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This paper looks at the role of fathers in the family. Structured around three poems, it emphasises the need for a triangular structure in the mind, enabling the child (and any individual) to look at 'reality', internal and thus external too, from a third position. The Oedipal situation, what Hanna Segal called 'the core complex', lies deep within the mind of any individual, and continues to have vital relevance in the lives of modern families. Clinical material is included in the paper to illustrate the points made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

A co-design project, consisting of individual and collective design activities, was organized with clients of a mental health service, in order to explore its potential to support people with psychosis. The group met for approximately two hours, weekly, for six months, participating in design activities and collectively deciding on the project purpose and outcome – a boardgame. The experience of one group participant (Anthony) is explored, selected as the first case study within an Interpretative Phenomenological Analytical (IPA) framework. Following IPA's ideographic focus, Anthony's case was purposefully selected, as it portrayed a detailed picture, informing theoretical reflection on designing as therapeutic. The paper includes Anthony's first-hand account, combined with an analysis of data from three semi-structured interviews, photographic evidence and a reflective diary kept by the lead researcher. Results suggest that, for Anthony, design activity: a) helps developing a sense of agency b) is experienced as grounding in reality c) contributes to the development of inter-personal relationships, and d) has a different sense of rhythm than artistic practice. These results are contextualized within literature on the lived experience of psychosis and suggest that designing can be beneficial for people with psychosis, providing the backdrop for further research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an a/r/tographic (artist/researcher/teacher) study through autobiographical close readings of several poems as a means to understand death within what the author calls eternal poetic time. Moving beyond the author's childhood's static image of death, the paper suggests that the ephemeral nature of life is not something to fear, but makes living more beautiful and eternal through the making and sharing of poetry and art. This paper is the first part of a three-paper study, which includes original poetry by the author. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual Poetry and nursing have much to say about humanity during and after the global lockdown. Whereas nurses have worked on the front lines to treat infected patients both physically and mentally, poets have played a tremendous role in relieving students of negative energy, motivating them to pursue their dreams and hopes. Building on Thematic Analysis and the Reflective Learning Approach, this paper examines the relationship between virtual poetry and nursing education. One focus group from Agadir city had to study English at ISPITS institute for 14 h, using Google Meet and, at a later stage, they were entailed to evaluate their learning experiences with the Online English Class. The results unveiled that the Moroccan student nurses share a great concern for humanity and that virtual poetry could be used as an instructional medium in shaping their personality traits and reinvigorating their academic goals about the nursing practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes group and community intervention work with individuals currently or formerly experiencing homelessness to create mutual connection and support using art, poetry, stories, pop-up porches, and photobooks. The group and community intervention work was enhanced by International Association of Social Work with Groups (IASWG) SPARC endorsement and funding to create photobooks which served to visualize the life stories and accomplishments of persons identifying as currently or formerly homeless. The two-decade journey of the author's work with individuals experiencing homelessness will be described to illustrate and celebrate how creative group and community interventions addressing homelessness (including photobooks) can connect individuals experiencing homelessness with people who have never experienced homelessness to facilitate group dialogue and mutual understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At 18 weeks' gestation, we were told that our son was not going to live. Left to cope on my own, I turned to the paper and pen and poured out my feeling and fears on paper. For the next couple of years, I was to spend many hours dotting all the “i”s and crossing all the “t”s to make sure every detail was correct. In this short article, I share briefly an introduction followed by a poem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

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 considers performance poetry as a method to explore lived experiences of disability. We discuss how poetic inquiry used within a participatory arts-based research framework can enable young people to collectively question society’s attitudes and actions towards disability. Poetry will be considered as a means to develop a more accessible and effective arena in which young people with direct experience of disability can be empowered to develop new skills that enable them to tell their own stories. Discussion of how this can challenge audiences to critically reflect upon their own perceptions of disability will also be developed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Through poetry and strips of narrative, this paper discusses the embodied experience of chemical sensitivity and the anthropologist author's and other patients' journey through altered perception towards knowledge, community and transformation in the context of a medical clinic. The narratives are situated in several strands of relevant theory, including Merleau‐Ponty's work on the primacy of perception, feminist perspectives on embodied experience and standpoint epistemology, disability studies, identity creation through narrating the self, and Lave and Wenger's situated learning in a community of practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liberal common sense sees the absence of conversations about abortion in schools as the consequence of a taboo that leaves teenage girls uninformed and silenced. From this perspective, the solution is to systematically introduce the subject of abortion in sex education curricula in order to provide information, resources and discussion on the schools' terms. Using post-structuralist theory, I argue that what might be needed instead is a certain ‘side-spreading’, rather than an official understanding, of the subject of abortion in schools. I aim to de-naturalise dominant liberal discourse by making transparent the links between sex education and ‘populational reasoning’, considering powers of production, questioning the position of schools as official holders and spreaders of approved knowledge about sex, and inviting possibilities to ‘de-territorialise’ and ‘re-territorialise’ the subject of abortion in unpredictable ways. This paper is composed of personal reflections, poems and theoretical explorations that challenge the predetermined nature of sex education curricula. Arguments for loosening the subject of abortion through multiple discourses and modes of expression are mirrored by the fragmented, genre-crossing form this paper takes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Adolescence is a challenging stage due to the multiple and rapid changes that occur. In this paper, we present a clinical case of a teen with anxiety and hypochondriac symptoms. The therapeutic treatment, ongoing, was provided in 16 sessions. The intervention was based on the assumption that health anxiety results from processes that maintain catastrophic interpretations that for itself