Lingering on things: how reading poetry can expand understandings of consumer–object relationships

The literature on consumer–object relationships is extensive, but new avenues for research can be inspired through object poetry reading. Reading poems that attend closely to objects allows researchers to access the experience of “lingering,” a form of engagement with objects that contrasts with the existing disjunction between individuals and tangible goods. This paper introduces the Imagist movement of early twentieth-century poetry, the object poetry style, and the “Red Room Poetry Object” project – a poetry-writing competition for young people and their teachers in Australasia – to illustrate how marketing scholars interested in consumer – object relationships can be inspired by object poetry reading. The article concludes with a discussion about how engagement with published poems can inspire consumer researchers more broadly.