Collaborative Poem-Making
Contagious Poetry, Belfast
Patrick Lowell Kruse, a Queen’s University Belfast student doing a Masters in Education, set himself a personal challenge: write a poem with a stranger every day for a year, just to see what would happen. Using a 1940s typewriter to type up and give away each poem on the spot, he took the project to parks, airports, and public spaces across Belfast and beyond. He started it wanting to give something of himself to the world and make people smile, poetry being to him a natural way to do that. What he discovered was that the act of writing something together with a stranger created a connection neither person had planned for: people messaged him weeks later with photos of the poem on their fridge, or to say they had started writing their own. He called it contagious poetry because it turned out to be exactly that.
Collaborative Poem-Making
Write a poem together with someone, and find out what a form or a straight discussion would never have got you.
Phase 0: Know What This Method Is
Collaborative Poem-Making is a poem co-written between a facilitator and a participant or a group, built line by line around a chosen prompt. Because writing something together feels like making rather than answering, people stop performing a response and start thinking and reflecting. It could work in any setting, a workshop, a meeting room, a research participant catch-up, a public event, wherever the group already is. What you learn depends entirely on the prompt you choose: the method provides the mechanism, you provide the question.
Best Suited For
Any point in an engagement activity where you want reflection and collaboration. It could work equally well for checking whether key messages and findings have landed with people, for building connection and shared understanding between people who need to work together, and for capturing how people feel about or relate to a topic, a place, a decision, or an experience. The prompt decides which of these you are doing.
Interested Parties
Anyone whose honest reflection or connection you want. Works one-to-one or in a group. Does not require anyone to be “good” at writing or poetry: the collaborative structure means no one person carries the whole thing, and the playful frame gives people permission to try something they may normally refuse.
Ask Yourself Before You Begin:
- “Have I chosen a prompt that matches what I actually want to learn? The prompt decides everything the poem produces: connection, feedback, reflection on key messages, or something else entirely. Decide this before you arrive.”
- “Am I, or is the person running this, comfortable opening a conversation with a stranger or a group without a script? This method cannot be forced. If the facilitator is uncomfortable with open-ended social situations, the poems will be polite and useless.”
- “Am I running this one-to-one or with a group, and have I thought through what the writing process will look like in practice for that format? Deciding in advance means the group knows what to expect and you are not working it out in the room.”
- “Have I planned my three separate consent questions before I start, so I am not scrambling for them afterwards? Keeping a copy, quoting it, and photo or video are three separate decisions, not one.”
Part 1: The DIY Step-by-Step Method
Open With Ordinary Conversation, Not Poetry
Talk normally first, before poetry gets mentioned at all. The connection has to come before the activity, not the other way round. Introducing the poem too early turns it into a task; letting conversation build first means people come to it already open.
The Details:
- One-to-one: have a real conversation with the person. Ask what they’re doing, how their day’s going, something in their immediate environment. Go at least one question deeper before mentioning poetry at all.
- In a group: a quick warm-up chat or icebreaker does the same job. The goal is to get people talking to each other, not to you, before anyone picks up a pen.
- Tip: if you are embedding this in a programme, bring in someone slightly outside the core delivery team to run it. A participant writing a poem with the person who designed the programme is subtly being assessed. A participant writing a poem with someone they have not met before is not.
Gauge Openness Before Inviting People In
Only move to writing once there is some genuine willingness in the room. This method cannot be coerced into producing useful data. A poem written by someone who felt obligated to participate will be polite and empty. The gauge step is not a hurdle to skip; it is how you know the data will be worth having.
The Details:
- One-to-one: read the individual. If they are closed off or distracted, don’t push. Come back later in the session or let it go entirely.
- In a group: read the room’s energy as a whole rather than pushing everyone into the activity at once. If half the group is not ready, the poems from that half will not tell you anything useful.
- Tip: if someone is genuinely not open to it, a form might suit them better and that is fine. Not every method fits every person. Accepting that gracefully is part of running this well.
Choose Your Prompt Based On What You Want To Know
The prompt is the lever. It decides what the poem produces and therefore what your evaluation data is. Decide what you are trying to learn before you arrive, build the prompt around that, and have it ready.
