Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal

Volume 2 Issue 1

“IT’S A TRASH”: POETIC RESPONSES TO THE

EXPERIENCES OF A MEXICAN EGG DONOR

Heather Walmsley

University of British Columbia

HeatherLWalmsley@gmail.com

Susan M. Cox

University of British Columbia

susan.cox@ubc.ca

Carl Leggo

University of British Columbia

carl.leggo@ubc.ca

Heather Walmsley is a qualitative health researcher whose work entwines the literary arts with

bioethics, political theory, and anthropology to examine societal and ethical transformations of

emerging health technologies. Heather was a SSHRC Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University

of British Columbia from 2012-14. She is a graduate of the 2016 Writers Studio at Simon Fraser

University and her poetry is published in the anthology Emerge 16.

Susan Cox is a qualitative researcher and ethicist working in health research and interdisciplinary

studies. Her work on the use of the arts in health research aims to open up new ways of co-creating

and mediating our understandings and experiences of health and contemporary social life.

Carl Leggo is a poet and professor at the University of British Columbia. His books include:

Lifewriting and Literary Métissage as an Ethos for Our Times (co-authored with Erika Hasebe-Ludt

and Cynthia Chambers); Poetic Inquiry: Vibrant Voices in the Social Sciences (co-edited with Monica

Prendergast and Pauline Sameshima); and Sailing in a Concrete Boat: A Teacher’s Journey.

“It’s a Trash:” Poetic Responses to the Experiences of a Mexican

Egg Donor

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal

Volume 2 Issue 1

ABSTRACT: This paper explores the use of found poetry as interpretive and aesthetic inquiry into

the meaning and experience of reproductive tourism. The context is an ethnographic study of

transnational egg donation, focusing upon the fertility services industry in Cancun, Mexico. Our

source is an audio-recorded interview conducted with Maria, a young Mexican woman who struggles

to maintain her integrity as a single mother donating eggs to a fertility clinic. Drawing upon Maria’s

story, we experiment with three forms of found poetry as a method for listening deeply to her voice. In

this paper, we share our research process, poems, and reflections.

KEYWORDS: poetic inquiry; reproductive tourism; qualitative research; found poetry; egg donation;

infertility

“It’s a Trash:” Poetic Responses to the Experiences of a Mexican

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What can poetry contribute to the understanding and evocation of the ethics

of a burgeoning multi-billion dollar international reproductive tourism industry? This

question inspires this collaboration in poetic inquiry. We write as three poet-

researchers - Heather Walmsley, Susan Cox, and Carl Leggo. Our methodology

braids together contrasting personal and scholarly backgrounds with the thread of a

common conviction: that poetry is a way of “opening

knowing,” a “fierce kind of inquiry” (Stewart, 2012,

“What can poetry

pp. 116-117).

contribute to the

Reproductive tourism refers to the movement

understanding and

of patients between nations in search of eggs and

evocation of the

sperm, fertility services, and surrogate bodies. Often,

such patients travel to take advantage of legislative,

ethics of a

cultural, ethical, and cost of living and/or price

burgeoning multi-

disparities between jurisdictions. Critics have framed

this phenomenon dramatically - as a “reproductive

billion dollar

brothel” (Cherry, 2014) or “moral pluralism in motion”

international

(Pennings, 2002). In Canada the Assisted Human

Reproduction Act

(AHRA) has prohibited the

reproductive

purchase of eggs and surrogacy services since

tourism industry?”

2004, on ethical grounds (Downie & Baylis, 2013).

The resulting scarcity of eggs and surrogates, and

the cost of treatments, has driven many Canadians

to fertility clinics in Cancun,

Mexico (Schurr & Walmsley, 2014).

In January

2014, Heather travelled to Cancun and conducted in-depth

interviews with clinicians, medical tourism agents, reproductive travellers, and egg

donors. One driving question was whether Canadian law effectively exports the

commodification of children, exploitation of women, and associated assaults on

human dignity to the poor and vulnerable overseas. Within a void of empirical

evidence, she sought the “actual stories, desires, and migratory pathways” (Inhorn,

2011, p. 88) of egg donors and recipients. This research obtained ethics approval

from the Behavioral Research Ethics Board, University of British Columbia.1

Participant consent forms explained that analysis would involve creating poetry from

interview transcripts, as part of an arts-based research methodology.2

This paper centers upon one of these interviews conducted with a young

Mexican egg donor one evening after work in a park in Cancun. Although this

interview has been transcribed, we chose to work only with the audio recording of the

interview and not the written text. Each of us listened carefully to the audio recording

“It’s a Trash:” Poetic Responses to the Experiences of a Mexican

Egg Donor

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal

Volume 2 Issue 1

and wrote three found poems, according to the distinct formal requirements below,

and in the order presented below. We also composed commentaries - reflecting on

our poetic intentions, form, and process, and circulated responses to each other’s

work. We originally developed this collaborative writing process using “data” from an

online infertility discussion forum (Walmsley, Cox, & Leggo, 2015).

