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It may appear that the act of writing is fruitless in the face of the size and open-ended complexity of gathering environmental calamities including global heating, species extinction, and the appearance of plastic in everything. And yet – and yet – poets and others continue to write in ways that allow us to think about the earth's futures and, more specifically, the future of place in catastrophic times. Geo, Eco and Topo – poetics are acts of making – making earth, home, and place. Making earth as homeplace. This paper considers Juliana Spahr's book Well Then There Now as an entry point into thinking and writing about place in a relational way appropriate for a time of emergency. It focuses on the ways writing-as-making (poiesis) can help us to diagnose troubled worlds and prefigure new ones. The paper surveys the connections between geography and poetry, outlines the contributions of eco, geo and topo poetics and explores the hybrid poetics of Well Then There Now before advocating for the affordances of creative writerly approaches for geography more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This paper explores the role of literacy in the lives of women who are recovering from substance abuse. It discusses the work and products of a one-year literacy workshop in which participants were immersed in reading, writing and sharing of different writings and works of arts. The work with the women converged around their poetry, prose and free writing during their literacy workshop and journaling. Conversations about their writing revealed four themes: (1) finding one’s voice, (2) shifting self-perceptions, (3) writing as an outlet for expression and for sharing traumatic events, and (4) talking about addiction. The overarching concept of these four themes is literacy as a healing tool. This paper discusses the role of writing as a tool for healing from traumatic events and dealing with addiction. [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 shows how reading and writing processes contribute to therapist supervision as a means of working through impasse situations and facilitating the development of the therapeutic self. Texts read and written during supervision will mediate resistance, blocked narratives and containment or attention issues, as well as difficulties in change and processing developments during therapy. Texts will serve as a platform to contain the unconscious and conscious realms and shall contain the professional intrapersonal processing of the supervisee, as well as therapist-patient transference and countertransference relations and supervision relations. For this purpose, three variations of supervision shall be presented, demonstrating the transformative power of reading and writing processes for supervision in impasse situations: (1) reading and writing the therapeutic hour's summaries as a means to gain a re-observation; (2) the text's contribution in removing the patient's identity barriers; (3) the text as a release container to expose the iceberg. [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 explores the impact of a Spoken Word Education Programme (SWEP hereafter) on young people’s engagement with poetry in a group of schools in London, UK. It does so with reference to the secondary Discourses of school-based learning and the Spoken Word community, an artistic ‘community of practice’ into which they were being inducted. It focuses on what happened when secondary students, already enculturated into school Discourses about learning (in their English lessons especially), learned about new ways of being readers, writers, listeners, and performers through the SWEP Discourse. The paper draws on qualitative data collected during the first three years of programme development to consider how an introduction to the social practices of this artistic community appeared to influence 11–18 year old students’ attitudes to poetry study, discussion, writing, and performance both in school and beyond the parameters of traditional secondary school learning. [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]

This research investigated the use of poems for reflection. Participants (n = 16) were enrolled upon a Foundation Degree in Sports Coaching. Part modular assessment saw the students create an action plan that provided key indicators as to their ability within a range of study skills. The entire cohort failed to implement the plan. Whilst there exists a prevailing wind of poetic embrace within the social sciences, limitations are evident within the domain of sport and physical activity. The research questions whether poems may be implemented as a means to initial reflection and reorientation and as a consolidation of prior learning. Findings suggest poetry may aid initial reflection and reorientation and a consolidation of prior learning, that the writings were enjoyable, at times frustrating, developmental and that such creativity might be advocated elsewhere across the HE curriculum. Implications for the learner are discussed and I suggest a framework for practitioners (‘Reflective Facilitation’), which considers how we may assist our learners in a process of guided discovery in which their reflections may become critical and self-governed. The paper then considers the limitations of the research process and offers considerations for future practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This pilot clinical trial tested effectiveness of a poetry writing intervention for family caregivers of elders with dementia. This paper presents findings from a larger study using mixed methods to examine outcome variables of self-transcendence, resilience, depressive symptoms, and subjective caregiver burden. Findings reported here focus on qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews conducted with participants following their poetry writing experience. A grounded theory approach was used. Themes that arose from the data support a mid-range Theory of Self-Affirmation in Caregivers with subthemes of achievement, catharsis, greater acceptance, empathy, self-awareness, reflection, creative and fun, positive challenge, and helping others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]