Poetry Writing: A Process of Finding One’s Own Voice

This article presents, in the form of a free-verse poem, the trajectory by which the author discovered how to unleash his voice as an academic writer. The poem describes how the author became completely disillusioned with the processes and products of mainstream academic journals in accounting and business, and how the discovery, by serendipity, of a chapter presenting writing as a method of inquiry, by Richardson and St. Pierre, invigorated his academic career. Then, inspired by a series of letters written by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, the author presents a writing process that may be useful for other authors seeking to get rid of the standard academic “non-style” of writing and find their own voices