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Contemplating the school to work transition in the insecure and unpredictable twenty-first century world of work can be anxiety inducing for college students. Consequently, college students may develop disempowered career stories in which they feel ill prepared to explore career prospects or engage with the world of work. This paper describes a career counselling intervention aimed at transforming the disempowered career stories of college students into more empowered versions. Grounded in career construction theory and designed as a group modality, the intervention employs poetry therapy to enhance the development of internally defined and motivated career stories among the group participants. Although this paper highlights the Kenyan context, the intervention itself can easily be adapted to other contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“What am I without paid work?” Some would say, “A non-person.” Others might say, “Free!” The experience of retirement is explored using creative writing for therapeutic purposes. Written from the perspective of fictional British retirees from different workplaces, the paper offers a view of how expressive and reflective writing can be both therapy and research at times of transition. Little in the literature on retirement in the UK uses the “experience near” approaches of writing as inquiry. This paper will point out some of the benefits of research methods that are “up close and personal”, culturally embedded and embodied. Encouraging the use of playful, creative writing in individual counselling and in groups is one of the aims of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the use of poetic documents in narrative therapy practice. It considers the ways in which feminist and poststructuralist ideas inform these practices and speculates about the extent to which a ‘poetic-mindedness’ might sustain the practice of double- (or multiple-) listening. The author illustrates these explorations with examples from her own therapeutic practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]