Poetic forms

The three forms of found poetry we used are described below:

1. Found poetry - Erasure poetry. Take one text and black out words and/or

letters, creating a poem from the remaining words and phrases (which must remain in

order). It is possible to create new words by fusing two words after erasing letters, but

letters must remain in the order they appeared. The researcher-poet has freedom

regarding punctuation and layout. Given our use of audio rather than written texts,

this process became a process of selecting and recording phrases that resonated

(the words remaining in their original order), and effectively “erasing” what did not.

2. Found poetry - Free-form excerpting and remixing. Excerpt words and

phrases from source text(s) and rearrange them in any manner you choose to form a

poem. Again the researcher-poet has freedom regarding punctuation and layout.

3. Found poetry? Or not? Total poetic freedom. Write a poem about

anything inspired by the data and stimulus, the research process, or the writing

process.

Strands of Inquiry

Heather. “Poetry is a break for freedom,” writes poet and philosopher David

Whyte (2017), “The discipline of poetry is in overhearing yourself say difficult truths

from which it is impossible to retreat.” My intention in this work of collaborative poetic

inquiry is threefold. I wish to use poetry to listen to the difficult truths of the

reproductive tourism industry from the perspectives of differentially located

participants. These truths unsettle debates raging within bioethics and policy on the

commodification of the body and compensation for donor gametes; they unsettle

understandings of reproductive tourism and female agency; they disrupt my own

understandings of motherhood.

I also wish to use poetry as a way of hearing differently - of hearing subtler

shades of experience than those emerging from thematic or narrative interview

“It’s a Trash:” Poetic Responses to the Experiences of a Mexican

Egg Donor

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal

Volume 2 Issue 1

analysis. This hearing involves careful attention to my own cognitive and affective

responses. It is enriched through careful attention to the responses of Susan and

Carl, to similarities and differences, and how I relate to them.

Finally, I hope to use poetry to write “difficult truths,” with greater clarity and

impact. A lover of literature, working in sociology, I am driven to craft a “poetic social

science” that moves both heart and head

(Bochner,

2000). I am inspired that

neuroscience now acknowledges poetry as an integrator of linear left-brain activity

with somatic, visual, emotional right-brain activity. “The imagery and sensations of

poetry,” writes Siegel (2007), psychiatrist and pioneer of interpersonal neurobiology,

burst

“our cognitive conceptions at their roots

… give birth to a new way of

knowing” (p. 162).

Susan. The practice of poetic inquiry offers a gorgeous opening to anyone who

longs to explore creative approaches to meaning-making in qualitative research. As a

sociologist, ethicist, and health researcher who early on made what she thought was

a pragmatic choice to study biology rather than creative writing, I have in some ways

come full circle through the life sciences, social sciences, and humanities. This is no

claim to mastery of any sort but rather a shorthand way of saying that I mostly live in

the interstices, never quite comfortable within any one culture of knowing.

As a qualitative researcher constantly in search of more authentic,

aesthetically satisfying and deeply ethical approaches to understanding experiences

of health, illness and the body, I find in poetic inquiry the opportunity to listen

differently, to become more acutely aware of how I listen and of how I represent what

I hear. Following Glesne’s (1997) reflections on

“Poetic inquiry is to

poetic transcription, I seek some middle ground

me like a crackling between “the ‘small t’ truth of description” that is

the representation of an interviewee’s experience

fire that invites you

as filtered by the researcher, and “the large ‘T’

to rub your hands truth of seeing,” as Paz (1995) writes, “with the

eyes of the spirit” (p. 213).

together and then

spread them wide,

Poetic inquiry is to me like a crackling fire

turning your palms that invites you to rub your hands together and

then spread them wide, turning your palms

toward the flames

toward the flames so you might not just become

so you might not warm again, but your blood might fill with a kind of

elemental energy that flows from hands to heart

just become warm

and then to head. This flow of energy counters

again…”

dualistic ways of thinking about the body and

“It’s a Trash:” Poetic Responses to the Experiences of a Mexican

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mind, reaffirming that insight and understanding arise as much from sensory

experience, emotion, intuition, and imagination as they do from logic or cognition.

Carl. All my emotions and experiences, all my hopes and desires, are steeped

in poetry. I live in poetry, and poetry lives in me. I recognize with Adrienne Rich (1993)

that “a poem can’t free us from the struggle for existence, but it can uncover desires

and appetites buried under the accumulating emergencies of our lives” (pp. 12-13).

Like Rich, I know that a poem is “not a philosophical or psychological blueprint; it’s an

instrument for embodied experience” (p. 13). A poem is a way of living with an

imaginative and expansive devotion to one’s own experiences as well as the

experiences of others. In writing poetry, poets learn about themselves in relation to

others. The pronouns I and you connect in the richness of communication and

communion.