The Details:
- One-to-one: offer the prompt as a starting point and stay open to where the person wants to take it. If they have a topic of their own, follow them there.
- In a group: set one shared prompt for everyone, or let pairs or small clusters pick their own. A shared prompt makes comparison across poems easier; self-chosen prompts produce richer individual material. Decide which matters more for your evaluation question before you begin.
- Tip: if someone seems hesitant about the topic, try turning it into a joint search: “let’s find something we’re both interested in or somthing that annoyed us” shifts it from an assignment into a game. Once you find a shared interest, the poem follows naturally.
Prompt example: “Write a poem about the one thing from today you will still be thinking about tomorrow.”
Prompt example: “Write a poem together about what brought you both, or all, to this room.”
Prompt example: “Write a poem about what this programme has been like for you.” Or more specifically: “Write a poem about one moment from this project that stayed with you.”
Write It Together, Line By Line
Alternate lines, help each other when stuck, and let the poem end when it ends rather than forcing a set length. The collaborative structure is what makes this work as an evaluation method: no one person is performing, no one is being assessed, and both people are focused on the poem rather than on each other, which is what creates honesty.
The Details:
- One-to-one: pass the poem back and forth between you. Aim for 8 to 10 lines, but stop when it feels finished. If one person writes a line that clearly ends the poem, let it end there. Forcing more lines produces filler, not data.
- In a group: either the whole group builds one poem together by passing it round, or split into pairs or small clusters who each write their own and share back. Both work: passing the poem round a whole group slows down and creates ceremony around the writing, which suits reflective or closing moments; pairs and clusters work faster and suit groups that need to move.
- Tip: read it aloud together at the end and ask if anyone wants to change anything, rather than deciding for them. The reading-aloud moment often produces the most useful facilitator observations: you can see which lines people react to, which lines they quietly revise, and which lines produce a laugh or a silence.
Give Them The Poem And Capture Your Notes
The poem belongs to the people who wrote it. Take a photo of it and give them a copy before you do anything else. Then write your facilitator notes before you leave the room or within 30 minutes of the session ending, while the details are still present.
The Details:
- Action: photograph the handwritten poem before you type it up or tidy it away. A handwritten photo proves the moment happened in a way a clean typed version does not.
- Your facilitator notes should cover: which parts of the writing were easy and which took longer; where the energy shifted; any lines that surprised you; anything said in the room that did not make it into the poem; and your read of what the poem is actually about underneath its surface topic. These notes are your second layer of evaluation data.
- Tip: write the notes before you check your phone or speak to anyone else. They are a raw data artefact, not a summary.
Close With Consent, Not Assumption
Ask three separate questions before you do anything with what has been written. Get a yes to each, separately, and treat each as genuinely optional.
The Three Questions:
- Can I keep a copy? Even if they say yes to everything else, ask this first and separately.
- Can I quote from it? In a report, a funding application, or other documentation. Clarify whether they want to be named or anonymous.
- Can I use a photo or video? Of the poem, of them writing it, or of them reading it. These are three further separate questions if precision matters.
Important:
- Do not bundle consent into one blanket question. Someone may be comfortable writing the poem but not having it photographed, or happy to be quoted anonymously but not named.
- If someone asks you to take something down or delete it after the fact, do it immediately, no pushback. Patrick found this happened occasionally with video content, and his practice of immediate removal meant it remained a non-event rather than a breach of trust.
- Same process whether it is one person or a room full of small groups.
Part 2: Using This as an Evaluation Method
Choose Your Prompt With Your Outcomes in Mind
The prompt is your data-collection instrument: choose it by asking what outcome you are trying to evidence. Are you trying to show that participants understood the key messages of your research? That they felt connected to each other after a programme activity? That something shifted in how they relate to a topic or a decision? Find a prompt that puts participants in direct relationship with that question, without asking them to answer it directly. The gap between the surface of the poem and what it is actually about is where your evaluation data lives.