increases anxiety. The principles of cognitive–behavioral and narrative therapy were applied in the intervention. The therapy involved providing psychoeducation, reducing the excessive focus given to the body, learning and training strategies to cope with anxiety, and constructing a life project. The case study shows the value of using metaphors as tools in the therapeutic process, and when facing life's challenges. Also, it shows the importance of using reading and writing exercises to promote change and adjustment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The nature of participants' experience in practitioner research is often taken for granted, and its more tacit dimensions overlooked. Poetic expression is valuable in surfacing these tacit dimensions, enabling the researcher to engage with them more consciously and draw on them to strengthen the research. To illustrate, I draw on my own poetically expressive writing relating to the experience of leading an action research project - a text entitled A Gossamer Thread. I describe how I came to write in this way, and draw on the poet Robert Frost's account of 'the figure a poem makes' to show how the writing arises from within experience and is able to clarify its meaning. This process is linked to an understanding of Dewey's concept of integral experience. Ways in which poetic expression may contribute to practitioner research are discussed, exploring how the vitality of poetic expression can energise research and how writing poetically emphasises receptivity, stepping back from assumptions and opening up to possibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronic illness diagnoses frequently cause the shattering of personal assumptions about the self and the world, resulting in an experience of alienation and fragmentation of identity. Multiple studies on the effects of expressive writing have demonstrated physical, emotional, and psychological health benefits, yet little is known about how it might offer benefit in response to a chronic illness diagnosis. Combining the transformation-through-writing model with the dual process model for non-death loss and grief, I take an autoethnographic approach to explore how creative writing about Fibromyalgia (FM) allowed me to progress from a first story/loss orientation to a second story/restoration orientation as part of a dialogical process of self-reconstruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers exploring sensitive topics need to identify appropriate methodologies to encourage open expression. We used poetic inquiry to explore the lived realities of transwomen in Namibia, a socially marginalised group globally. We conducted two focus group discussions with 15 transwomen and developed found poems. The poems captured issues of identity and belonging and illustrated the transwomen's journeys of self-acceptance, experiences of violence, rejection, agency and relationships. In order to enhance participant voice and enrich the poems, they were shared with some transwomen in a feedback and reflection session. This article unpacks this collaborative poetics approach. We share selected poems, explore their impact on participants, and discuss how this engagement with the poetry allowed for deeper discussion of participants' experiences. The collaboration around the poems allowed researchers and participants to find new ways to explore and address issues of discrimination and marginalization, and to actively engage larger and more diverse audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on Latinx youth's testimonios or "stories of marginalization" tied to immigration. I drew from Anzaldúa's conceptualizations of nepantla [unfamiliar in-between spaces] and Sepúlveda's pedagogy of acompañamiento [accompaniment] to understand the youth's experiences. Methods involved reuniting with former elementary students through pláticas [informal gatherings] to discuss poetry they wrote in fourth grade. Individually, their writing revealed tensions traversing temporal boundaries. Collectively, their poems exposed a racist nativist shadow cast over their lives. Implications for practice include teachers centering Latinx youth in the classroom, accompanying them, and witnessing their testimonios. Our responsibility as educators lies in empathizing with students as they face heavy burdens in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I discuss the ways in which writing poetry and reflecting on its meanings may be a valuable tool for promoting an educator's reflexivity surrounding issues of reconciliation. As Canada embarks on the work of healing the difficulties its colonial past has caused its original inhabitants (i.e. Indigenous peoples), educators must explore ways in which they can contribute to a more socially just, democratic, and healthy society. By utilising the theoretical framework of Dialogical Self Theory (DST) to describe and explore identity and the writing of poetry as an exploration of self, it becomes possible for myself, as an educator, to unearth my own biases and begin to create safe spaces for identity exploration, learning, and healing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents culturally relevant strategies for creative counseling with children who have been diagnosed with cancer. In addition, therapeutic foundations and cultural considerations for using creative methods with pediatric oncology populations are discussed. Finally, the author outlines the use of specific creative interventions to assist this population including Beads of Courage, drum therapy, art, games, music, and poetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Well-developed career stories are becoming increasingly important for individuals as they navigate an unstable and unpredictable labour market. Existing narrative approaches in career guidance do not yet clearly identify the learning process by which career stories are created. In this article, a model of transformation-through-writing will be introduced to help explain the learning process that occurs when narratives are used for constructing career stories. We propose that this learning process occurs stepwise in four cognitive stages: sensing, sifting, focusing, and understanding. To progress through these stages, an internal (with oneself) as well as an external (with relevant others) dialogue is needed. The case study used to illustrate the process is a story of unemployment and effectively shows how narratives can be created through expressive and reflective writing and how such a process may foster career learning in response to a boundary experience. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines poetic phenomena-rhymes, alliteration, puns-that appear in the introspective reports of people who have taken part in a psychology experiment. We argue that these phenomena are a form of discourse poetics identified in conversational data by Sacks and subsequently discussed by Jefferson, among others. We extend earlier research, first, to identify how the organization of these introspective narratives facilitates a range of poetic and rhetorical forms more commonly associated with the study of classical literary and religious texts; and second, to provide evidence that these poetic forms are not happenstance but are pragmatic achievements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this case study was to explicate the life story and gain deeper understanding of the aging experience of an elderly woman. Through poetry, this woman transformed challenging life experiences. Data analysis revealed themes of determination, spiritual strength, and creatively aging. The findings support knowledge development about how older women age and express their lives. Most of the participant's poetry was in the sonnet form, which can convey deep and universal insights. Thus, the aging experience was seen from an extraordinary perspective. The study led to a deeper understanding of a dynamic holistic perspective of aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]