I engage in poetic inquiry because I am committed to infusing social sciences

and health sciences research with the disciplinary goals of the humanities, especially

literature and creative writing. I applaud Jean-Luc Nancy’s (2006) understanding that

“poetry is at ease with the difficult, the absolutely difficult” (p. 4). I embrace difficulty,

especially the tangled and complex questions of how we live in a cosmopolitan world

full of injustice and crisis and fear. I support Nancy’s claim that “poetry must be taken

into account in everything we do and everything we think we must do, in our

arguments, our thinking, our prose, and our ‘art’ in general” (p. 15). Nancy promotes

“a polyphony at the heart of every voice” (p. 43). I seek to hear the polyphony in every

voice.

Erasure Poems

Money

Carl

I need money

I did it because of the money

I really need the money

if you get less eggs they pay

less money the only word

I can say about the money

“It’s a Trash:” Poetic Responses to the Experiences of a Mexican

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Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal

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it’s trash

I need the money

I didn’t want to because it’s so

bad money I want more money

I spent the money the next day

all the money was for them

everything was for the school

I never do something for me

I want to have more boobs

the money, everything is for

the school

single mom

you think about what you do

with your body I don’t want to

it’s not good money

it’s like an experiment

it’s just money

you don’t have an idea how

much money they get with

my eggs a lot of money, a lot

I want a good life

two years maximum

I think I’m just going to do it

like everything

it’s money money

money money

Nothing

Heather

Another clinic, they

pay ten thousand pesos but

if you have less than

“It’s a Trash:” Poetic Responses to the Experiences of a Mexican

Egg Donor

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal

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ten eggs

they pay one thousand less

for each egg

it’s not legal it’s not legal it’s not legal

they do that

and they are woman.

***

Different fathers

don’t give a shit

don’t give money

nothing

zero

totally zero

totally zero.

***

The father of her, he disappeared

now he wants to see her

doesn’t want to give money

“low season,

low season,

low season”

so bullshit, fucking

hippy, never wants

to give money.

***

They call me again,

they want me to do it

now

“It’s a Trash:” Poetic Responses to the Experiences of a Mexican

Egg Donor

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal

Volume 2 Issue 1

My Things

Susan

I was living here

right here in the corner

I was living with my ex boyfriend

and she was my neighbour

I had really a problem

before kind of what I am going to tell you

on December 21st she called me

Maria Maria please

I am going to Mexico City

give me a jacket

please please please

give me your jeans

please please please

I only have just one jeans of that colour

it is for my work

Please please don’t be like that

I am going to give it back

that was on December 1st

yesterday was January 27th

and she didn’t call

we crossed I think

I was out with my boyfriend

she’d go out and say well hi

she’d say you were out

I’d say please call

I don’t have my things!

one month ago and she is not giving my things

so I am like don’t talk to me

I have some things of her

so you know

I have the things

I washed them

I had the things prepared

my boyfriend said why don’t you

why you don’t go and ask for your things?

I said no I don’t have to go with her and ask for my things

she has education

she has to go

“It’s a Trash:” Poetic Responses to the Experiences of a Mexican

Egg Donor

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal

Volume 2 Issue 1

she asked me to give her some things

so now I am like I keep my things

there is no more worry

God bless you

So let’s start….

Si si

it’s strange

she knows she has my things

she loves my things!

so it is, you keep your things

okay, si.

Carl’s commentary. In her poem “Nothing” Heather recreates the aural

dynamic of Maria’s speech. By focusing on Maria’s typical way of speaking where she

repeats many words and phrases three times, Heather not only evokes the story-

telling dynamic of Maria’s speech, but she also evokes the character of the story-

teller. Maria is vitally and vibrantly present in her speech. In many ways, Maria’s story

is a hard story to attend to - there is so much injustice, unfairness, and sadness in

the story. Heather’s poem represents the challenges of Maria’s life. On the other

hand, the whole interview also presents Maria as humorous and hopeful. There is

always more to the story than any single poem can hold or evoke.

In a similar way, Susan conjures the character of Maria as complex, even

paradoxically tension-filled in her poem “My Things.” Maria is poor and generous; she

is hopeful and hopeless; she is gregarious and

“A poem works

protective. The poem is aptly titled - Maria’s life is

governed by the economic system of capitalism with

primarily with

its commitment to reciprocity, exchange,

babble and doodle -

remuneration, and mutual agreement. What Maria

has learned is that this arrangement often doesn’t

aural signifiers and

work very well. Susan’s poem evokes this tension by

visual signifiers.”

focusing on the momentousness of Maria’s

emotional responses to a friend’s borrowing and not

returning her clothes. A poem works primarily with babble and doodle

- aural

signifiers and visual signifiers. In “My Things” Susan evokes the rhythms of Maria’s

speech and story-telling by focusing on the graphic layout of the poem on the page.

