Therapeutic implications of poetic conversation

Abstract

The authors experienced a serendipitous exchange of poems leading to shared examination about poetry as dialogue. This led to designing and coleading a workshop at the National Association for Poetry Therapy, 2005, on poetic conversation. We suggest details about the structure and content of the workshop, and examples of poems to illustrate many different conversations. This article suggests several ways to look at poetry as dialogue: conversation the poet engages in with him or herself, conversations begun by the poet for the reader, poems written directly to or about someone else, between two or more parts of the self, or as a response to another poem. We use the writing of Gregory Orr, Jane Hirshfield, Jack Leedy, and Nick Mazza to illustrate how poetry in conversation leads to compassion, sympathetic identification, and connection. Ultimately, we believe it is these states that underpin the therapeutic value of poetry.