Helen Owton Libri

The book presents a phenomenologically-inspired method of storytelling through 'poetic inquiry,' emphasizing poetry's sensory appeal and its potential to foster shared experiences. It examines poetry's role as data, its transformation from data to poetic form, and its use in literature reviews and reflective writing. The latter chapters focus on evaluating poetic inquiry and its capacity to engage audiences for broader research dissemination. This interdisciplinary work is valuable for scholars in psychology, sociology, social work, literature, and various professional fields.

This book is about sexual abuse in sport, and specifically about one girl’s experience of long-term chronic abuse in sport. A ‘non-conventional’ approach is employed to explore the experiences of a female athlete named Bella who was groomed, sexually abused by her male coach, and then subjected to years of athlete domestic violence. Through a collaborative auto-ethnography process, these experiences are reported through vignettes and selected poems seeking to involve the reader in the grooming process of a young female athlete, so that they might react from the different social positions they currently occupy. Bella’s story acts as a pedagogical resource in ways that stimulate ethical discussions and enhance knowledge of sexual abuse in sport, by assisting those involved to better understand their own ‘field’ and the dynamics of abuse within it, in order to develop effective abuse prevention strategies.