Search

In difficult times, people turn to poetry, reading, and writing for solace and peace. In emotionally intense and traumatic times, people use poetry to process and understand the lived eyepieces. The havoc wreaked by the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the emotional and psychological well-being of individuals all across the world. Poetry has emerged as a savior in these difficult times. A phenomenon, "lockdown poems", came into existence as individuals all across the globe processed and shared their lived experiences of isolation, pain, and suffering through poems. In the present paper, students of a management program process and share their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, the subsequent lockdowns, and their community work experience. Poetry as a therapeutic and hope-building tool is discussed in the paper along with the original poems written by the students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper includes research into the pervasiveness and dangerousness of intimate partner violence and the ways that poetry therapy can be used to help victims gain perspective on their situation. According to the World Health Organization, over 30 percent of women worldwide have experienced violence at the hands of a partner. The author's personal experience with poetry therapy in leaving an abusive relationship of 13 years is used as an example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a retrospective look, from a distance of thirty-five years, at the lasting influence of a poetry therapy class on one of its participants. It chronicles how words written by a classmate, never seen or heard from after the class dispersed, had a lasting influence on her life. It builds on a theory borrowed from science, the entanglement theory, which suggests that particles in the sub-atomic realm, once connected remain forever in contact with each other. Drawing from the framework of the class, it speculates on extrapolating the physical theory of entanglement to a theory of human connections. It suggests underlying patterns in which lives fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, patterns so complex as to be beyond human understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trauma needs containment and recognition in order to be handled, and this project enabled the soldier to do both through the use of writing and poetry. This paper is based on the qualitative findings of an 18-month long poetry therapy group conducted in a veteran's center, and follows the progress of the veterans as they learned to use writing and poetry to focus on the present and reconnect to a broad spectrum of emotions they had been trained to suppress. The paper describes the theory behind the exercises and their impact on the veterans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Older adults suffer from narcissistic injuries due to the multiple losses faced during later stages of life. A combination of poetry therapy and self-psychology can be an effective approach to address these losses. While self-psychology focuses on the fragmented self, and aids in the development of a more cohesive self, poetry therapy provides opportunities for expression, creativity, and life review that circumvent the limitations often faced by older adults. This paper is a single case study that explores how poetry therapy can be used to generate self-object experiences that provide structure to the older adult's ego. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contribution of stories in biblio-poetry therapy practice and in enhancing personal development is the focus of this paper. Writing, telling and listening to stories open up possibilities for change and new learning windows. Through expressive and communicative stories, therapeutic and developmental dia- and polylogism can expand one's imaginative space and perspectives of action in a “holding framework” and even in virtual communities. Rewriting previous “truth stories” moves and modifies one's conceptions of self, others and life relations. The inhibitions, failures and dislocations inherent in storytelling also provide valuable experiential and experimental touching/moving knowledge. The presence of the “imagined reader” and the “internal supervisor” in the writing process can help in reflecting, evaluating and steering, through meta-emotional and metacognitive processes, one's own and others’ needs, aspirations and goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]