What This Method Can Evaluate
- Whether key messages or findings have been understood and retained, in participants’ own language rather than yours
- How participants experienced a specific activity, event, or programme element
- Whether a group has arrived at shared understanding or shared meaning around a project
- Connection and relationship: whether people feel differently about each other after an activity
- Emotional response to a topic, a decision, a place, or an experience
- Change over time: run the same prompt at the start and end of a programme and compare the poems
Good Prompt Selection Looks Like
- A prompt chosen to fit the specific evaluation question, not defaulted to out of habit
- A question the participant has a genuine relationship with: something they experienced, felt, decided, or learned
- A prompt that frames the territory without prescribing what participants say about it
- Something open enough to produce a real answer, specific enough to produce a useful one
Your Four Data Collection Options, From Lightest to Richest
- Photograph of the completed poem. Taken immediately, in the participant’s handwriting. This is your primary artefact: a visual record of what they produced, in their own words, in the moment.
- Facilitator field notes. Written within 30 minutes of the session: which parts were easy, which took longer, where the energy shifted, anything said that did not make it into the poem. This process layer shows what was present beyond what ended up on the page.
- Reading aloud. Ask participants to read the poem aloud at the end and, with consent, note or record their reading. The way people read their own poem, what they emphasise, what they rush, where they pause, is a third layer of data the text alone cannot provide.
- Follow-up poem with the same prompt. Run the same prompt with the same person or group at a later point in the programme. The two poems side by side are direct evidence of change over time, in participants’ own language, without a single survey question.
Part 3: The Realist Pathway
Evidence Manifest
How the Mechanism produces specific, usable evaluation data.
| Evidence Type | What it Proves | Data Source |
|---|---|---|
| Qualitative Poem Text |
Direct, unrehearsed language on your chosen prompt, produced in the moment rather than composed for an audience. Because the collaborative structure and the playful frame bypass the self-editing that surveys and group discussions produce, what appears in the poem is closer to what participants actually think than most evaluation instruments can reach. | Photograph of the handwritten poem taken immediately after the session; typed transcript if needed for reporting, stored alongside the photograph. |
| Observational Facilitator Field Notes |
The emotional and conversational landscape around the poem: which parts were easy to write and which took longer, where the energy shifted, what was said in the room that did not make it onto the page, and the facilitator’s read of what the poem is actually about beneath its surface topic. This layer often reveals more than the poem text itself. | Notes written by the facilitator within 30 minutes of the session, before speaking to anyone else or reviewing the photograph. |
| Testimonial Reading Aloud |
How participants relate to what they produced: what they emphasise, what they rush, where they pause or laugh. The reading aloud moment is where participants’ own analysis of the poem surfaces, and it often produces the strongest quotable material of the whole session. | Facilitator notes from the reading-aloud moment; audio or video recording with participant consent where a fuller record is needed. |
| Comparative Follow-Up Poem |
Change over time on the same prompt, with the same person or group, evidenced in their own language without a single survey question. New words that appear, shifts in tone or subject, and things named in the second poem that nobody would say in the first are direct evidence of impact. | Repeat session at a second point in the programme, using the same prompt. Photographs of both poems stored for direct comparison; participant quotes from the second session describing what feels different. |
The data from a collaborative poem is richer than it looks. Here is how to use it.
Quote The Line, Not The Whole Poem
Pull the single strongest line from a poem into your report instead of the full text. It carries the same evidential weight and respects that the whole poem belongs to the person who wrote it. A single well-chosen line, credited generically and placed in context, is more persuasive to a funder than a full poem they have to interpret themselves.
Pair Baseline And Exit Poems Side By Side
If you have run this at two points in a programme with the same people, lay the two poems next to each other in your report. The shift in language, tone, and subject does the evidencing for you without any analysis needed. Words that appear at the close that nobody would have written at the start are your strongest impact data.
Photograph The Handwriting
A photo of the actual handwritten poem is more persuasive to a funder than a typed-up version. It proves the moment happened, proves it happened with a real person, and proves it happened in their own words rather than yours. The messiness of real handwriting is evidence of authenticity, not a problem to be tidied away.
The “One-Sentence” Report
“Because we used Collaborative Poem-Making, participants in our programme felt comfortable enough to be honest and gave us reflection a form would never have captured.”