping into the world of creative writing was both daunting and exciting.
With a slight feeling of, “Am I allowed to just give this a go?”, I applied for funding from the Moray Endowment Fund for this pilot project. Thanks to the support from the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society – where I work as Research Fellow on the SCOPE project – and several wonderful collaborators, I set out to design and organise a creative workshop using guided poetry methods. The workshop targeted an interdisciplinary audience with a particular interest in, or experience of working with, issues related to contraception, sexual and reproductive health, or pregnancy and STI prevention. This could include researchers, practitioners, policymakers, community organisers or activists.
Dr. Autumn Roesch-Marsh, a senior lecturer in Social Work with a passion for using poetry in in research and teaching, agreed to help design and facilitate the workshop. Nel Coleman, Library Citizen Science Engagement Officer at the University of Edinburgh, helped me find a suitable space and shared their expertise on practical and accessibility considerations. And finally, visual artist and ‘live scribe’ Cassandra Harrison joined to create a visual record of the workshop. I reached out to invite individuals from across the abortion and contraceptive landscape in Scotland I had gotten to know through the work on the SCOPE project, and through The Centre for Research on Families and Relationships and Interdisciplinary Research in Sexual Health Network Scotland.
Finally, the day arrived. Our room on the first floor of the main library gave us a panoramic view of the unusually warm and sunny Meadows – a lush and verdant backdrop to the event. The afternoon workshop started with lunch, offering a chance to mingle, get to know other participants, and slow down. Altogether we were 19 people, primarily academic researchers, but also some healthcare professionals and postgraduate students.
Why a poetry workshop on contraception?
I opened the workshop by sharing why I had organised a workshop on “Exploring contracepting through poetry”. This event was a new way for me to build on the work I have been doing for several years, including during my PhD (Larsson 2023), a qualitative interview study investigating young people’s experiences and practices with contraceptives in Sweden, and with doing what I call “the work of contracepting”.
I explained how my PhD aimed to “nuance” what I saw as a simplistic linear story often told of what contraceptive use involved – especially for young people – that you get information, you absorb that information, choose a contraceptive method and then use it. I wanted to challenge one-dimensional portrayals of young people as “irresponsible” sexual actors. I started using the term “contracepting” as a verb – that could refer to both pregnancy and/or STI prevention – to illustrate that contraception is something you do. Through the lens of contracepting, I emphasise that contraceptive use is not a one-off achievement but an ongoing activity and practice that requires different forms of work: work that is done in relation to and with a range of actors. Conceptualising contraceptive experiences and practices through the lens of work has been very generative to highlight contracepting as an ongoing activity that requires a range of efforts, energies, knowledges, and capacities. And to highlight that this work is not evenly distributed and experienced equally across society, but shaped by dimensions of privilege and marginalisation related not only to sexism and misogyny, but also racism, classism, ageism, ableism, homophobia, and transphobia.
While writing up my PhD, I struggled at times with the rigid academic norms and formats for presenting findings. Early on, I had ambitious ideas of producing a graphic novel based on the stories of my participants about their experiences of contracepting. I was really keen to bring in more creative modes of communicating the research and engaging people. In the end a graphic novel, or even comic strips at the start of each chapter, ended up being too unrealistic within the context of a PhD, never mind my lack of artistic experience.
Image 2. Thesis cover by Frank Rokhlin
However, to echo my first empirical chapter, sometimes one cannot understate the importance of friends. I am lucky to have a best friend – Frank Rokhlin – who has been with me throughout my academic journey from my first year as a sociology student all through my PhD journey, and also happens to be a brilliant artist. He not only created the beautiful cover for my thesis, but also, on an incredibly short deadline last minute, designed and produced wonderful artwork for all nine thesis chapters. Collaborating with Frank to develop these illustrations was not only fun and creative, but also helped me reflect on the sociological story I was trying to tell in a different way. It created a new frame through which people could engage with the work.
