For Croteau, those deep feelings came out in poetry.

There was something about the experiences that couldn't simply be chronologically laid out in any kind of clear, you know, English language standard way.

And I think some part of that is also the language that I'm working in in Thai is structured very differently linguistically than English.

So when I would start to think about these narratives being shared with me in Thai, the repetition, the way that things come up, the way that narratives will circle back and come forward, but it's not simply a loop, it's moving in a way that's time is a little bit different.

Poetry just emerged as the space where that could maybe be held in a different way.

Actually, the collection that you're talking about was written in the midst of my field site.

It was particularly the section Bridges, which talks about a meeting between the Department of Rural Roads, about a project to build a bridge through this fishing village.

Here's Chantal Croteau reading her ethnographic poem Bridges, which was published in 2025 as part of a collection in the journal Practicing Anthropology.