In my poem “Money,” I collected the references to money that are sprinkled

throughout the interview, and I shaped them on the page in order to evoke a keen

sense of emotional turmoil. I am impressed by Maria’s honesty, humour, and

“It’s a Trash:” Poetic Responses to the Experiences of a Mexican

Egg Donor

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humanity. While Maria’s stories are definitively hers, I also heard many resonances

with the stories of family and neighbours I grew up with in Newfoundland. In

significant ways, these are the stories of the economically underprivileged, the

working poor.

Susan’s commentary. Carl’s poem “Money” moves along with a strong

rhythm, contrasting Maria’s need for money to cover her children’s schooling with her

desire to have a good life. She says “I never do something for me” and has disdain for

how she must earn money to provide for her children. As a result, the money is trash.

Thus Maria forces us to think about the value of money in the context of how it is

earned as opposed to how it is spent.

In Heather’s poem “Nothing,” I hear Maria speaking very directly. I am grateful

that we were able to work from the audio-recording as I would never have grasped as

much from a written transcript. Like Heather, I am coming to appreciate how important

it is to hear the actual voices of those we are speaking through as we create this kind

of poetry. Staying close to their words is only part of the picture!

In creating “My Things,” I found the act of transcribing Maria’s interview very

intense. Such a breathless rush of words and so many forms of non-verbal but

audible communication. Two languages, and at least four voices; the sounds of a

park, children, wind, recording equipment, laughter, women talking, a child

interrupting. I felt as if I was almost there! As I started getting the words down, the

way they came out, the lovely accent so impossible to capture, I realized that Maria’s

story of lending a friend some nice clothes to go to the big city contains the essence

of a much deeper ethics that is fundamental to relationships between women and

what it might mean to be an egg donor. This is no mere story of a missing pair of

jeans, it concerns the responsibilities women have to one another and the importance

of mutual respect.

Heather’s commentary. Working from the audio changes everything. It

focuses and complicates issues of voice and authorship. I am struck by the focus of

established “found poetry” rules (which assume a written text) upon word order,

layout, and punctuation. Audio pulls my attention instead to speech patterns,

intonation, emphasis; it offers a strong sense of individual voice. Listening, I hear

Maria’s love of repetition, the way she repeats when she is animated: Si, si, si.

Please, please, please. Low season, low season, low season. In “Nothing,” I use this

speech pattern as a way into the analysis, as a way of hearing what is truly important

to Maria, and as the central organizing principle of the poem.

“It’s a Trash:” Poetic Responses to the Experiences of a Mexican

Egg Donor

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Volume 2 Issue 1

I love Susan’s focus in “My Things.” I too was hit by the symbolic power of this

side-story about clothing that preoccupied Maria early in our interview. The poem

makes a powerful statement of outrage and injustice, of the respect that should be

accorded to things given - be they a pair of jeans or donor eggs. The lack of

punctuation and stanza breaks disorient at first, but they channel an authentic voice,

and the repetition eventually provides a rhythmic internal structure I did not anticipate

visually. The use of italics for speech gives a clear sense of the different voices,

appropriated by the narrator.

Carl’s play with spacing of words in “Money” intrigues me. The irregularity of

the pauses, the changing rhythm, the lack of stability until “money” repeats at the end;

they suggest Maria’s surging speech, her simultaneous bravado and fear, her

emotional turmoil. I enjoy the simple clear focus of this poem: how important money is

for a young single mother working hard whilst the bills never cease. It is an important

poem - for Maria, and for egg donors everywhere.

Free-form Excerpting and Remixing

My Eggs

Susan

I was living here

right here in the corner

I was living with my ex boyfriend

and she was not from my country

I had really a problem

with what I am going to tell you

on December 21st they called me

Maria Maria please

we have this woman here at the clinic from Atlantic City

give us an egg

please

give us two eggs

please please

give us all your eggs

please please please

I only have one, just one egg this month

it is for starting my family

Please please don’t be like that

you can have lots more

“It’s a Trash:” Poetic Responses to the Experiences of a Mexican

Egg Donor

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal

Volume 2 Issue 1

you are like a rabbit

you can make lots more

that was on December 1st

yesterday was January 27th

they kept calling

wanting more

I was out with my boyfriend

the girl at the clinic

she’d say you were out

I’d say please don’t keep calling

I have given you my eggs

one month ago and you are not giving me enough money

so I am like don’t talk to me

I have some money from them

so you know

I have the money

not very much

my boyfriend said why don’t you

why you don’t go and ask for more for your eggs?

I said no I don’t have to go to them and ask for more

those women have education

they have money to travel

they have everything

and they ask me to give them my eggs

so now I am like I keep my eggs

there is no more worry

God bless you

I wonder if she knows she has my eggs

they love my eggs

so it is, I keep my eggs.

