In the spirit of creative scholarship recognized by the university, and drawing on arts-based research, my dissertation expands upon my first chapbook of poetry, Detroit: Workers, Teachers, Lovers by asking the question: What does it look like to use the arts to engage with communities that are important to me? What does it mean to be a community-engaged teaching artist, and how do I use my passion for the arts to fuel the work that I do in ways that are fulfilling and personally inspiring? These questions matter to educators, leaders of community organizations, and artists who want to engage with communities that are important to them. Similarly, this work holds potential for envisioning scholarly research differently. What might it look like for educators to make art while teaching the arts? My dissertation aims to answer these questions through the lens of my experiences as a poet and educator who happens to hail from Detroit, Michigan. The poems in this collection are the product of my heartwork as a community-engaged teaching artist. When I say "community-engaged," I mean that I write, teach, and perform poetry in communities that I care for, and that care for me in return. These are occasion-making poems, meant to draw people closer to one another. This hybrid collection embraces the image, too, the beauty of place, and the inspiration I draw from living as an educator and lifelong student. The notion of poetic gifting is at the heart of this work. These poems have lived and breathed through my live performances and publication. Because I am a practicing creative scholar, I embrace the opportunity to share my work widely, with non-academic and academic audiences alike, in dynamic formats. This work provides guideposts for ways that poet-scholars and public scholars can disseminate their art and scholarship in order to that are excite, reach far flung groups, and engage with communities and organizations that matter to them.
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