Poetry and Story Therapy

Book excerpt: Poetry and short stories can act as powerful springboards to growth, self-enhancement and healing. With the guidance of a skilled facilitator, participants can engage with their own creative expression, and with that of others, and in doing so find opportunities to voice their truth, affirm their strengths, and find new ways of coping with challenges. This book explores the therapeutic possibilities of poetry and stories in turn, describing how to select appropriate works for discussion, and providing techniques for facilitating personally-relevent and growth-enhancing sessions. The author provides ideas and suggestions for personal writing activities that emerge from or intertwine with this discussion, and explains how participants can create their own poetic and narrative pieces using non-literary stimuli, such as music, photographs, paintings, objects, and physical movement. A useful appendix contains titles of individual poems, stories, and literary anthologies that the author has found particularly beneficial in her work, as well as useful further resources and contact details for readers who would like to train to be registered or certified poetry therapists or facilitators. Combining theory with innovative ideas for practical, experiential exercises, this book is a valuable tool for creative arts therapy students and practitioners, mental health and medical professionals, and anyone else interested in the healing possibilities of creative expression.