benefits of creative writing poetry

The Personal Benefits of Writing Poetry

by Melissa Donovan | Mar 10, 2022 | Poetry Writing | 22 comments

What are the benefits of writing poetry?

Poetry writing is an excellent practice for strengthening one’s writing skills. Through poetry writing, we gain command of language, cultivate a robust vocabulary, master literary devices, and learn to work in imagery. And that’s just a small sampling of how poetry improves basic writing skills.

However, poetry has other benefits that are meaningful on a more personal level.

Writing has long been hailed as a deeply therapeutic practice. In fact, all the arts have therapeutic benefits. But poetry imparts a broad range of emotional and intellectual benefits that are useful to personal growth, whether we’re working on self-improvement, emotional or psychological coping and healing, developing relationships, and even furthering our careers — including careers outside of the writing field.

And while all forms of writing, from journaling to storytelling, can be therapeutic, poetry writing offers some unique benefits.

Emotional and Intellectual Benefits of Writing Poetry

Whether you want to stimulate your intellect or foster emotional health and well-being, poetry writing has many benefits to offer:

Therapeutic: Poetry fosters emotional expression and healing through self-expression and exploration of one’s feelings. It provides a safe way to vent, examine, and understand our feelings.
Self-awareness: Through raw expression of our thoughts and feelings, poetry can help us become more attuned to what’s going on in our hearts and minds.
Creative thinking: With its emphasis on symbolism, metaphor, and imagery, poetry writing fosters and promotes creative thinking.
Connections: Many people write poetry privately, but when poems are shared, they can inspire, move, and honor other people, forging deeper interpersonal connections.
Catharsis: The act of creation — of making something out of nothing — is a cathartic experience.
Critical thinking: Through the expression of our thoughts and ideas, poetry pushes us to challenge ourselves intellectually.
Language and speaking: The practice of poetry strengthens language, writing, and speaking skills.
Developing perspective, empathy, and world views: Writing poetry often prompts us to look at the world from a variety of perspectives, which fosters empathy and expands one’s world view.
Cognitive function: Whether we’re searching for the perfect word, working out how to articulate a thought, or fine-tuning the rhythm and meter of a poem, the steps involved in crafting poetry strengthen our cognitive processes.

This is just a sampling of the benefits of writing poetry. Can you think of any other ways that poetry writing is beneficial to your emotional or intellectual well-being? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment, and keep writing poetry!

22 Comments

A very interesting perspective of looking into the idea of writing poetry. I myself write poetry so I can understand Melissa ideas.

Good luck with your poetry, Colin!

While I agree with the points you make, I think poetry is valuable in and of itself. One can not, ultimately analyse the value of poetry in purely utilitarian terms. It is valuable in and of itself. Kevin

Kevin, as the post mentions, poetry is valuable in many ways. It would take an entire book to cover them all. This post focused on the benefits of poetry in terms of personal growth and development. You’ll find other articles on this site about the other benefits of poetry.

Poetry writing is more than just tossing a few lines on a page. If you want to write poetry, read poetry: TS Eliot, Anne Sexton, Rodney Merwin, Emily Dickenson, Robert Lowell.

I cut my teeth on Yeats: “One had a lovely face and two or three had charm, but charm and face were in vain because the mountain grass cannot but keep the form where the mountain hair has lain.”

Mastering the poetic line is essential to mastering the prose line. And I agree with Kevin, poetry is valuable in and of itself.

I recommend finding a poety group online or in your town as well.

Hi Phillip. I appreciate your feedback. Many writers I’ve encountered like to write poetry for personal reasons, often for self-expression or personal growth. They may not want to be published or refine their poetry to the level of some of the master poets you’ve mentioned. Everyone has a right to express themselves and write poetry in any way they want. Having said that, I personally enjoy the journey of improving my skills, studying the masters, etc.

I love poetry a lot and I really think that poetry influences people a lot. I always feel myself calm and even better. Romantic poetry always make my mood better. I wrote a lot of poems and I can surely say a lot of theme were quite well. I stopped writing poetry cause less of time. I’m now working as a writer and I write article I have too. So , there is no time left for writing poetry.

I know what you mean, Julie. When writing becomes a job, we have less time to write the fun stuff!

Excellent article. Poetry is the highest creation of the literary mind. Writing poetry has helped my prose to be condense, wittier and elegant. Writing poetry is using imagination. Writing prose is using logic. I write both poems and prose because I want to live in the world of both logic and imagination.

Poetry is close to my heart as well. Thanks, Simon.

Very true. I’ve written poetry for much of my adult life, although only ever had one published in a University magazine. It definitely helps in personal ways.

Thanks for sharing your experiences, Vivienne. Mine are similar 🙂

I love reading poetry, so I am developing the hobby of writing it on my own. I find very rewarding doing so. The more I write, the more I can want to write with all of my limitations. However, I am pressing on.

I feel the same way about writing poetry–it’s so rewarding. I don’t get to write it as often as I’d like but it’s always been one of my favorite forms.

Hi Melissa,

This is great!

I write poetry personally and I run a business where I write poetry/prose for special life events and I would love to share this with my mailing list.

Would you be okay with me sharing this? I will of course credit you and the article.

Of course! You’re welcome to share a link to this article. I’d appreciate that. Thanks so much! I’m glad you liked this post.

Thanks so much! I will certainly share a link.

That’s awesome. Thanks, Biancca.

Really great explanation and very helpful

Glad you found it helpful! Thanks for your comment.

What you said about poetry as therapeutic and used to release emotions and exercise creativity hits me the most since I am also a writing fan. Still, I don’t know so much about poetry. I’m a caregiver here in Puerto Rico, and the kind of work that we have is stressful. All thanks to a friend, I have learned about this Puerto Rican poet, Giannnina Braschi, with good books to read. I wanted to get one to have more glimpses and ideas of the poetry and story she offers. Maybe it will help me improve my writing skill and learn poetry someday.

When I started writing poetry, I knew almost nothing about it. I just put my thoughts and feelings into lyrical language. Over time, I read some poetry and studied it and took workshops. It’s truly an amazing tool for creative self-expression.

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International Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab) is a multidisciplinary research-to-practice initiative accelerating the field of neuroaesthetics.

More than words: why poetry is good for our health.

“Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true: That even as we grieved, we grew That even as we hurt, we hoped That even as we tired, we tried That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious”

Amanda Gorman, the 2017 National Youth Poet Laureate, spoke these powerful words at the 2020 presidential inauguration from the dais of the United States Capitol where, just weeks prior, a violent insurrection had erupted.

For millions of viewers watching virtually, amidst a raging pandemic and tumultuous political moment, her words provided solace and healing.

Gorman’s performance was a testament to the power of poetry and its delivery through spoken word to express our collective fears and most fervent hopes. Research shows that poetry—reading, writing, speaking it—can help support our mental health, especially in times of great need.

Amanda Gorman. Every word. Every single word. Inspiring and healing. Powerful and moving. #InaugurationDay https://t.co/LF5UQPp1aW — Javier Muñoz (@JMunozActor) January 20, 2021

The Healing Word

Poetry can provide comfort and boost mood during periods of stress, trauma and grief. Its powerful combination of words, metaphor and meter help us better express ourselves and make sense of the world and our place in it.

Different research studies have found evidence that writing or reading poetry can be therapeutic for both patients dealing with illness and adversity as well as their caregivers. A 2021 study of hospitalized children found that providing opportunities for them to read and write poetry reduced their fear, sadness, anger, worry, and fatigue. A group of 44 pediatric patients was given poetry-writing kits containing writing prompts, samples of selected poems, colorful construction paper, pens, and markers. The majority of children reported that they felt happy after the poetry activity. The post-poetry surveys also found that writing and reading poetry gave the children a welcome distraction from stress and an opportunity for self-reflection.

Another study found that guided poetry writing sessions significantly alleviated both symptoms of depression and trauma in adolescents who have been abused. Other studies found that poetry therapy with a certified therapist helped cancer patients improve emotional resilience, alleviate anxiety levels and improve their quality of life .

Poetry therapy also may support the emotional well-being of caregivers, including domestic violence counselors , family members of dementia patients and frontline healthcare workers. A systematic review published in 2019 found that poetry can help healthcare workers combat burnout and increase empathy for patients, giving the frontlines another arts-based tool to turn to during the pandemic and beyond.

And the healing benefits of poetry can extend to just about anyone: one study of undergraduate students in Iran found that reading poetry together reduced signs of depression, anxiety, and stress. Using poetry to find our voice can open up new ways of expressing ourselves that cannot be traversed with everyday words, and open up ways to heal and restore us particularly in times of stress. As UCLA psychiatrist and poetry therapist Robert Carroll once put it : “Our voices are embodiments of ourselves, whether written or spoken. It is in times of extremity that we long to find words or hear another human voice letting us know we are not alone.”

Rhythm and Rhyme on the Mind

Our brains are highly attuned to rhyme and rhythm in poetry. Even newborn infants respond to rhymes. In one 2019 study , researchers measured the surface brain activity of 21 Finnish newborn babies listening to regular speech, music, or nursery rhymes. Only the nursery rhymes produced a significant brain response when the rhymes were altered, suggesting that the infants’ brains were trying to predict what rhyme should have occurred.