Si, no mas.

Teeter Totter

Carl

it’s so bad

in Mexico

it’s so sad

“It’s a Trash:” Poetic Responses to the Experiences of a Mexican

Egg Donor

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal

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it’s not legal

always always

it’s destruction

destruction

always the same

after the extraction

you feel like a balloon

you can’t

make pee

you can’t poo

nothing nothing

it’s nothing

zero totally zero

god bless you

but

bye bye

I have to be rude

if I’m not rude

I don’t like to be rude

the kids get you

crazy doesn’t matter

if you plan them or not

I’m very cool

I’m a cool mom

but they don’t know

I start feeling bad

about my body

to do that to my body

“It’s a Trash:” Poetic Responses to the Experiences of a Mexican

Egg Donor

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal

Volume 2 Issue 1

the hormones I feel more like

how do you say

horny

my body I love

the way I am now

I really love it

I don’t want

they don’t want to pay me more

they don’t want to

they don’t want to pay more

no no no not a problem you don’t

have options no nothing

they just make the extraction

I just had four good ones

they were going to pay me 4000

four fucking thousand pesos

I go out of the hospital

I puked

I felt so bad

I was white white white

I felt so bad

they paid bad

they treat you

like an animal

disgusting it is nothing

a new clinic that pays more

it’s on Facebook

going to get so many women

“It’s a Trash:” Poetic Responses to the Experiences of a Mexican

Egg Donor

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal

Volume 2 Issue 1

It’s a Trash

Heather

I need the money

I pay

everything

school

rent

food

light

toys

everything

every each

problem

my problem

Christmas

birthdays

everything

spend spend spend

my eggs are

very fertile

they call me a lot

I already made it like

five times

they tell me

my eggs are very fertile

but they pay

so bad

it’s a trash

it’s the only word

8,000 pesos

it’s a trash

an animal

one time one egg

swallow all the medicine

they don’t pay

disgusting

like the animal

uncomfortable

every day inject yourself

two injections

maybe three

“It’s a Trash:” Poetic Responses to the Experiences of a Mexican

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Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal

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injections

anesthesia

surgery

last time I did it

these girls they told me

hey Maria we have

just four good eggs

four good ones

four fucking thousand pesos!

they don’t do it well

a headache

bleugh I puke

white white white.

I felt so bad

I was mad

I spent the money next day

all the money

for school of them

the fucking school

twenty thousand pesos

school

rent

I want

to have more boobs

I never do it

for vacation

something for me

everything

for school

school school school

was eating me

it’s so

bad paid in Mexico!

pffff

it’s a trash

the owners don’t care

don’t want to pay

it’s so sad

it’s a trash

“It’s a Trash:” Poetic Responses to the Experiences of a Mexican

Egg Donor

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Volume 2 Issue 1

Susan’s commentary. In “It’s a Trash,” Heather respectfully examines Maria’s

ethos around egg donation. Maria wants it to be clear that she is not doing this for

herself. She donates eggs to pay school, rent, food, light, toys. She is a single mother

and as soon as the money is made, it is spent. She is on a treadmill and cannot get

off. The gravity of her situation and the impossibility of improving her life through egg

donation is thus at the heart of her assertion that the money is trash.

Carl’s poem “Teeter Totter” is playful in showing visually how Maria will adopt

one position and then its opposite. She literally teeter totters back and forth as we see

her thinking, her decision-making, her living come to life in this crazy attempt to find

some balance. The ultimate insight comes toward the last third of the poem when we

see that despite a miserable experience with egg donation, Maria is already holding

out hope for the next clinic being different, more humane, and perhaps more willing to

pay her enough to suffer through this again. This is very sad and yet also such a

tribute to resilience and the ways that people who have little choice continue to make

their difficult lives into something livable. Might it be that through listening deeply to

Maria’s story, the researcher somehow

contributes to the possibility of making

things ever so slightly better?

“Might it be that through

In creating “My Eggs,” I wondered if

listening deeply to Maria’s

my previous erasure poem (“My Things”)

story, the researcher

could literally be turned into a poem in

which, as I imagined, the clothes were a

somehow contributes to

metaphor for Maria’s eggs. My challenge

the possibility of making

was to see how few words and phrases

could be changed so that this new poem still

things ever so slightly

made sense. Would the same flow and style

better?”

and emphasis still work? Would the same

sense of underlying indignation at the lack of

respect for her acts of generosity prevail?

Heather’s commentary. Reading “Teeter Totter,” I envy the freedom of the

experienced poet, who can dance the tightrope between structure and its dissolution

without tottering one bit. I love the rich presentation of Maria here, a complexity that

Carl’s play with the dynamic of “disorder” in poetry allows. The structure and imagery

of the teeter totter is marvelous and the poem neither simplifies nor contains the

individual. We see the contradictions: anger, self-pity, self-love, fury, pain, disgust,

humiliation, outrage, determination, strength, vulnerability, naiveté, and hope.