After having completed the PhD at the end of 2023, I have been ruminating on the limitations of academic storytelling, and on how to do more with this amazing artwork and the rich stories participants shared with me. What I have learned tends to energise and give me hope and joy is play and creativity. Creativity that is low stakes, focused on personal expression and exploration, and connection with others. Perhaps it is a little naïve and overly romantic, but I think in times like these – of extreme hate and violence, genocide, climate disaster, austerity, transphobia, and steady erosion of reproductive and sexual rights– we need to create space for fun, joy, and pleasure. Indeed, I hope this creative space was able to bring people together and collectively imagine what a more just, enjoyable, and caring contraceptive future might look like.
What happened during the workshop?
After I set the scene, Autumn took over and the workshop began in earnest. After a quick postcard-based icebreaker, Autumn started by encouraging us to let go of some of the pre-conceived ideas and anxieties about what a poem needs to be, and reflecting on the power of poetry. She explained that poetry can be a ‘special language’ that creates ‘resonance of another’s world’ (Neilsen 2008), a place to embrace uncertainty and not knowing and serve as a ‘meeting place’ where stories intersect and enable reflexivity (Behar 2008, Krizek 2003).
For the first exercise, we were introduced to three published poems – chosen by myself and Autumn and related to the theme of contracepting in some way. We read and reflected on these privately, listened collectively as a few brave volunteers read them aloud, and then discussed them as a group. For the second exercise we did a writing warmup, where we were asked to create a word hoard based on what comes to mind with the word contracepting or contraception.
After this brief warmup, I introduced the material that that we would be working with in the workshop to write our poetry. In preparation for the workshop, I had picked out a selection of interview excerpts from the empirical chapters of my PhD thesis, trying to showcase the wide range of stories of contracepting that came up in the interviews with young people. Following the presentation of these interview excerpts, Autumn introduced two poetry writing techniques: The Golden Shovel and Blackout Poetry.
As Autumn explained, The Golden Shovel is a poetic form created by Terrance Hayes, inspired by Gwendolyn Brookes. We were encouraged to choose a line or sentence from an interview excerpt, and use each word in the line as a word for our poem. To give an example, I took a line from my interview with Pim where they spoke about their experience of growing up in a rural part of northern Sweden and exploring their sexuality with their girlfriend:
But with my girlfriend of 10 years (…) the dental dam has been a natural part. We cut up condoms. In the beginning when we were exploring – up in Norrland [northern region of Sweden] – it’s a bit more taboo to have a lesbian relationship. A bit more like exploring each other, it became a fun thing. We do this thing with condoms. Not as serious, we can’t get pregnant. With her – more for disease purpose. She hasn’t had anyone else but me, while I’ve had several others. Only in more recent years that she’s dating a dude. We sat and giggled and cut up condoms.
(Pim, pansexual non-binary and genderfluid person in their mid-20s)
Image 3. The word hoard
Using the last line of the interview excerpt, I wrote this poem:
I think it was a Wednesday, we
had only spoken on the phone, I sat
hands on knees on a mint chair, and
quiet – waiting. Down the hall someone giggled
then my name – walk briskly, and
bare, cold. Relief. A cut
Fluorescent buzzing light, I look up
it’s on the list, remember to get condoms.
The other technique, Blackout Poetry, ended up being the most popular among the workshop participants and is a form of found poetry where the poet takes – in this case – an existing text and “blacks out” sections of the text, creating a new poem from what remains. Based on an excerpt from my interview with Helena, a bisexual cis woman in her early 20s, I created the following blackout poem.
For the rest of the afternoon, we alternated between individual writing time – trying out these poetry writing methods with the interview material – with time to (optionally) share what we had written around one’s table or with the whole group. I was interested in how blackout poetry mirrored the analytical process. A few workshop participants said that this would be an interesting method to bring to research training courses.
I was blown away by the amazing and original poems that came out of the workshop. As someone who remembers the personal stories we worked with and has spent an inordinate amount of time working and thinking with this exact interview material, it was surreal, overwhelming and emotional to see this group of individuals so carefully and reflectively engage with these words – bringing in their own experiences and selves – to produce beautiful, insightful, sad, angry, and funny poems. We also learned that brevity sometimes is indeed the soul of wit, as one participant quite spontaneously read out this blackout poem:
The Pill. Angry chuckles.
