Breaking the Line

As a mode of academic discourse, poetry offers pathways that lead to new and diverse ways of understanding. However, in my experiences as a learner and as an Instructional Associate at the Learning Centre at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU), I have found that poetry is not being utilized to its fullest capacity in the teaching of writing and in the exploration of language. The following thesis-performance hybrid is intended to illustrate the value of poetry as an approach to teaching writing and as an academic discourse, demonstrated largely through the medium of poetry itself. The technique of métissage has been selected to enhance the performative elements by intertwining life writing, various forms and types of poetry and significant citations from the literature. The life writing in the following text adopts conventions of autoethnography and biography, while the poetry reflects aspects of poetic inquiry. Through embracing a hybrid approach, which fuses various types of texts, the work explores the value in the greater use of poetry and the greater use of hybrid texts and forms of written assignments in the practice of teaching writing. This thesis-performance hybrid seeks to embody the very concepts being explored within it.