Poetry as Liminal Inquiry: Illuminating Complexity, Mysticism, and Embodied Knowing

Abstract

This paper explores poetry as a form of liminal inquiry, positioning poetic practice as an embodied, intuitive, and relational mode of meaning-making within the complexity of teaching and learning. Drawing on a reflective collection of poems written during a doctoral course on Mysticism and Activism in Education, the author revisits this work from a current perspective as an educator and scholar, using complexity theory to understand both the poetic process and classroom learning as nonlinear, emergent, and relational systems. Rather than yielding to linear thinking or single answers, the paper argues that poetic inquiry mirrors how insight develops in complex educational contexts through cycles of return, pause, revision, and surprise, much like the day-to-day work of teaching. In dialogue with scholarship on mysticism, contemplative pedagogy, and complex systems, poetry is framed as a way to engage epistemological pluralism by honoring subjective, embodied, and intuitive ways of knowing alongside theoretical understanding. Organized across three interpretive phases inspired by mystical traditions (Underhill, 2020), the World of Becoming, the Metaphysical World of Being, and Divine Reality, the poems are offered not as conclusions but as invitations to dwell within uncertainty and emergence. Ultimately, the paper suggests that poetry functions as a complexity-attuned pedagogical and inquiry practice that reflects how meaning arises through interaction, attentiveness, and relationship, echoing Theise’s reminder that “we hunt for words to give flavor of the experience of the ineffable, even if the experience is, by definition, beyond description” (p. 153).