Of course, even adults appreciate rhythmic and rhyming poems. One study found that the brain can automatically detect poetic harmonies and patterns even when the reader had not read much poetry before. In particular, stanzas with rhymes and a regular meter , or rhythm, led to a greater aesthetic appreciation and more positively felt emotions. This may be because, according to the cognitive fluency theory , we tend to enjoy things that are easier for us to mentally process, and both rhyme and repeated patterns do just that.

Rhyme and rhythm in poetry also intensify all emotional responses , be it joy or sadness. And like music, poetry can give us the chills, producing literal goosebumps with a good stanza. One study found that recited poetry could cause participants to feel intense emotions and subjective feelings of chills. Surprisingly, even subjects with little prior experience with poetry were moved; 77% of them said they experienced chills listening to unfamiliar poems. Video recording of the participants’ skin (via a “goosecam”) captured objective evidence of goosebumps during the readings.

These poetry-induced chills activate parts of the brain’s frontal lobe and ventral striatum, which are involved with reward and pleasure. The insular cortex, a brain area associated with bodily awareness, was also activated during these moving passages which may explain why poetry can feel like a full-body experience.

The words matter too, of course. The right words in a poem elevate the intensity of positive emotions the reader has.

The use of metaphor—making comparisons and drawing connections between different concepts—in particular has been found to activate the right hemisphere of the brain . Normally, our brain’s left hemisphere is far more involved in helping us understand language, but research has found that the right hemisphere may be critically important for integrating meanings of two seemingly unrelated concepts into a comprehensible metaphor.

In times of trauma, our language centers may go offline, making it difficult to fully express ourselves. By activating a different part of the brain through metaphor, poetry may help us again find our voice.

Though more research still needs to be conducted to understand all the ways poetry impacts our health, this much is clear: beyond rhyme or reason, poetry is good for our health and soul.

How to Make a Rhyme on Your Own Time

Listen to The Slowdown daily poem podcast from American Public Media and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Check out these 5 tips for how to read poetry from NPR.
Write your own poems. Try these poetry exercises to help you get started.
Read some selected poetry that resonates with teens.
Transform Shakespeare into a pop song or vice-versa. Take a sonnet by the Bard and write it like a Top 40 hit. Or turn your favorite love ballad and make it a sonnet .
Try your hand at writing your own poem – these worksheets of literary devices can help you get your creative juices flowing.
Find a favorite children’s poet , such as Shel Silverstein or Roald Dahl.
Act out a poem. Sing a poem. Find different ways of enjoying poetry!
Write a haiku . A traditional form of Japanese poem with a 5-7-5 syllable pattern, writing a haiku can be easy and fun.
Write an acrostic poem . You can start with your own name, but branch out to anything you like or enjoy.

This is article is a part of IAM Lab’s regularly updated COVID-19 NeuroArts Field Guide . Be sure to check the Guide for the latest, evidence-based tips on how the arts can support our wellbeing during the pandemic.

We would also like to hear from you: Are you, your loved ones or colleagues dealing with specific issues and want to learn more about art-based solutions? Are you already using the arts to help you cope?

Please share your thoughts, ideas and concerns with us at covid19arts@artsandmindlab. org . Be well and stay safe.

Lead Image: Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Carlos M. Vazquez II / Flickr

Written and reported by IAM Lab Communications Specialist Richard Sima . Richard received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from Johns Hopkins and is a science writer living in Baltimore, Maryland.

Graffiti child balloon unsplash Karim Manjra 4.3

When You Write

Why Poetry Matters: The Significance Of Poems In Our Lives

Do you ever find yourself drawn to the beauty of language? The way words can flow together to evoke emotions and paint vivid imagery in our minds? If so, then you already understand the significance of poetry in our lives.

Poetry is more than just a collection of words on a page; it is a form of expression that has the power to capture the essence of human experience. Through poetry, we can explore our deepest emotions, from love and joy to grief and despair. It allows us to reflect on our own experiences and connect with others who may have gone through similar struggles.

The language of poetry is unique, often using metaphors and symbolism to convey complex ideas in a concise and impactful way. It is a tool for self-expression and self-reflection, a way to understand ourselves and the world around us.

In this article, we will delve into the significance of poems in our lives and explore why poetry matters.

Key Takeaways

Poetry serves as a means of emotional expression, allowing us to explore our deepest emotions and connect with others who have gone through similar struggles.
Poetry is a powerful tool for communication and self-expression, allowing poets to experiment with different forms and structures.
Reading and writing poetry can have therapeutic benefits, improving mood, reducing stress, and alleviating symptoms of depression and anxiety.
The impact of technology on poetry has created both opportunities and challenges, but the future of poetry in the digital age remains promising as long as the integrity of the art form is preserved.

Poetry as an Expression of Human Emotions and Experiences

Poetry’s power lies in its ability to capture and convey the full spectrum of human emotions and experiences, making it an incredibly relatable and enjoyable form of expression. Through poetry, we’re able to explore the depths of our own emotions and connect with the experiences of others. The words on the page can evoke feelings of joy, sorrow, love, and everything in between, allowing us to confront and process our own feelings in a safe and creative way.

Human experiences in verse have the unique ability to make us feel less alone. When we read a poem that speaks to us on a personal level, we feel understood and validated. Poetry has the power to create a sense of community and empathy, bringing people from different walks of life together through shared experiences.

Whether it’s a love poem that captures the intensity of a first kiss or a piece that delves into the complexities of grief, poetry allows us to connect with each other on a deep and meaningful level.

The Unique Power of Poetic Language

When you read poetry, you’re often struck by the beauty of metaphors and symbolism. These literary devices allow writers to convey complex emotions and ideas in a powerful and concise way.

Additionally, the rhythm and sound of poetry can be mesmerizing, drawing you in and immersing you in the language.

Finally, the economy of language in poetry is remarkable – every word is carefully chosen and placed for maximum effect.

It’s this unique combination of elements that gives poetry its enduring appeal.

The Beauty of Metaphors and Symbolism

With metaphors and symbolism, poets paint vivid pictures in our minds, creating a beauty that words alone cannot capture. These literary devices add depth and complexity to a poem, allowing the reader to see beyond the surface level and into the deeper meaning of the words.

Here are four reasons why metaphors and symbolism are crucial in poetry:

They create a sense of universality: Metaphors and symbols tap into our shared human experiences and emotions, making them relatable to a wider audience. They allow us to connect with the poet and their message on a deeper level.
They evoke emotions: Metaphors and symbols add an emotional layer to a poem, allowing the reader to feel what the poet is feeling. They create a visceral response that can stay with the reader long after they’ve finished reading.
They add complexity: Metaphors and symbols can add layers of meaning to a poem, making it richer and more complex. They allow the poet to convey multiple ideas and messages in one piece of writing.
They challenge our thinking: Metaphors and symbols can be ambiguous, leaving room for interpretation. They challenge the reader to think critically and consider different perspectives, making poetry a thought-provoking and engaging art form.

In short, metaphors and symbolism are essential in poetry. They add beauty, depth, and complexity to a poem, making it a powerful tool for communication and self-expression.

The Rhythm and Sound of Poetry

Ah, the sweet melody of verse and the musicality of rhymes – it’s what makes reading a poem akin to listening to a symphony. Poetry is an art form that not only communicates emotions but also engages our senses.

The musicality of poetry is the rhythmic arrangement of words that creates a harmonious flow, inviting readers to feel and experience the emotions of the poet. Reading poetry aloud has a profound impact on the reader. The words come alive, and their musicality is amplified.

The rhythm and sound of poetry have the power to transport us to another world, to evoke emotions that we never knew existed. The musicality of poetry creates a space for us to connect with ourselves and others, to share in the beauty of language and the power of emotions.

The Economy of Language in Poetry

The efficiency of language in poetry is one of the most remarkable aspects of this literary art form. Poets have the ability to create an impact with just a few words, making every word count.

The brevity of language in poetry allows for a condensed yet powerful expression of emotion and imagery. Poets use this economy of language to convey complex emotions and ideas with just a few words, making poetry a unique form of expression.

The impact of brevity in poetry is undeniable. It allows poets to create a deep emotional connection with their readers by using only a few words. The reader is left to interpret the meaning of the poem, which makes poetry even more personal and intimate.

The economy of language in poetry not only creates a powerful impact but also allows poets to experiment with different forms and structures, making poetry an innovative literary art form.

So next time you read a poem, pay attention to the efficiency of language used by the poet and appreciate the impact of brevity in their expression.

Poetry as a Tool for Self-Reflection and Self-Expression

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by your emotions, struggling to find a way to express them? Poetry can be a powerful tool for connecting with and exploring your feelings.

Through writing and reading poems, you can find meaning in life experiences and gain a deeper understanding of yourself. Additionally, poetry can help you overcome challenges by providing a safe space for reflection and self-expression.

Connecting with Emotions

Surprisingly, it’s often the saddest poems that make us feel the most alive. It’s not the happy-go-lucky rhymes that we remember, but the ones that cut us deep and expose our vulnerabilities. That’s the power of poetry – it connects us with emotions that we sometimes try to bury deep inside.

