Abstract
Researchers in the social sciences have frequently bemoaned the difficulty in accessing and expressing the nuances inherent in human experience (Offord and Cantrell 2008; Rath 2012; Hoskins 2015; & Allen 2017). For academics working within sex and sexuality studies – and on porn audience research in particular – the focus of study is often precisely which is least easily tangible: namely how sex and sexuality are experienced by the individual. The contention of this paper is that creative methods, specifically the written and spoken poetic form, can give texture to some of these more elusive experiential complexities. By drawing upon my own work in the field of porn studies, I also contend that poetry in research can speak to issues of ontology, epistemology and reflexivity experienced within the field of sex and sexuality studies, in a way that traditional academic language and research methods may otherwise struggle to achieve.