Thomsen, DCSmith, TimothyElrick-Barr, CE2024-10-062023-11-272024-090016-7398D6Y1D (isidoc)https://hdl.handle.net/10182/17698Poetic inquiry is used to highlight contrasting lived experiences of vulnerability and worsening socio-ecological outcomes among Australia's fastest growing coastal communities. Our approach interweaves multiple participant voices across local and national scales to juxtapose the contrasts of inequality, enmesh social and ecological experiences, and ask reflexive questions of audiences. We offer an evocative portrayal of inequality to the growing body of work demonstrating that unequal and intensifying vulnerabilities are created and sustained through complicated, non-adaptive and hierarchical social systems. We demonstrate that poetic inquiry can interrogate complex system phenomena and broad concepts, such as the Anthropocene, to distil critical and systemic issues while retaining undeniable connections with the deeply personal implications of socio-ecological change. Hence, poetic inquiry can serve analytical and descriptive purposes towards an emotional and political aesthetic providing a compelling reorientation from more conventional modes of inquiry and representation. In this study, the misuse of power and privilege in the Anthropocene is reduced and revealed as the Obscene.16 pagesen© 2023 The Authors. The Geographical Journal published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers).adaptive capacityAnthropoceneclimate changeinequalitypoetic inquiryvulnerabilityJournal Article10.1111/geoj.125591475-4959ANZSRC::410103 Human impacts of climate change and human adaptationANZSRC::410102 Ecological impacts of climate change and ecological adaptationANZSRC::441006 Sociological methodology and research methodsANZSRC::3709 Physical geography and environmental geoscienceANZSRC::4406 Human geographyhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Attribution