Through exploring vulnerability, we can find emotional healing through poetry. When we read a poem that speaks to us on a personal level, we feel seen and heard. It’s a reminder that we’re not alone in our struggles and that there are others out there who have felt the same way we do.

Poetry gives us permission to feel, to express our emotions without judgment. It’s a freeing experience that allows us to connect with our true selves and the world around us. So, let the sad poems make you feel alive because, in those moments of vulnerability and emotional connection, we find a sense of peace and understanding that is invaluable.

Finding Meaning in Life Experiences

When you’re feeling lost or unsure, it’s often the experiences that challenge us the most that can provide the greatest insight and direction. Poems can help us make sense of these experiences by offering new perspectives and insights that we might not have thought of before.

They can help us see the beauty in the struggle and find meaning in the chaos. Through poetry, we can explore our own experiences and find purpose in them. We can discover new parts of ourselves and grow in ways we never thought possible.

Poems can help us connect with our emotions and give voice to the experiences that we might otherwise struggle to put into words. They remind us that we’re not alone in our struggles and that there’s always a way forward, even when the path seems uncertain.

So, whether you’re feeling lost or just looking for a little inspiration, poetry can help you find meaning and purpose in your life experiences.

Overcoming Challenges Through Poetry

You’ve learned how to find meaning in your life experiences through poetry, but what happens when you face challenges that seem too difficult to overcome? This is where poetry truly shines.

By using poetry for resilience, you can find hope in even the darkest of times. When faced with adversity, it’s easy to feel alone and helpless. But poetry has a way of bringing people together and reminding us that we’re not alone in our struggles.

Through the words of poets who have also faced challenges, we can find comfort and understanding. By reading about others who have overcome similar obstacles, we can find the strength to keep moving forward.

And when we write our own poetry, we can express our emotions in a way that helps us process our feelings and find clarity. Poetry can be a powerful tool for overcoming challenges and finding hope in the midst of adversity.

Poetry as a Universal Language

When you read a poem, you’re not just reading words on a page. You’re tapping into a timeless art form that has been used to express human experience across cultures and throughout history.

Poetry has a cross-cultural appeal that transcends language barriers and allows us to connect with people from different backgrounds and perspectives. It is a tool for understanding and empathizing with the world around us, and for gaining new insights into the human condition.

The Timelessness of Poetry

Poetry possesses an enduring quality that has transcended time and continues to resonate with readers today. Despite the ever-changing world we live in, the themes and influences found in poetry are timeless.

Whether it’s love, loss, hope, or despair, these emotions have been felt by humans throughout history and will continue to be felt in the future. Poetry captures these emotions in a way that is both universal and personal, allowing readers to connect with the experiences of others and find solace in their own.

The timelessness of poetry also allows us to connect with past and future generations through verse. By reading the works of poets who lived centuries ago, we are given a glimpse into their world and the challenges they faced. We can see how their experiences are similar to our own and gain a better understanding of the human condition.

Additionally, through writing our own poetry, we are contributing to a legacy that will be passed down to future generations. Our words have the potential to inspire and connect with people we may never meet, creating a chain of understanding and empathy that stretches beyond our own lifetimes.

Poetry may be ancient, but its power to connect and inspire remains as relevant as ever.

The Cross-Cultural Appeal of Poetry

It’s remarkable how poetry can transcend cultural boundaries and touch the hearts of people from all walks of life. Poetry is a form of art that has the power to connect people from different backgrounds and cultures. It’s a universal language that speaks to the human experience.

Here are three ways in which poetry facilitates cultural exchange:

Poetic translation: When a poem is translated into another language, it opens up a window into another culture. It allows readers to understand the thoughts and emotions of people from different parts of the world. It also helps to preserve the beauty and richness of different languages.
Shared themes: Although cultures may differ, poetry often deals with universal themes such as love, loss, and hope. These shared themes help to create a sense of understanding and empathy between people from different cultures.
Performance: Poetry is often performed in front of an audience. This creates an opportunity for people to come together and share their love for poetry. It also allows for a cultural exchange as people from different backgrounds share their own poems and experiences.

Poetry has the power to bring people together and facilitate cultural exchange. Its ability to transcend cultural boundaries and touch the hearts of people from all walks of life makes it an important art form in our lives.

Poetry as a Tool for Understanding Different Perspectives

You can gain a greater understanding of different perspectives by perusing poetic pieces, particularly those that present poignant portrayals of people and places. Poetry has always been a tool for empathy, allowing us to step into the shoes of others and view the world through their eyes.

Through the use of vivid imagery, metaphors, and similes, poets can convey complex emotions and experiences that might not be easily expressed through other forms of writing. Expanding your worldview with poetry can be a transformative experience, as it exposes you to diverse cultures, traditions, and ways of life.

Poets can offer unique insights into the human condition, shedding light on issues that might otherwise go unnoticed. Through their words, they can challenge our preconceived notions and encourage us to think critically about the world around us. Whether you’re an avid reader or a casual poetry enthusiast, exploring different poetic styles and themes can broaden your horizons and deepen your understanding of the world we live in.

The Relevance of Poetry in Contemporary Society

You may not realize it, but poetry has played a major role in social justice movements throughout history. From Langston Hughes to Maya Angelou, poets have used their words to shine a light on issues of inequality and injustice, inspiring change and activism.

But poetry is not just a tool for activism – it also has a powerful impact on mental health. Studies have shown that reading and writing poetry can improve mood, reduce stress, and even alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety.

As we move into the digital age, the future of poetry remains uncertain, but one thing’s clear: its relevance and importance in our lives isn’t going anywhere.

The Role of Poetry in Social Justice Movements

Poetry plays a pivotal role in social justice movements by giving a voice to the marginalized and inspiring collective action. When marginalized communities are silenced and their voices suppressed, poetry becomes a powerful tool to amplify their experiences and struggles. Through poetry, the marginalized can express their pain, hopes, and dreams in a way that resonates with others.

Poetry can bring people together, creating a sense of community and shared purpose that can lead to social change. Here are five ways in which poetry can evoke an emotional response in people and inspire them to take action for social justice:

Poetry can paint a vivid picture of the injustices faced by marginalized communities, making them impossible to ignore.
Poetry can create a sense of empathy and solidarity, helping people understand the struggles of others and see the world from their perspective.
Poetry can inspire people to take action by highlighting the urgent need for change and calling on individuals to do their part.
Poetry can offer hope and resilience in the face of oppression, reminding people that they’re not alone in their struggle for justice.
Poetry can challenge the status quo and push people to question their own assumptions and biases, paving the way for a more just and equitable society.

Incorporating poetry into social justice movements can have a profound impact on the way people think about and respond to issues of inequality and oppression. As you explore the intersection of poetry and activism, you’ll come to see that poetry isn’t just a form of self-expression, but a powerful means of amplifying the voices of those who’ve been silenced for far too long. By using poetry to inspire collective action and push for change, you can help create a world that’s more just, equitable, and compassionate for all.

The Connection between Poetry and Mental Health

Feeling overwhelmed and stressed? Let’s explore how incorporating poetry into your daily routine can benefit your mental health.

Poetry has been used as a form of therapy for centuries, and for good reason. When you read or write poetry, you engage with your emotions on a deeper level. This can help you process and release any negative feelings you may be carrying.

The therapeutic benefits of poetry extend beyond just emotional release. Poetry and mindfulness practices go hand in hand. When you read or write poetry, you’re forced to slow down and focus on the present moment. This can help you become more mindful and aware of your thoughts and feelings.

By incorporating poetry into your daily routine, you can create a space for introspection and self-reflection, which can lead to a more positive and healthy mindset.

So, why not give it a try and see how poetry can benefit your mental health?

The Future of Poetry in the Digital Age

In this fast-paced digital age, it’s easy to overlook the impact that technology has on the way we consume and create art, including poetry.

Social media has become the new frontier for poets, giving them an opportunity to share their work with a wider audience. However, this shift towards digital platforms has also raised concerns about the quality and authenticity of poetry in the online world.

As technology continues to evolve, so does the role of technology in poetry creation. While some argue that technology has made poetry more accessible and democratic, others worry that it has created a culture of instant gratification and superficiality.

Despite these concerns, the future of poetry in the digital age remains promising, as poets continue to use technology as a tool for self-expression and connection. The key will be to find a balance between embracing the benefits of technology while also preserving the integrity of the art form.

The language of poetry has the ability to touch our hearts and souls in a way that no other form of communication can.

Through poetry, you can reflect on your own life and express your innermost thoughts and feelings. You can connect with others who have had similar experiences, and you can learn from the wisdom of poets who’ve come before you.

Poetry is a universal language that transcends cultural and linguistic barriers, allowing us to connect with people from all walks of life. So why does poetry matter? Because it allows us to express ourselves in a way that is both personal and universal.

It helps us to understand ourselves and each other, and it reminds us of the beauty and complexity of the human experience.

So go ahead, pick up a pen and write a poem. Share it with others, or keep it for yourself. Either way, you’ll be tapping into the power of poetry and all that it has to offer.