“It’s a Trash:” Poetic Responses to the Experiences of a Mexican

Egg Donor

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal

Volume 2 Issue 1

My second poem “It’s a Trash” has an analytical starting point. Conducting

interviews in Mexico, I was struck by the deeply contested understandings of “ethical”

compensation for donor eggs and surrogacy services. Clinicians assured me that they

did not pay their donors too much, certainly not enough to live on. Conveniently, if

they paid more, this would entail the “sale of eggs,” the inducement to “donate,” the

commodification of the body. It would violate bioethical principles upheld by countries

like Canada and create a market in human eggs.

Maria, on the other hand, feels cheated

and exploited by the smallness of her

financial compensation. Egg donation is

“I try here to honour her

risky, painful, inconvenient. If it is work, she

wants a fair wage. If it is a gift, she requires

voice, her heart, her

respect, care, money, and relationship. I try

here to honour her voice, her heart, her

sense of justice and

sense of justice and ethics. I spread my

ethics. I spread my

poem on the page like a balance sheet

poem on the page like a

detailing income and expenditure, to

visualize her verbal accounting of injustice

balance sheet detailing

and lack of reciprocity.

income and

expenditure, to visualize

Susan also writes deeply into this

issue in “My Eggs.” “You are like a rabbit”:

her verbal accounting

the line is funny, and horrific, in its

of injustice and lack of

proximity to the truth. Read alongside “My

Things,” this poem reveals Maria as

reciprocity.”

trapped by her own cultural norms of gift

and reciprocity

(which dictate that she

should not have to ask for her clothes back

or demand more money) into a frame of

exploitation that is legitimized by globalized

bioethics and medicine. A Mexican donor, wedged between the perils of inappropriate

behavior and exploitation, is vulnerable. “My Eggs” expresses that vulnerability, with a

gentle disturbing humor.

Carl’s commentary. In “My Eggs,” Susan presents a creative response to the

issues that arise in “My Things.” By rewriting the first poem with a different focus, the

whole business of reproductive economics and ethics is held up to a harsh light. With

a hint of satire, “My Eggs” takes the seemingly insignificant issue of borrowed clothes

to a place of heightened consciousness about the convoluted and contested

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experience of extracting eggs for a price in a free enterprise system that is

characterized by a lot more enterprise than freedom. “My Things” and “My Eggs” are

a powerful poetic combination!

In her poem, “It’s a Trash,” Heather uses Maria’s words to evoke the character,

voice, and heart of Maria in ways that honour Maria’s challenging stories. This poem

insists on acknowledging the complexity of the ethics, politics, and economics of

medically assisted reproduction. This is a very sad poem, and the poem needs to be

sad. Maria’s voice is both poetic and prophetic.

Similarly, in

“Teeter Totter” I have used mostly Maria’s words, but I have

worked with the words like an alchemist who is seeking to translate or transform

language into heightened hermeneutic possibilities. Orr (2002) reminds us that, “a

poem isn’t meant to simplistically turn disorder into order or chaos into cosmos” (p.

23). Instead, in poetry “disorder is dynamic” (p. 23). In “Teeter Totter” I am seeking to

honour the dynamic disorder of living and experience by composing an iteration of

order with poetic rhythms.

Free Poetry

Acido Desoxirribonucleico (ADN)

Heather

My eggs, they are fertile

maybe I have five kids

different women

maybe, yes I’m curious

maybe see a picture

of the baby

of course, it’s my ADN

maybe yes, I’m curious

it’s my family

maybe, to see a picture

my family is Italian

they have blue eyes

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my kids, they don’t have blue eyes

maybe, to see

of course why not

Hearing with the Heart

(for Maria)

Carl

you live faraway

in a world I know

only as a tourist

still

your stories

ring the stories

of neighbours

I knew growing up

in places and times

with bedraggled hope

like a dirigible rises

in the air defying

gravity with gravitas

your voice sings

unguarded pure lyrical

amidst the cacophony of

airplanes barking children

dialogue exasperation fun

gumption holiness interruptions

joy kin laughter murmuring

notes openness play questions

resilience Spanish traffic

ululation voices wind

xylophones yammer zest

like the Caribbean Sea

I hear in your stories

the heart’s rhythms

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A World Away

Susan

becuz I heard in your voice

a song

woven between the dog barking

the dust settling

and the cars honking

imagined you barely sitting

child on your knee

restless and sweaty

on a park bench telling

us in your best English

that in your corner of the world

your beautiful body is an egg factory

you were suddenly no longer

a world away

Heather’s commentary. There is a myth, perpetrated by the reproductive

tourism industry, peddled to donors and intended parents alike, that identity is nurture

alone. Rather than acknowledging the biological, cultural, societal, and legal

complexities of identity, parenthood, and relationships … recruiters tell donors their

eggs are mere bundles of cells, that they are absolutely not their own potential future

children. This is why I wrote “Acido Desoxirribonucleico.” When gently pressed on the

issue, Maria revealed to me that she was in fact curious about the genetic sons and

daughters she may have. She was highly aware that others’ children created from her

gametes might look more like her than her own

children do. Acknowledging this curiosity, in a

context of such denial, struck me as brave,

“Hearing with the heart

honest, and important for others to hear.

