AustLit

Epigraph:

Of flashing knives, whirling sticks, bursting bombs,
And accompanying gutturals and fricatives of hate,
And evil that requires no axis
To turn on, being everywhere –
Kaiser Haq, ‘Published in the Streets of Dhaka’

'Always there remain alternate versions of your official research project - half written then abandoned, scratched in the margin of a book, or descending through your brain cloud at 2am only to evaporate upon waking. These unrealised versions have their own validity. They could even be described as the purest kind of enquiry, unfettered by the format that research proper must follow to be recognised and accepted.' (Introduction)

'This suite of poems from The Bangalore Set engages with the fields of postcolonial ethnography and arts-based inquiry. The result of a creative collaboration between an Australian writer/ethnographer and a range of people she encountered while in residence in Bangalore, India, the compositional process behind the poems indicates how arts-based methods can effect balance between the traditional binary of Researcher and Researched within ethnographic studies. Presented chronologically, the poems track Kathryn Hummel’s progression from observer to participant to interpreter of others’ lives in and views of the city, demonstrating how creative collaboration might shift ethnography away from its divisive colonial origins towards a practice more suited to contemporary postcolonial contexts.'

Source: Abstract.