A Look Back and a Path Forward: Poetry's Healing Power during the Pandemic

David haosen xiang.

1 Harvard Medical School, 25 Shattuck Street, Boston, MA 02115 United States

Alisha Moon Yi

2 Harvard College, Cambridge, MA USA

This discussion seeks to highlight the ability of poetry to combat loneliness, a growing public health problem with significant negative health outcomes that potentially impact millions of Americans. We argue that poetry can play a very relevant role and have an impact in medicine. Through a brief literature review of previous studies on poetry in medicine, we demonstrate that poetry can not only combat loneliness but can also play important roles in helping patients, physicians, and other healthcare professionals/providers. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we believe now is the perfect opportunity to utilize poetry because the benefits can be experienced even in solitude, which is why this is such a timely and pertinent issue today.

“Healing is a matter of time, but it is also a matter of opportunity.” -- Hippocrates

Introduction

During this pandemic, the dangers of loneliness and social isolation cannot be ignored. Loneliness is associated with a 26% increase in risk of premature mortality, can have a negative impact on cardiovascular, immune, and nervous systems, and affects about a third of people in most industrialized countries (Cacioppo and Cacioppo 2018 ). Reducing social interactions is a well-documented risk factor for several mental disorders including schizophrenia and major depression, as well as generating increased feelings of fear and anxiety (Miller 2011 ). Moreover, with acute stress generated during the COVID-19 pandemic, reported symptoms of psychological stress, including loneliness, among American adults have increased since 2018 (McGinty et al. 2020 ).

With the disruption of regular networks of trusted individuals and groups, that means we must confront these pertinent mental health issues ourselves. Yet without meaningful methods or practical tools to do so, many have nowhere to turn to, and no solution seems to be in sight. Lack of access to mental health resources is exacerbated by this pandemic, and improving mental health services is needed (Moreno et al. 2020 ). After all, loneliness is becoming an incredibly pressing public health problem, and must be addressed with proper engagement and full support from the medical community.

In this paper, we hope to show that poetry can be a powerful, practical, and accessible tool to combat loneliness directly, and that poetry can provide a new avenue for healing. Since the nineteenth century, poetry has been used formally and informally for healing purposes in the United States, and now, in our current day, we believe the opportunity for poetry’s significance and applications to be recognized is crucial (Mazza and Hayton 2013 ). During this COVID-19 pandemic, the opportunity for poetry to provide healing can be immediately effective and applied widely.

Poetry in medicine

Poetry, as a healing tool applicable and accessible to anyone, can have a concrete impact in all areas of medicine, specifically in providing innovative methods for healing to occur individually and holistically.

Several scientific studies and reviews have previously demonstrated that poetry has a beneficial impact on patients in terms of managing pain, coping with stressors, and improving personal well-being (Lepore and Smyth 2002 ). Moreover, listening, writing, and reading poetry is associated with a reported improvement in pain following a surgical procedure and improves a patient's ability to deal with chronic illness (Arruda, Garcia, and Garcia 2016 ; Naidu and Shabangu 2015 ; Eum and Yim 2015 ; Hovey, Khayat, and Feig 2018 ). Additionally, poetry provides patients with further methods of coping with unexpected or stress-inducing situations. A previous study demonstrated that reading and writing poetry temporarily increases working memory capacity, which can increase an individual’s ability to proactively cope with stressful events. Moreover, this improvement in working memory is associated with greater recall of medication instructions and scheduled health appointments, which improves health outcomes (Klein 2002 ).

In directly addressing mental health, poetry has been shown to have positive short and long-term mood changes as well as behavioral effects in school and work performance (Lepore 1997 ). Expressive writing can decrease physiological stress indicators such as lower muscle tension, reduce perspiration level, and lower blood pressure and heart rate levels (Smyth et al. 1999 ). Furthermore, the introspective writing that poetry fosters also offers patients an opportunity to reflect on their lives, enabling them to accept their situation with poise and peace (Heimes 2011 ). This aspect of poetry is often highlighted in palliative care, as there has been a growing recognition within the field to recognize how poetry can develop person-centered organizations, better train health professionals, and support a patient’s overall well-being (Davies 2018 ; Coulehan and Clary 2005 ). Previous literature review on poetry therapy for patients in palliative and end-of-life care show that poetry facilitates meaningful shared experiences and significantly improves relationships between healthcare providers and patients (Gilmour, Riccobono, and Haraldsdottir 2019 ).

In health professions education, specifically, in nursing, poetry has been frequently employed as a teaching platform to teach values such as empathy, to develop greater emotional awareness, to reduce anxiety and stress, and to assess communication skills (Mood 2018 ; Jack 2015 ). The benefits that poetry can have in fostering empathy and greater self-awareness for those in the nursing profession have been well-documented and provide a different approach that can greatly enhance knowledge of complex and ambiguous situations often experienced in nursing practice (Clancy and Jack 2016 ).

For the caregiver, physician, or healthcare professional, poetry can provide a different lens with which to view the field of medicine. Poetry offers an innovative approach to further humanizing medicine through promoting empathy, emotional sensitivity, cultivating a compassionate presence, and ultimately, providing an accessible platform to acquire and develop skills that are difficult to otherwise teach. Furthermore, these are traits crucial in healing and can significantly increase one’s own effectiveness, further helping and facilitating the patient experience.

For patients, poetry provides a space to vent, to reflect, and to come to terms with their respective situation. It provides an organizational structure with which to tackle new perceptions and deal with negative thoughts. Healing can take place within individuals, at a pace determined by them. Whether it is coping with pain, dealing with stressful situations, or coming to terms with uncertainty, poetry can benefit a patient’s well-being, confidence, emotional stability, and quality of life (Heimes 2011 ). Poetry restores agency, allowing one’s voice to be heard and represented the way he or she wishes it to be. Moreover, when writing, the poems that patients generate can serve as valuable repositories of past knowledge and experience and can comfort relatives or affected parties, which oftentimes strengthens relations with loved ones. Poetry has immediate benefits for not just the individual but also for the immediate family members, and the larger community as a whole.

The benefits of poetry in medicine and public health today

One of the key tools to combat loneliness is a strong social relationship with others. A genuine connection with others can effectively help those who are suffering from loneliness. As a matter of fact, the presence of strong social relationships is associated with a 50% increased likelihood of survival, and surprisingly, both actual and perceived social isolation are both associated with increased risk for early mortality (Holt-Lunstad, Smith, and Layton 2010 ). A 2015 study found no differences in increased likelihood of mortality between measures of objective and subjective social isolation, suggesting that both perceived and actual social isolation can have similar detrimental effects on individuals (Holt-Lunstad et al. 2015 ).

That is where the three aspects of poetry—reading, writing, and sharing—become so incredibly relevant and applicable. To paraphrase poet Paul Celan, a poem is like a handshake: it creates bonds between people. Poetry, and the creative introspection it fosters, can help individuals feel more connected to themselves, to those around them, and to the external world as a whole. Even when practiced in isolation, as many individuals currently are during this pandemic, poetry can increase self and interpersonal awareness, encourage the ownership of voicing your own ideas and emotions, and increase one’s ability to reflect upon significant memories or current-day situations. This can directly address both actual and perceived social isolation and can be a powerful step in helping individuals combat loneliness.

When reading poetry, one is able to challenge his or her own perspectives, to become more tolerant of different points of view, and to appreciate the nuances of various opinions. Reading poetry can also help individuals feel connected to others; oftentimes, reading a poem can remind the individual of a similar experience or emotion, creating a sense of belonging. Poems have real emotional power and serve as a testament to all of us that we are never alone, that amongst these collective voices we can find those that ring at the same frequency as ours (Wassiliwizky et al. 2017 ). Reading poetry can provide solace and great hope to us, as it reaffirms our place in the world and, in those moments when we come across a poem or certain lines that strongly resonate with us, it is as if we are jolted with electricity at the sheer joy of knowing we can share a bond with someone who we may have never met.

In writing poetry, the mind is forced to slow down and to revisit memories, often bringing to life past emotions and experiences. The process itself is a dynamic one in which writers often learn many new things about themselves that they did not previously think about. Writing poetry also allows one to strengthen an individual’s sense of identity and voice. Poems function as fragments of ourselves, and when writing, we are able to represent ourselves the way we want to be represented, in the most honest and effective light. Poetry allows us to bear witness to who we are and to put into words what often cannot be expressed easily otherwise. Poetry creates avenues for self-expression that cannot be felt through other means of communication. This in itself can be a healing and restorative process, a self-guided therapy that allows us to strengthen our mental health and connection to ourselves, and to those around us.

And when provided a space to share poetry with others, as one is listening to others’ lived experiences and emotions, social bonds can be formed, and safe spaces can be generated where vulnerability and tolerance are actively encouraged. In sharing favorite lines or discussing experiences and emotions with strangers, poetry can bring people together, from all backgrounds, with subtle ease. Unexpected commonalities are frequently found, which spur conversation and a further willingness to create new social relationships. Poetry can create genuine community and an atmosphere of welcome and warmth.