is so important, and yet

Carl’s poem, “Hearing with the Heart,” is

often so challenging

notable in its honesty too; it sings out, so

genuine, strong and true. This poem has a

within academia.”

lovely light playful quality. I enjoy the one-word-

per-line stanzas (“bumbling … crumbling and

hope … generosity”) for the pace and the

sounds, and then for the magnificence of humanity conveyed. Hearing with the heart

is so important, and yet often so challenging within academia. In the field, talking

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face-to-face, one has little choice but to engage the heart. Back in the office, reading

transcripts, recreating poetry from another’s story … left-brain activity takes over.

Working from audio helps. The rhythm and sounds of voice conjure life, body,

and soul; they remind us of the interpersonal relational context of the work. Susan’s

poem, “A World Away,” speaks to this, with immense power and startling simplicity.

The beauty of this poem lies in its essence as a dialogue, as Susan generously

shares her process of listening, of attuning to the sounds of Maria’s environment

(“dog barking … dust settling … car honking”) of imagining Maria’s body ruefully

perceived as an egg factory. I experience this profoundly, as a listening into

compassion, into empathy, into a sense of shared humanity and joint responsibility,

until all egg donors globally are “suddenly no longer a world away.”

Carl’s commentary. In “A World Away,” Susan evokes the presence of Maria

with heartful poignancy. In carefully chosen language that calls forth vivid images and

cacophonous sounds, Maria’s story is presented with complexity and tenderness.

Susan has crafted her words in precise ways that offer a heightened understanding of

the events of Maria’s life. Maria tells her story with an unrelenting truth, and Susan’s

observation that “your beautiful body is an egg factory” is a brutally sad testimony to

the challenges that Maria lives every day. The alliteration in the final stanza sings in a

prophetic voice.

The title of Heather’s poem “Acido Desoxirribonucleico (ADN)” calls the reader

to focus on the medical culture that objectively, scientifically, logically, procedurally

oversees the physical processes of reproduction, but the poem concisely and

precisely opens up the heart’s expansive longing for connection, even love. This

poem accomplishes what poetry, at its best, seeks to reveal - the ambiguity and

mystery and wonder that is the heart of human experience.

“Hearing with the Heart” represents a testimony to the poignancy of Maria’s

story for evoking human connections. As I listened to the audio recording of the

interview with Maria, I was enchanted and entranced with the music of her voice and

the cacophony of sounds that interrupted and punctuated and accompanied the

conversation. As I listened to the interview, I was impressed with the vitality,

complexity, and humanity that inspirits and enthuses the conversation. In “Hearing

with the Heart” I express my gratitude to Maria for teaching me how to listen, attend,

and hear with heart and love.

Susan’s commentary. Heather’s meditative poem “Acido Desoxirribonucleico

(ADN)” tackles a neglected question: How does the egg donor feel about the

unknown babies she has played such an important role in creating? How many are

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there? What colour are their eyes? This kind of curiosity is dangerous; it could get in

the way of egg donation; it could mess up successful arrangements. It is not a piece

of the story that most clinics want to identify, much less talk about. Heather has

written this poem with a very gentle hand.

Carl’s “Hearing with the Heart” pays homage to those who are so generous

with their lives, so willing to open bravely to unknown others. It reminds us there is

little else that could be more precious or more important in how we go about the work

we do. I especially loved the alphabetical stanza with the list of things and sounds

and feelings, ricocheting us from exasperation to holiness and making me quickly go

and look up a new word “ululation,” only to find that it is a long howl, and then see that

it is nestled next to voices and wind, exactly where a howl should be if it is to be

picked up and heard.

In “A World Away,” I write into and out of the feelings that Maria has stirred in

me. I explore the impact of her words and her story and wonder at the power of her

lone voice in reaching me at a deep level. I almost feel as if I have been sitting next to

her. There is something ephemeral in coming to know someone like this, something

that is as penetrating and yet indescribable as the long howl to which Carl refers.

Discussion

Heather. Maria’s interview bursts with vulnerability, courage, and rage. The

audio draws my attention to her rhythms and intonation. Maria’s repetitions signal

intense emotion; they become an organizing principle in my poetic inquiring, striving

towards difficult truths. I hear the vulnerability - reinforced by a Western bioethical

pressure towards altruism, of being a cheap clinical resource. I hear outrage at the

lack of reciprocity - in cash, respect, or kindness, for eggs. I hear curiosity - denied

by an industry claiming eggs as mere “bundles of cells,” about a donor’s possible

genetic children.

