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This paper concerns young adults who came to Sweden from Afghanistan as unaccompanied refugee minors (UMs) and their engagement with poetry and other creative activities. The aim was to explore how UMs use poetic writing and other creative activities to handle resettlement challenges. Seven young men and six young women, aged 18–24, participated in semi-structured interviews. The material was analyzed using the three components of poetry therapy, developed by Mazza. Three themes were identified: (1) Encouragement; (2) Creative expressions as a "safe place"; and (3) A sense of recognition. Through creative expressions, our participants could understand and handle the emotional difficulties and the insecurity associated with resettlement. Poetic writing was a way to convey personal experiences of injustices, a source of self-understanding, and a way to establish new social networks. We discuss and present suggestions on how poetry and other creative activities can be integrated in interventions toward UMs. [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]