We experienced this firsthand through the Hope Storytelling Project, a series of virtual poetry workshops that we co-led and taught through our local library systems in Cambridge and Las Vegas. We had developed our program with discussion and connection in mind, as we wanted both to teach poetry and to allow our participants to form meaningful social relationships with each other. Quickly, we realized that the sense of community we were able to generate through poetry was incredibly valuable. Over the course of the summer, we consistently had participants remark on the sense of belonging and community that the workshops provided, and how encouraged they were to speak and share their hopes and fears, their worries and joys, and to feel a real connection to others, while learning and immersing themselves in poetry. They shared how the space absorbed them in heartfelt sharing, how the workshops felt like a gentle cleansing, how people’s willingness to share was truly touching, and how poetry enabled them to continue their journey of self-discovery and healing.

Our experiences with teaching and leading these poetry workshops reaffirmed our belief that poetry can serve as an effective antidote to loneliness and the health complications that social isolation brings. During this pandemic, this project provides a model for coping with the uncertainty and chaos of life: as we were reminded of each other's stories, we were able to find similarities in seemingly different lives, finding connection through those similarities. In the moments of interaction and dialogue with each other, we saw genuine relationships being cultivated.

Most importantly, the accessible nature of poetry makes it an incredibly relevant and applicable tool, especially now, when genuine connections are a scarce commodity. Poetry is particularly powerful because it is so easily accessible, as its benefits can be experienced from the comfort of one’s own home. Simply by reading a poem once a week, sharing a poem with a friend, or spending five to ten minutes to free write about a favorite memory, a current idea, a worry or hope, can all be effective first steps in experiencing the benefits of poetry. It is imperative that we bring such experiences into more communities, where other methods and tactics to combat loneliness may not be as accessible. The opportunity is now to recognize the healing potential of poetry.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

David Haosen Xiang and Alisha Moon Yi contributed equally to this article.

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

How Creative Writing Can Increase Students’ Resilience

Many of my seventh-grade students do not arrive at school ready to learn. Their families often face financial hardship and live in cramped quarters, which makes it difficult to focus on homework. The responsibility for cooking and taking care of younger siblings while parents work often falls on these twelve year olds’ small shoulders. Domestic violence and abuse are also not uncommon.

To help traumatized students overcome their personal and academic challenges, one of our first jobs as teachers is to build a sense of community. We need to communicate that we care and that we welcome them into the classroom just as they are. One of the best ways I’ve found to connect with my students, while also nurturing their reading and writing skills, is through creative writing.

For the past three years, I’ve invited students in my English Language Development (ELD) classes to observe their thoughts, sit with their emotions, and offer themselves and each other compassion through writing and sharing about their struggles. Creating a safe, respectful environment in which students’ stories matter invites the disengaged, the hopeless, and the numb to open up. Students realize that nobody is perfect and nobody’s life is perfect. In this kind of classroom community, they can take the necessary risks in order to learn, and they become more resilient when they stumble.

Fostering a growth mindset

One of the ways students can boost their academic performance and develop resilience is by building a growth mindset. Carol Dweck, Stanford University professor of psychology and author of the book Mindset , explains that people with a growth mindset focus on learning from mistakes and welcoming challenges rather than thinking they’re doomed to be dumb or unskillful. A growth mindset goes hand in hand with self-compassion: recognizing that everyone struggles and treating ourselves with kindness when we trip up.

One exercise I find very useful is to have students write a story about a time when they persevered when faced with a challenge—in class, sports, or a relationship. Some of the themes students explore include finally solving math problems, learning how to defend themselves, or having difficult conversations with parents.

I primed the pump by telling my students about something I struggled with—feeling left behind in staff meetings as my colleagues clicked their way through various computer applications. I confided that PowerPoint and Google Slides—tools (one might assume) that any teacher worth a paperweight has mastered—still eluded me. By admitting my deficiency to my students, asking for their help, and choosing to see the opportunity to remedy it every day in the classroom, I aimed to level the playing field with them. They may have been reading three or four grade levels behind, but they could slap a PowerPoint presentation together in their sleep.

For students, sharing their own stories of bravery, resilience, and determination brings these qualities to the forefront of their minds and helps solidify the belief that underlies a growth mindset: I can improve and grow . We know from research in neuroplasticity that when students take baby steps to achieve a goal and take pride in their accomplishments, they change their brains, growing new neural networks and fortifying existing ones. Neurons in the brain release the feel-good chemical dopamine, which plays a major role in motivating behavior toward rewards.

After writing about a few different personal topics, students choose one they want to publish on the bulletin boards at the back of the classroom. They learn to include the juicy details of their stories (who, what, when, where, why, and how), and they get help from their peers, who ask follow-up questions to prompt them to include more information. This peer editing builds their resilience in more ways than one—they make connections with each other by learning about each other’s lives, and they feel empowered by lending a hand.

In my experience, students are motivated to do this assignment because it helps them feel that their personal stories and emotions truly matter, despite how their other academics are going. One student named Alejandro chose to reflect on basketball and the persistence and time it took him to learn:

Hoops By Alejandro Gonzalez Being good takes time. One time my sister took me to a park and I saw people playing basketball. I noticed how good they were and decided I wanted to be like them. Still I told my sister that basketball looked hard and that I thought I couldn’t do it. She said,“You could do it if you tried. You’ll get the hang of it.” My dad bought me a backboard and hoop to play with. I was really happy, but the ball wasn’t making it in. Every time I got home from school, I would go straight to the backyard to play. I did that almost every day until little by little I was getting the hang of it. I also played with my friends. Every day after lunch we would meet at the basketball court to have a game. … I learned that you need to be patient and to practice a lot to get the hang of things. With a little bit of practice, patience, and hard work, anything is possible.

Originally, Alejandro wasn’t sure why he was in school and often lacked the motivation to learn. But writing about something he was passionate about and recalling the steps that led to his success reminded him of the determination and perseverance he had demonstrated in the past, nurturing a positive view of himself. It gave him a renewed sense of investment in learning English and eventually helped him succeed in his ELD class, as well.

Maintaining a hopeful outlook

Another way to build resilience in the face of external challenges is to shore up our inner reserves of hope —and I’ve found that poetry can serve as inspiration for this.

For the writing portion of the lesson, I invite students to “get inside” poems by replicating the underlying structure and trying their hand at writing their own verses. I create poem templates, where students fill in relevant blanks with their own ideas.

One poem I like to share is “So Much Happiness” by Naomi Shihab Nye. Its lines “Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house / and now live over a quarry of noise and dust / cannot make you unhappy” remind us that, despite the unpleasant events that occur in our lives, it’s our choice whether to allow them to interfere with our happiness. The speaker, who “love[s] even the floor which needs to be swept, the soiled linens, and scratched records,” has a persistently sunny outlook.

It’s unrealistic for students who hear gunshots at night to be bubbling over with happiness the next morning. Still, the routine of the school day and the sense of community—jokes with friends, a shared bag of hot chips for breakfast, and a creative outlet—do bolster these kids. They have an unmistakable drive to keep going, a life force that may even burn brighter because they take nothing for granted—not even the breath in their bodies, life itself.

Itzayana was one of those students who, due to the adversity in her life, seemed too old for her years. She rarely smiled and started the school year with a defiant approach to me and school in general, cursing frequently in the classroom. Itzayana’s version of “So Much Happiness” hinted at some of the challenges I had suspected she had in her home life:

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness. Even the fact that you once heard your family laughing and now hear them yelling at each other cannot make you unhappy. Everything has a life of its own, it too could wake up filled with possibilities of tamales and horchata and love even scrubbing the floor, washing dishes, and cleaning your room. Since there is no place large enough to contain so much happiness, help people in need, help your family, and take care of yourself. —Itzayana C.

Her ending lines, “Since there is no place large enough to contain so much happiness, / help people in need, help your family, and take care of yourself,” showed her growing awareness of the need for self-care as she continued to support her family and others around her. This is a clear sign of her developing resilience.

Poetry is packed with emotion, and writing their own poems allows students to grapple with their own often-turbulent inner lives. One student commented on the process, saying, “By writing poems, I’ve learned to be calm and patient, especially when I get mad about something dumb.” Another student showed pride in having her writing published; she reflected, “I feel good because other kids can use it for calming down when they’re angry.”

To ease students into the creative process, sometimes we also write poems together as a class. We brainstorm lines to include, inviting the silly as well as the poignant and creating something that represents our community.

Practicing kindness

Besides offering my students new ways of thinking about themselves, I also invite them to take kind actions toward themselves and others.

In the music video for “Give a Little Love” by Noah and the Whale, one young African American boy—who witnesses bullying at school and neglect in his neighborhood —decides to take positive action and whitewash a wall of graffiti. Throughout the video, people witness others’ random acts of kindness, and then go on to do their own bit.

“My love is my whole being / And I’ve shared what I could,” the lyrics say—a reminder that our actions speak louder than our words and do have an incredible impact. The final refrain in the song—“Well if you are (what you love) / And you do (what you love) /...What you share with the world is what it keeps of you”—urges the students to contribute in a positive way to the classroom, the school campus, and their larger community.