Reading Susan and Carl’s poems, I am delighted by their play: the tightrope

dance in “Teeter Totter” between structure and dissolution, the tragic humor of “My

Eggs.” In their final poems Susan and Carl share their own beginnings, imaginings,

and feelings. Experiencing this profoundly, listening into compassion, I am called to

greater vulnerability and reciprocity in my research. I seek to find a way to

reciprocate, to honour the generosity of Maria, who spoke to international researchers

one night candidly in a park in Cancun, in hope perhaps, that they could change

something. This work, I understand, has just begun.

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Carl. As a poet, I am always a student. Poetry is full of mystery, and long ago I

relinquished any hope for mastery by immersing myself in the inexhaustible wonder of

poetry. In my journey with Susan and Heather, I have been exploring the possibilities

of poetry for collaboratively and creatively researching the experiences of others by

attending to our own particular positions as interconnected in/to the whole world. As I

listened to Maria’s stories, I was blessed by her conscientious commitment to sharing

her stories so others might learn. The goal of my poetry is to honour Maria by

recognizing her humour, humanity, and hope, but also, my goal is to acknowledge

how Maria is, like a poem, full of mystery and wonder.

The Mexican poet and diplomat Octavio Paz (1999) notes that, “soon after

being born we feel we are a fragment detached from something more vast and

intimate” (p. 95). He understands how we “desire to return to that totality from which

we were ripped” (p. 95). Paz knows that poets research this experience of the

fragment that seeks the whole. In listening carefully to Maria’s words, stories, voice, I

know I can be readily dismissed for appropriating her experiences, refracting them

through the lenses of my many privileged Canadian positions, and misrepresenting

Maria in countless ways that will only serve to perpetuate her Otherness as

marginalized. Nevertheless, I am willing to take the risk of being offensive in order to

claim for poetry a place where Maria’s voice can be invited and even amplified. Like

Hirshfield (1997), I know that “truth and beauty live most happily amid complexity and

paradox” (p. 102). That is the heart of poetry.

Susan. Like many qualitative researchers, I have long relied upon the analysis

of transcripts arising from in-depth interviews as the bread and butter of my

methodology. No matter how skilled the transcriptionist, however, the attempt to

capture word for word what is said must inevitably be reconciled with a kind of failure

that has only recently become fully apparent to me. Even with a good transcript in

hand, I often return to the original audio files to listen for tone, inflection and all the

nuances of voice and breath that allow us to interpret someone’s words in situ. In this

work with Heather and Carl, I have come to appreciate how this kind of deep listening

must be at the heart of scholarly work that purports to

“understand” another’s

experience. In shifting our attention from looking at words on the page to listening

closely to the music of the human voice we may, if we are lucky, find an invitation to

come to know someone. This is a humbling experience and one that constantly

reminds me of the extraordinary generosity of research participants. Heather

recognizes in this, a call to sustained engagement in the research while Carl realizes

that in order to reciprocate we must take the risk of opening ourselves to the

possibility of not getting it exactly right all of the time. To do so is, nonetheless, to trust

that the piece we each bring to the whole has value in and of itself.

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REFERENCES

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Cherry, A. L. (2014). Rise of the reproductive brothel in the global economy: Some

thoughts on reproductive tourism, autonomy, and justice. University of

Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Social Change 17(3), 257-290.

Downie, J., & Baylis, F. (2013). Transnational trade in human eggs: Law, policy, and

(in)action in Canada. The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 41(1), 224-239.

Glesne, C.

(1997). That rare feeling: Re-presenting research through poetic

transcription. Qualitative Inquiry, 3(2), 202-221.

Hirshfield, J. (1997). Nine gates: Entering the mind of poetry. New York, NY: Harper

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Harcourt.

Pennings, G. (2002). Reproductive tourism as moral pluralism in motion. Journal of

Medical Ethics, 28(6), 337-341.

Schurr, C., & Walmsley, H. (2014). Reproductive tourism booms on Mexico's Mayan

Riviera. International Medical Travel Journal.

Siegel, D. (2007). The mindful brain: Reflection and attunement in the cultivation of

well-being. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

Stewart, S. (2012). Poetry: The edge of knowing. Creative Approaches to Research,

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NOTES

UBC BREB No H13-02561.

It should be noted that this process is a deep inquiry into researcher process, a reflexive evaluation of the impact of

poetry on our own processes of listening. According to this design we do not receive input from the interviewee as to how

well heard she feels in the resulting paper. We feel this absence. We would love, in a future project, to re-design our

fieldwork and process to include the aesthetic, evaluative, and reflective participation of research interviewees.

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Egg Donor