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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]

The present paper analyses the therapeutic power of poetry in the form of poetic epiphanies and epiphanic knowledge in medicine, in two illness narratives of Ian McEwan. The first novel Saturday deals with a patient suffering from Huntington's disease. The second novel The Children Act deals with a leukemia patient. Both of these novels show how literary and creative art forms like poetry can generate epiphanic moments for the patient and epiphanic knowledge for medical professionals which act as moments of opportunity to cultivate and encourage empathetic clinical practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The death of a loved one can create a tear in the fabric of meaning. Grieving involves remaking meaning. In therapy, events can be emplotted into stories, which can return some sense of coherence to the bereaved. In this paper, I present a way of narrating loss through a narrative therapy approach of retelling. This involved writing found poems, known as rescued speech poems, from the conversations of people who had lost a loved partner. The found poetry sought to bring an order to grieving and to polish the beauty of key moments following loss. For one participant, the found poetry amplified a narrative of the biography of the loved one. For another, the poems added beauty to a memory of her deceased partner. Thus, rescued speech poems—judiciously selected from speech, and sensitively arranged on the page—can provide another way to facilitate vibrant meaning-making of life after loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How much of the “Sylvia Plath” we know is a storied life rather than a real one? Can the two be separated? This is complex given that Plath’s final collectionArielwas published twice by husband then daughter. How do we (re)construct Plath as a real person when the narrative around her death is enveloped by presumptions and stereotypes of suicide? This paper explores poems from both versions ofArielwith the idea that, rather than living for her suicide, Plath explored experiences of living in a space in-between wanting to live and wanting to die. This passionate ambivalence is demonstrated in poems such asTulips,Edge, andLady Lazarus. This paper will not presume that the poems withinArielrepresent her whole life; rather, they represent the story of her life during the time in which they were written, tangible artefacts of her inspiration from 1961 to 1963. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Commencing within the trajectory of perseverance, this paper sets out to examine the ways in which the phenomenon of waiting has been shrewdly explored by Niyi Osundare inWaiting Laughters[Osundare, N. (1990).Waiting laughters. Lagos: Malthouse]. Waiting is considered in the context of contemporary African literature and the poet’s own Yoruba tradition. It goes on to argue that the poet extends meanings of waiting far beyond their conventional limits, thus making it a complex, multi-levelled construct deployed as an instrument of resistance in the face of deplorable socio-economic and political conditions of contemporary African states. The paper identifies several manifestations of waiting: as patience, as natural progression, as social predicament, as historical inevitability, as humour, as laughter therapy, and as resistance. Each of these notions of waiting is an element of Osundare’s preoccupation with ways of overcoming the inequities, deprivations and injustices of African nations, and thus offers strategies for minimizing the effects of oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

In this paper we report on a project to take poetry into a nursing home, building on the widely-held belief in the benefits of poetry in therapeutic settings. This intervention involved us reading poetry aloud in a nursing home and reflecting on how residents reacted to these texts. Our findings suggest that talking about the poetry allowed members of this community to self-reflect and tell narratives that were important to them. Sometimes the poem served as a catalyst, encouraging the disclosure of poignant stories, while at other times the poems seemed incidental to the stories told by the group. Our subsequent reflections also suggested to us that there were several areas that needed further exploration. The poems are not delivered straight to the listener with no mediation; rather, the poems and the discussion afterwards are mediated by both the general expectations and particular interventions of the audience and the facilitators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on the possibilities afforded by the availability of high-quality Open Educational Resources (OERs) for traditional Humanities subjects such as English. The OERs provided a rich multimedia environment that enabled students to explore a range of selected poems. This paper reports on the design, development and usability testing of OERs for the teaching of poetry at Junior Certificate level in Irish post-primary schools. The potential impact of such OERs is also addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negritude poetry is often considered the bastion of African literary engagement with the Europe and ultimate summation of the determination of people of the black race to confront racism. But if Negritude as a cultural movement serves as an enduring watershed in the decolonization process of the black Africa and the Caribbean, Negritude poetry on the other hand is incontrovertibly grounded in the committed promotion through writing of the avowed philosophy engraved in the movement's criticism of racial discrimination against Africans and blacks in the diaspora, by the white supremacist Europeans. Indisputably, Negritude essentially celebrates the African cultural renaissance in music, folklore and orature. Despite Senghor's magisterial father figure portraiture and his occupation of a dignified position in the halo chamber of fame in African literature, his writing has been largely described by the critics as conciliatory due to his remarkable volte-face in his latter poetry. An affirmation of this charge has been exemplified in Africanite and metissage culturel. However, David Diop has consistently cut the image of enfant terrible of the Negritude poetry and his poetics have been profoundly iconoclastic. Remarkably, Senghor and Birago Diop's poetry have been strikingly portrayed as confrontational and their poetics belligerent, Aime Cesaire, Leon Damas and David Diop's poetry exuberantly amplify militancy and radicalism mediated by the combative bravura. The paper seeks to evaluate how the selected Negritude poets have eloquently appropriated protest in the language of their poetry, in order to seek restoration of the battered African dignity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poetry creates new ways of knowing and is increasingly being used in qualitative research. Although few researcher-poets integrate poetry as the primary method for their inquiry, many researchers use poetry to synthesise and re-present data. In this paper, I establish the importance of reflexivity and use poetry to re-present my experience of becoming a researcher. Drawing upon my experience as a doctoral researcher, I explore my fear of “non-production”, my relationship with the Ph.D., transitions and relationships following fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, and my fear of being an academic imposter. As a researcher using the art of poetry, I have expanded my understanding of research and the researcher role. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Literature supports the use of both poetry therapy and music therapy with adolescents. Song writing in particular has been recognized for its wide appeal among the adolescent population. In fact, many of the techniques incorporated into the song writing process are common to both poetry therapy and music therapy. This paper will examine some of those common techniques and provide an overview of related literature. A case study will be provided to illustrate some of the techniques mentioned within the review of literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Therapists often use poetry activities with children and adolescents. Understanding how to process poetry activities is necessary for counselors to implement these activities in a therapeutic manner. This paper will outline the authors' experience in using various poetry activities with children and adolescents. Guidelines for processing activities with clients will be presented. Two case studies will illustrate these guidelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to demonstrate the power and meaning of human lyricism by the only means that can really do so - lyricism itself. Using a fresh reading of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets (Eliot, 1944), the author demonstrates the lyrical attitude Eliot himself offers us as a way to observe the world. This lyrical attitude, which the author believes is a vital component of the analytic presence, will be presented here as a unique kind of integration between the predictable and explicable - and that which is inexplicable and sometimes even unknowable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will explore the use of poetry in therapy, particularly with trauma survivors, and clients in recovery from addiction to alcohol and other drugs. Practice examples from sessions with individuals and groups illustrate some of the methods and benefits of writing poetry. Mazza's (2003) model is introduced, together with a discussion of the theoretical base and research supporting poetry writing as a therapeutic collaboration. In addition, the author demonstrates how therapists can use poetry writing themselves as a way to make sense of their work, and relieve the stress of absorbing the hurt and pain of their clients. Samples of poetry from her work and that of other therapists are included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the sacredness of language from the early history of language, and how poetry from all times and cultures connects and heals. The author discusses her work with the California Poets-in-the-Schools program and how the children's poems healed the heart of a Chumash Indian elder. The history of the literature of other nations and cultures' exclusion from American literature is addressed, and how finally that wound is being mended so that poetry of all peoples can help to truly blend us, rather than separate us. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]