After watching the video, I ask students to reflect upon what kind of community they would like to be part of and what makes them feel safe at school. They write their answers—for example, not being laughed at by their peers and being listened to—on Post-it notes. These notes are used to create classroom rules. This activity sends a message early on that we are co-creating our communal experience together. Students also write their own versions of the lyrics, reflecting on different things you can give and receive—like kindness, peace, love, and ice cream.

Reaping the benefits

To see how creative writing impacts students, I invite them to rate their resilience through a self-compassion survey at the start of the school year and again in the spring. Last year, two-thirds of students surveyed increased in self-compassion; Alejandro grew his self-compassion by 20 percent. The program seems to work at developing their reading and writing skills, as well: At the middle of the school year, 40 percent of my students moved up to the next level of ELD, compared to 20 percent the previous year.

As a teacher, my goal is to meet students where they’re at and learn about their whole lives. Through creative writing activities, we create a community of compassionate and expressive learners who bear witness to the impact of trauma in each others’ experiences and together build resilience.

As a symbol of community and strength, I had a poster in my classroom of a boat at sea with hundreds of refugees standing shoulder to shoulder looking skyward. It’s a hauntingly beautiful image of our ability to risk it all for a better life, as many of my ELD students do. Recognizing our common humanity and being able to share about our struggles not only leads to some beautiful writing, but also some brave hearts.

About the Author

Laura Bean, M.F.A. , executive director of Mindful Literacy, consults with school communities to implement mindfulness and creative writing programs. She has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and presented a mindful writing workshop at Bridging the Hearts and Minds of Youth Conference in San Diego in 2016.

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Poetry Writing

Tips for improving your poetry writing skills.

The section “Poetry Writing Skills” in our guide provides tips and techniques for improving your poetry writing skills. It covers a variety of ways to improve your poetry writing including:

Reading widely: Reading poetry written by other poets can help to expose you to different styles, forms, and techniques, and can inspire you to develop your own unique voice and style.

Experimenting with different forms and structures: Poets can try their hand at different forms of poetry, such as sonnets, haikus, and free verse, and explore different structures and techniques to find the one that works best for them.

Using descriptive language and imagery: Using descriptive language and imagery can help to bring your poetry to life and create a more vivid and engaging experience for your readers.

Paying attention to rhythm and sound: Paying attention to the rhythm and sound of your poetry can help to create a more musical and engaging experience for your readers.

Revising and editing your work: Revising and editing your work can help to improve its structure, imagery, and overall impact on readers.

Overall, the section “Poetry Writing Skills” provides tips and techniques for poets to improve their poetry writing skills. It covers the different ways to improve their skills by reading widely, experimenting with different forms, using descriptive language and imagery, paying attention to rhythm and sound, and revising and editing their work. It is designed to help poets to become more confident and proficient in their writing and to develop their own unique voice and style.

Ideas For Poems: Finding Inspiration

Our section on “Ideas for Poems” is designed to help poets find inspiration for their work and develop their own unique voice and style. It covers different ways to get inspired, from observing the world around to exploring different themes, structures, and techniques. It provides prompts, ideas and tips to help poets to generate new and exciting ideas for their poems.

Why Write Poetry?

Fostering a deeper appreciation for literature and the written word.

Encouraging critical thinking and reflection.

Enhancing creativity and imagination.

Improving language skills and vocabulary.

Poetry writing can be a highly beneficial and rewarding activity for many people. It is a powerful way to express emotions, thoughts, and ideas, and can help to improve writing skills, creativity, and self-expression. Some of the key benefits of poetry writing include:

Emotional catharsis: Poetry allows individuals to explore their emotions and feelings in a safe and creative way, helping to release pent-up emotions and reduce stress and anxiety.

Improved writing skills: Poetry often requires a high level of focus on language, structure, and imagery, which can help to improve writing skills, vocabulary, grammar and learning poetic elements.

Increased creativity: Poetry provides a unique form of creative expression, where individuals can experiment with different styles, forms, and techniques, and push their own creative boundaries.

Self-expression: Poetry can be a powerful tool for self-expression, allowing individuals to explore their thoughts, feelings, and experiences, and to communicate them to others.

Empathy and understanding: Poetry can be a powerful way to connect with others, by providing a window into the emotions and experiences of others.

Self-discovery: Writing poetry can help people to better understand themselves, their emotions and experiences, and can help them to uncover new insights and perspectives.

Overall, poetry writing can be a valuable and fulfilling activity that can help to improve emotional well-being, writing skills, and creativity, while also providing a powerful means of self-expression and connection with others.

Poetry Writing Exercises & Prompts

Our guide to “Poetry Writing Exercises & Writing Prompts” provides a variety of exercises and prompts to help poets generate new creative writing ideas and improve their poetry writing skills. It covers different exercises such as free-writing, theme-based, form-based, imagery-based and rhythm-based, to help poets to find new inspiration, explore different emotions and perspectives, experiment with different forms and structures, and to create more vivid and engaging poetry.

An Overview of Our Guide to Poetry Writing

Our guide to poetry writing is divided into three main sub-topics to help aspiring poets develop their skills and find inspiration for their work. There are other options to help with writing poems such as literary devices. While they are useful, we have many other choices available also.

Poetry Writing Skills: This section of the guide covers the basic skills needed to write poetry in a poetic form, including understanding poetic forms and devices, learning to use imagery and metaphor effectively, and developing a strong sense of voice and style. It also covers tips for editing and revising poems, as well as advice for getting published.

Ideas for Poems: This section of the guide provides inspiration and prompts for generating ideas for poems, including tips for observing and writing about the world around you, using personal experiences and emotions as inspiration, and exploring different themes and subjects. Additionally, it covers how to use real-life experiences to inspire poetry, encouraging readers to draw on their own emotions and observations to create powerful and relatable work.

Poetry Writing Exercises and Prompts: This section of the guide includes a variety of exercises and writing prompts to help poets practice their craft and develop their skills, such as writing in different forms, experimenting with different structures and techniques, and using specific words, phrases, or images as inspiration. The prompts will help to push the poets creative boundaries and to explore new ways of writing different kinds of poetry such as free verse poetry. The guide covers the various forms of poetry, from traditional sonnets to modern free verse, and provides examples and exercises to help poets experiment with different forms and find the one that suits them best.

Overall, our guide to the poetry writing process is designed to help poets of all levels improve their skills, find inspiration, and develop their own unique voice and style. It includes a section on how to get published, providing advice on how to submit poetry to literary journals and magazines, as well as tips for building a strong online presence and networking with other poets. Additionally, it covers how to write poetry that is accessible to the readers and how to make it relatable, with practical advice on how to convey complex ideas and emotions in a clear and concise way.

Our guide to writing poems in an excitingly wonderful way mixes well with Grammarly’s post about How to Write a Poem . It is a great guide if you’re ready to begin your own poem writing adventure. We have explored with concrete words and brought to the surface great ideas for anyone to get started writing epic poetry.

Remember to use figurative language, a rhyme scheme and some helpful ideas to get your creative juices flowing! Great poetry always begins with an idea.

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Why learn creative writing? Truthfully, creative writing is one of the most misunderstood disciplines in the 21st century. When people think of a creative writing course, they often imagine a group of lofty, out-of-touch people who wear argyle sweater vests and have unproductive conversations about abstract concepts.

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth: the best writing classes remain engaged with the real world, and the skills gained in a creative writing course apply to nearly every facet of daily life.

If you’re wondering whether it’s worth picking up a course in fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, we have five reasons to learn creative writing. But first, let’s talk about what actually happens in a creative writing course.

The Basics of a Writing Workshop

Whether you’re enrolled in a poetry, fiction, or nonfiction writing class, you can expect the following writing process – at least in a quality writing course like the ones at Writers.com.

Weekly prompts and writing exercises to sharpen the precision and necessity of each word you use.
Constructive critiques from a community of writers who are each growing their writing skills alongside you.
A creative space to explore new ideas, experiment with language, and arrange words in new and exciting ways.
Focused writing instruction from a master of the craft.

The benefits of creative writing come from engaging with the course material, the writing prompts, and the other class members. These elements help you become a better writer, both in creative realms and in everyday life. How? No matter what form of writing, a creative writing class pushes you to connect ideas and create effective narratives using the best words – and that skill translates into real world success.

The Benefits of Creative Writing

1. why learn creative writing: improved self-expression.

Improving your writing skills leads to stronger communication. When you practice finding the right word in a story or poem, you engage the same parts of your brain that are active in everyday writing and speaking. A creative writing course subconsciously turns you into a more effective communicator.

The importance of precise language and self-advocacy translates well into both interpersonal relationships and working environments. Take it from this expert on how writing and self-advocacy results in career and leadership success.

2. Why Learn Creative Writing: Job Success

This brings us to our next point: great writing leads to job success. Of course, your boss probably isn’t expecting you to write emails in the form of a short story or a sonnet – though if they are expecting this, you have a pretty cool boss.

In reality, almost every job requires some sort of written work, whether that’s simple written communication or something more elaborate, like publishing data or marketing materials. In a creative writing class, you practice the style and grammar rules necessary for effective writing, both within the realms of literature and in career-related writing. Sharpening your writing and creativity skills might just land you your next promotion.