What were some of the reflections from the participants?
After quite a full afternoon, I wrapped up the workshop by asking participants for feedback on the workshop and the project itself, and sharing about possible next steps. Using the “Rose, Bud, Thorn” exercise, I asked participants what they felt had worked well, potential opportunities for growth, and what could be improved for future sessions.
Their overall feedback was overwhelmingly positive and encouraging. Several expressed how well-facilitated the workshop was, that it was a “very approachable way to writing poetry” and that it was good that we acknowledged the “vulnerability of creating and sharing poetry”. Many expressed how lovely it was to have a “scribe/artist who told the story of the afternoon”, and mentioned that they enjoyed the “lovely change of pace from everyday work/life” and one wrote that they “had so much fun and met interesting and friendly new people!”. One participant shared that they enjoyed working with the interview data as “inspiration” and another that the “‘time to write’ made us uncover a lot of experiences and journey”. Finally, there was also interest in bringing this type of workshop to other spaces, such as courses for social workers or medical professionals.
It helped me get out of an academic mindset and view the topic from a more vulnerable perspective.
I was really nervous coming to event as [I am] not creative but you guided the session very well.
When it came to buds and thorns, participants raised the desire to write more collaboratively, to expand further into using more of their own words, to have the option of sharing your poems anonymously, to include material from different sources (like books, magazines, or online post), and to explore zine-making and other poetry techniques. Once the workshop had come to a close, I was happily exhausted but determined and excited to see how this work might grow and develop in the future.
Next steps: future research and creating an exhibition
A year and half on from my PhD, I am currently in the process of a developing a broader interdisciplinary research programme – building on what I have learned and done over the past year around investigating, producing and sharing knowledge on contraception as a biosocial phenomenon. This research programme would seek to examine how people navigate the limitations of current contraceptive technologies and care systems to envision alternative contraceptive futures. The use of creative writing and storytelling methodologies would be central to this work. It is still very much in its early stages, and this workshop has been a brilliant opportunity to explore how creative methods can be used to produce new knowledge and insights into contraceptive experiences.
The more immediate and concrete next step in this project, however, involves curating and organising an exhibition based on the workshop. The exhibition will include a selection of the poems produced during the workshop, alongside the original interview excerpts, the visual record of the workshop, and some of Frank Rokhlin’s artwork from my PhD thesis. I am currently exploring different avenues forward with people involved in the workshop, including the possibility of co-curating elements of the exhibition with the workshop participants. The aim is to launch the exhibition sometime during the fall of 2025, hopefully as a little travelling exhibition.
If you would be interested in hosting, or know of any spaces that might welcome, such an exhibition, please reach out to me. If you would like to be invited to the launch event of the exhibition – drop me an email and I will make sure to invite you when the time comes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marie Larsson is a Research Fellow (Qualitative) at the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society in the Usher Institute at the University of Edinburgh.
THE THREE POEMS
“Ode to My Brand-Name Birth Control” by Hattie Jean Hayes, Thimble Literary Magazine
“To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall” by Kim Addonizio, Poetry Society of America
“On Visiting the Sexual Health Clinic Before Work” by Krystelle Bamford, The American Poetry Review
REFERENCES
Neilsen L. (2008). Lyric inquiry. In Knowles G., Cole A. (Eds.), Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples and issues (pp. 93–101). SAGE.
Behar, R. (2008). Between poetry and anthropology: searching for languages of home. In M. Cahnmann-Taylor & R. Siegesmund (Eds.), Arts-based research in education: foundations for practice (pp. 55-71). New York: Routledge.
Krizek, R. L. (2003). Ethnography as the excavation of personal narrative. In R. P. Clair (Ed.), Expressions of ethnography. Novel approaches to qualitative methods (pp. 141-151). Albany, NY: SUNY.
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