The Art of Creative Research by Philip Gerard

Author:Philip Gerard [Gerard, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780226179773
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2017-01-10T07:00:00+00:00

The Art of Listening

Nomi Stone writes, “For the past ten years, I have sought to heed Carolyn Forché’s call to comprehend the impress of the social on the poetic imagination, conducting ethnographic fieldwork and writing poems first on an island off the coast of Tunisia and then in mock Middle Eastern villages across the United States.” In the latter project, Stone faced serious ethical and practical challenges as she interviewed soldiers during war games in the desert of the western United States designed to train American troops for combat in Iraq. She recalls, “I came from a theater of war to war as theater.” She was very much interested in the “role players”—Iraqis playing the role of the enemy to the U.S. soldiers. Most had come from Iraq after helping American forces as translators or guides, and they or their families back in Iraq might be put at risk. It was not enough to earn their trust; she also had to make sure that she guarded their identities in anything she would write about them. “Fieldwork is really important, and at its best it is collaborative,” she says. She relies on her interlocutors to guide her through the cultural and political realities of their situation, and the interviews are crucial in the process—to both her anthropology and her poetry. For Stone, those she interviews become in effect part of a creative team, of which she is also part. She says, “My training as an anthropologist has attuned me to some ways of getting it right, and being a poet has summoned other attunements.”

Thomas French is one of the best interviewers I’ve ever seen—not because he is a charismatic genius, but, on the contrary, because he is humble and soft-spoken, very respectful of his subjects. He likes listening to people talk. He has both empathy for those he interviews and a highly trained sense of what to listen for. He often conducts interviewing clinics for reporters and creative writers, calling on a volunteer and then simply talking to that person as he would any subject in the field. I once watched him conduct such an interview in a room full of about eighty writers. The subject was a woman who worked as a college administrator. After only a few minutes into the interview, we were all hanging on every word. Recounting the mundane details of an ordinary day, the woman revealed fascinating insights about her life.

French’s technique is simple but, like many simple things, requires practice and patience. “So I just tried to give her as much opportunity as possible to feel safe,” he says. “But ultimately it’s the other person’s option. And I get journalists who ask, ‘Well, how do you trick somebody? What’s the trick to get somebody to open up?’ And my answer is ‘There’s no trick. If you’re tricking, then you’re not doing it right.’” French hits upon a crucial truth here: it doesn’t matter how smart or clever you are if the other person shies away from talking to you.

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