3. Why Learn Creative Writing: Improved Thinking Skills

Strong writing leads to strong thinking. No matter what type of writing you pursue, learning how to write is another form of learning how to think.

That might seem like a bold claim, so think about it this way. Without language, our thoughts wouldn’t have form. We might not need language to think “I’m hungry” or “I like cats,” but when it comes to more abstract concepts, language is key. How would you think about things like justice, revenge, or equality without the words to express them?

When you hone in on your ability to find choice, specific words, and when you work on the skills of effective storytelling and rhetoric , you improve your ability to think in general. Good writing yields great thinking!

4. Why Learn Creative Writing: Empathy

Reading and writing both rely on empathy, especially when it comes to being an effective workshop participant. When we read and write stories, we situate ourselves in the shoes of other people; when we read and write poetry, we let language navigate us through emotion.

The importance of creative writing relies on empathy. We practice empathy whenever we listen to another person’s life story, when someone tells us about their day, and when we sit down with a client or work partner. When we write, we practice the ability to listen as well as to speak, making us more effective communicators and more compassionate human beings.

5. Why Learn Creative Writing: It’s Fun!

In case you’re not convinced that a writing course is right for you, let’s clarify one more fact: creative writing is fun. Whether you’re in a fiction writing course, starting a memoir, crafting a poem, or writing for the silver screen, you’re creating new worlds and characters. In the sandbox of literature, you’re in control, and when you invest yourself into the craft of writing, something beautiful emerges.

The Importance of Creative Writing

Simply put, creative writing helps us preserve our humanity. What better medium to explore the human experience?

To learn creative writing, like any art form, requires compassion, contemplation, and curiosity. Writers preserve the world as they observe it in stories and poetry, and they imagine a better world by creating it in their works.

Through the decades, literature has explored society’s profound changes. Literary eons like the Naturalist movement and the Beat poets responded to the increase in Western Industrialization. Confessional poets like Virginia Woolf helped transform poetry into a medium for emotional exploration and excavation. And, genre movements like the cyberpunk writers of science fiction helped popularize the idea of an “information economy.”

Thus, the importance of creative writing lies in its ability to describe the world through an honest and unfiltered lens. Anyone who engages in creative writing, no matter the genre or style, helps us explore the human experience, share new ideas, and advocate for a better society. Whether you write your stories for yourself or share them with a wide audience, creative writing makes the world a better place.

Jobs for Creative Writers

Because creative writing isn’t a STEM discipline, many people don’t think that learning it will help their job prospects. Why learn creative writing if it doesn’t make any money?

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Creative writing skills are much sought after on resumes, since both creativity and the ability to write are soft skills in decline. Additionally, if you’re considering a career change—or ready to start one!—these are some popular jobs for creative writers.

Average Starting Salary: $51,000
Demand: High
Skills needed: creativity, grammar, timeliness

Copywriters help companies put their branding into words. A copywriter might write emails, blogs, website content, or ad copy that encompasses the company’s voice and purpose. Copywriting requires you to write in a mix of styles and forms, flexing your writing muscles in new and exciting ways.

Grant Writer

Average Starting Salary: $50,000
Skills needed: storytelling, research, argumentation

Nonprofits and research facilities rely on local and national grants to fund their projects. Grant writers help secure that funding, writing engaging grants that tell the organization’s story in an engaging, tailored, and convincing way. Creative writers will enjoy the opportunity to tell a meaningful story and create positive community change through this career.

Communications/Public Relations Specialist

Skills needed: creativity, communications, social media

A communications specialist helps drive a company’s image through various social channels. They may help create a positive narrative for their company through blogs, journalist outreach, social media, and other public-facing avenues. Much like copywriting, a PR specialist helps weave an effective story for a company.

Average Starting Salary: $55,000
Demand: Medium/High
Skills needed: creativity, storytelling, organization, self-reliance

The dream job for many writers is to write and sell books. Being a novelist is an admirable career choice—and also requires the most work. Not only do you have to write your stories, but you also have to market yourself in the literary industry and maintain a social presence so that publishers and readers actually read your work. It’s a tough business, but also incredibly rewarding!

Reasons to Learn Creative Writing: Finding a Writing Community

Finally, creative writing communities make the writing struggle worth it. The relationships you foster with other creative writers can last a lifetime, as no other group of people has the same appreciation for the written word. Creative writing communities create transformative experiences and encourage growth in your writing; if there’s one reason to study creative writing craft, it’s the friendships you make in the process.

You don’t need a class to start writing, but it’s never a waste of time to learn the tools of the trade. Creative writing requires the skills that can help you in everyday life, and a creative writing course can help.

At Writers.com, we believe that creative writing can transform both individual lives and the world at large. See the importance of creative writing for yourself: check out what makes our creative writing courses different , then take a look at our upcoming course calendar today.

Sean Glatch

Would like to apply for a course to write a novel.

I’d be happy to help! Please email [email protected] with any questions, and we’ll find the right course for your writing.

[…] Sean. “Why Learn Creative Writing.” writers.com. June 7, 2020. https://writers.com/why-learn-creative-writing . Accessed November 7, […]

[…] And last of all it’s fun! I hope to live my life doing the things I love, with like-minded creative people who I love. I have many exciting things upcoming as I continue with the process of completing my first novel, Les Année Folles, such as publishing to my first magazine, journal, and working on the millions of short story ideas I have stored in my head. Stay tuned! References: Glatch, S. (2020, June 7). WHY LEARN CREATIVE WRITING? Retrieved from Writers.com: https://writers.com/why-learn-creative-writing […]

The Personal Benefits of Writing Poetry

July 2, 2022
Benefits of Writing , Writing Helps Us Accept , Writing Poetry

What advantages does writing poetry have?

Poetry writing is a fantastic exercise for improving writing abilities. Writing poetry helps us improve our command of language, build a strong vocabulary, master literary methods, and develop our use of images. And they are only a few examples of how poetry enhances fundamental writing abilities.

But poetry also offers additional advantages that have deeper, more intimate meanings.

It has long been acknowledged that writing is a highly therapeutic activity. In actuality, all forms of art have therapeutic advantages. However, poetry offers a wide range of emotional and intellectual advantages that are helpful for personal growth, whether we’re working on self-improvement, emotional or psychological coping and healing, developing relationships, or even advancing our careers — including careers outside of the writing field.

Additionally, while writing in general—from journals to stories—can be therapeutic, poetry writing has some particular advantages.

Benefits of Writing Poetry on an Emotional and Intellectual Level

Writing poetry has numerous advantages to offer, whether you desire to cultivate emotional well-being or challenge your intellect:

Cognitive function: The procedures involved in creating poetry boost our cognitive processes, whether we’re looking for the right word, figuring out how to express a notion, or adjusting the rhythm and meter of a poem.
Creative thinking: Poetry writing nurtures and encourages creative thinking due to its emphasis on symbolism, metaphor, and imagery.
Self-awareness: Poetry can make us more aware of our innermost ideas and feelings by allowing us to express ourselves honestly.
Developing perspective, empathy, and world views: Perspective, empathy, and worldview development: Poem writing frequently challenges us to observe the world from a range of angles, which promotes empathy and broadens one’s perspective.
Language and speaking: Poetry writing exercises improve language, writing and speaking abilities.
Poetry is often written in private, but when it is shared, it can uplift, honor, and inspire others, fostering stronger interpersonal bonds.
Catharsis: Making something out of nothing through the process of creation is cathartic.
Critical thinking: Poems force us to exceed our intellectual limits by allowing us to articulate our thoughts and ideas.
Therapeutic: Through self-expression and emotional investigation, poetry encourages emotional expression and healing. It offers a secure setting for us to express, explore, and comprehend our emotions.

These are just a few of the advantages of writing poetry that help improve our mental and emotional health.

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The purpose of poetry

Article by Amy Wolf Photo illustration by Jeffrey C. Chase November 29, 2022

UD English professors explain how learning to read and write poetry benefits all students

John Ernest, chair of the Department of English at the University of Delaware, wants to bring poetry to life, so sometimes he’ll start his classes with a dramatic reading of a poem.

On more than one occasion, he’s arranged for someone — usually someone with some acting experience — to come into his classroom unannounced, launch directly into a dramatic reading of a poem, and then leave. The practice, Ernest said, helps students to realize the full life of poetry specifically (and literature in general) in what otherwise is a very formal, academic setting.

“The shock of that moment and the drama of that moment sets us up for talking about the poems that we're reading in class in a different way,” Ernest said. “The students can start to hear the ways in which there's an urgency in this poetry, that this is not just an academic subject, and so that helps them to then appreciate why it is that we're taking the trouble to learn how to read literature and how to read analytically or critically.”

Being able to read, analyze and write poetry teaches students to communicate and speak on a different level, Ernest said.

“It's almost like when you're trying to tell somebody how much you love them and the language just doesn't seem adequate to account for what you're actually feeling,” he said. “Poetry hits at those moments where you need to have much more packed into what you were saying — many more levels operating at once.”

