If you knew the end of a story would you still want to hear it? Using research poems to listen to Aboriginal stories

Abstract

This paper presents a poem created whilst conducting an inquiry into one of the endings of stories told of, and by, people living with mental illness: this story ending is grouped by a word (and social movement) widely known as Recovery in mental health care. Recovery, however, is not a word commonly used in the places where this Inquiry occurred. Nor is it a category of story ending often told about Australian Aboriginal people living with a diagnosis of chronic mental illness. This inquiry was, and is, thus focussed on how the current endings of stories that surround Australian Aboriginal peoples in mental health care are being/ were told and "heard". This paper is an attempt to use poetry as a therapeutic and storytelling strategy to highlight the difference between hearing and listening, and how that difference relates to the word Recovery as a paradigm shift and story of social change.