Poetry isn’t just limited to workshop classes. Indeed, poetry is a regular topic in almost all literature courses at UD, said Ernest, who will often use poetry to launch the theme of a class.

Devon Miller-Duggan, associate professor of creative writing in the Department of English, said that poetry is beneficial in areas far beyond the English classroom and in all aspects of life.

“It's about reading, and we need to read everything in life, from traffic signals to people's faces,” she said. “Being able to read poetry is the most intensive form of reading that we have in language. It is the ultimate kind of paying attention, and we don't pay enough attention in any part of our lives.”

Claire McCabe, assistant professor of English, will often have her students read poems that have social significance, including poetry that discusses racial issues, Indigenous people and the environment. She makes it a point to let students know that poetry isn’t just love poems, nursery rhymes or Shel Silverstein — although she said she loves Shel Silverstein — but that poetry goes beyond that.

“Poetry can get at something very deep, and that's what I try to show them,” McCabe said. “What being able to read poetry does is it lets the reader understand the subtleties not only of language, but of life. This particular time feels very fragile — all the unrest that we have in the world. I feel like somewhere along the line, we as a global culture have lost touch with the essence of what it means to be human, and I think poetry can bring that back.”

While writing poetry is certainly a creative process, there are many technical aspects that go into the craft, said McCabe, who is teaching a class called “Poetry Writing” in the fall of 2022. In her class, students learn about alliteration, assonance, consonance, white space, line length and more — and then, of course, put it all into practice.

“I often tell students that it's a bit like visual art — that's a metaphor that they can relate to,” McCabe said. “Just like you learn techniques when you're learning how to produce a painting, [it’s the] same thing with poetry. You might start out with an idea … but learning the craft allows them to go in and really shape it. [Poetry] isn’t something that you get an inspiration for and then you do it and there's your poem. It's something that you should conserve for a while and go back to and revise, and that's where all those craft elements come in.”

Most UD students will encounter poetry somewhere along their academic career, regardless of their major. Ernest acknowledged that not everyone will like all poems or all poets. Indeed, that’s something he embraces by bringing many different styles and different kinds of poetry to his classes. If you have enough different kinds of poems, he said, chances are students will connect with one of them.

The benefits of learning how to read and write poetry extend to non-English majors, Ernest said.

“They are sometimes some of our most enthusiastic students because after you've been using your brain to think about engineering or business for a while, many of these students absolutely welcome the opportunity to be creative and to think differently — to use their brains differently,” Ernest said. “I think they actually end up discovering that that helps them in unexpected ways when they go back to engineering or business.”

Poetry can be especially useful for science-minded students, Miller-Duggan said.

“Scientists are very linear in the way they're trained. A goes to B goes to C and you are looking for X, Y or Z outcome — it's all fairly straightforward,” Miller-Duggan said. “The problem is that the world doesn’t work that way. It's not a straight line. So giving them the opportunity to function in zigzags and leaps is ultimately going to benefit their capacity to function as scientists and to trust their instincts.”

Morgan Wright, a senior majoring in political science and English, took Miller-Duggan’s poetry writing class in the spring of 2022 and said that the best part of the class was the sense of community that was fostered. At the start of the semester, she was nervous that the workshop-heavy class would be a judgmental space, but she found just the opposite. Because of her incredibly positive experience in that class and others, she plans to pursue a master’s of fine arts (MFA) in creative writing after graduation.

Beyond teaching her the ability to write great poetry, creative writing classes at UD gave Wright insight into working with other people and collaborating.

“In a workshop setting, you have to learn very quickly that someone else's success is not your failure, and this is something I had always struggled with before,” she said. “If someone else produces something amazing, it is easy to be jealous, but it takes a lot more self awareness and confidence to step back and ask yourself what it is that makes their work so great and if that is something you'd like to challenge yourself to try to emulate with your own personal spin. I think that learning to celebrate others while also celebrating yourself is a message that is relevant in any workplace or field.”

McCabe said that when it comes down to it, poetry can help us to be more human and remind us of what really matters.

“The deep points that are made in poetry are really universal points, so poetry can be a way to erase our differences and remind us that we really are dependent on each other as a global community and even smaller communities, just as neighbors and friends,” she said. “I think it returns us to that kind of understanding rather than keeping us separate. Poetry is a way to bring people together.”

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Do You Know These Benefits of Writing Poetry?

Poetry is such a beautiful form of literature. It allows you to say so much without having to write pages and pages. Through symbolism, rhymes, rhythmic, and aesthetic language, poetry can truly express the author’s deepest emotions and wildest thoughts. And, the best thing about poetry is that it brings certain benefits to the author.

The benefits of writing poetry might be a mystery to you, but we’re here to tell you more. We’ve put together a list that will help you learn just how good poetry can be for you, mentally and physically. Let’s take a closer look.

1. Expressing Emotions

The number one benefit of writing poetry lies in expressing emotions. This is crucial for those people who have trouble dealing with how they feel.

And, one thing’s for sure- you should never swipe your emotions under the rug.

Through writing poetry, you’re able to:

process the emotions you’re feeling
use creativity to express them
deal with them in your poetry and let them go

That means that poetry helps you let go of certain feelings instead of constantly holding on to the past. And, this is extremely beneficial for your mental health and inner peace.

2. Escaping Reality

We all need a break from our reality every now and then. And, poetry allows us to create our own little world and escape in it whenever we like.

People who write poetry regularly report that they feel shifted away whenever they’re in this process. Here’s what that means:

writing poetry takes you to your happy place
you feel relaxed, stress-free, and inspired
you can rest from the daily noise and tension

Escaping your busy reality is a good idea, and poetry is one of the best ways to do it.

3. Building Self-Awareness

Learning about ourselves and getting in touch with our inner-selves is never a bad idea. This is something we should try doing for as long as we’re alive.

Because it helps us build self-awareness and grow stronger on a personal level. Here’s how poetry helps you build self-awareness:

you express your ideas and emotions in your poems
you do it intuitively, which makes it honest
you re-read those lines and gain new insight about yourself

Poetry allows you to learn about yourself, grow, and improve.

4. Memorizing Important Moments

When certain things happen in our lives, we like to hold on to them. Whether it’s a beautiful memory or a life-changing event, it’s good to be reminded of your past experiences.

But, holding it all inside can be potentially harmful to our mental health. This is why it’s a good idea to write it down through poetry. This way, you’ll be:

getting it out of your system
making sure it’s never forgotten
allowing yourself to re-live it whenever you read the poems

Angela Baker, a literary critic, and editor at Trust My Paper , says:

“Poetry is one of the best ways to preserve some of the most important moments of your life. When you turn them into poetry, they’ll forever remain alive and available for you to re-live them. That’s the beauty of poetry.” Angela Baker

5. Remove Emotional Pain

Some of the most beautiful poems were written as a result of great emotional pain. When we suffer, we feel most inspired to write poetry because we feel the need to ease the pain we’re feeling.

Poetry helps us remove this emotional pain, and here’s how:

we bring it out of ourselves
we deal with all the emotions we’re feeling
we find relief and peace

Writing poetry benefits those who are struggling to heal from a recent emotional episode and need a hand to do it successfully.

6. Improving Cognition

Poetry isn’t just beneficial for our emotional side. It also has a positive impact on our brand and cognition, so we can almost say that it’s making us smarter.

Here’s why this is the case:

writing poetry is a complex process
it requires us to combine the words, hidden meaning, symbols, rhymes, and rhythmic
this process makes our brain active and stronger

Poetry helps us train our brain into being sharper and working smoothly. As a result, our overall cognition, memory, and focus are improved.

Final Thoughts

Writing poetry is an immensely enjoyable and beneficial process we should all try. People who write poetry experience significant benefits and improvements in their well-being.

Hopefully, the benefits listed above helped you understand just how valuable the process of writing poetry is. Use it as inspiration to start enjoying writing poetry more.

Donald Fomby is an experienced freelance writer and amateur poet. He currently works as an editor at Supreme Dissertations . Donald mainly focuses on literature-related topics and aims to provide practical advice his readers can apply easily

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Why Poetry Is Important

Inspire your child’s imagination and build their early literacy skills with poetry, rhyme, and rhythm.

Poetry is an important form of creative writing that centers around the expression of complex feelings and experiences. The interplay of certain words and rhythm makes poetry a powerful tool for building foundational literacy and writing skills, including reading comprehension , phonemic awareness , self-expression, and storytelling.

Beyond that, encouraging kids of all ages and interests to write poetry offers them meaningful learning opportunities. Reading poetry helps children appreciate simple ideas through figurative language and gain a deeper understanding of stories outside of their own life experiences. By providing a window into the thoughts of others, poetry has the power to increase empathy and provide a new perspective of the human experience.

On the other hand, writing poetry encourages kids to express themselves and channel their imagination through a unique art form. Poetry writing provides an outlet for children to process and communicate how they feel and what they think in their own writing. From experimenting with various poetic devices to exploring different rhyming words , writing poetry grants kids the freedom to run wild with their own thoughts.

Encourage your child to write their own poetry and channel their inner Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson! To help them get started, show kids how integrated poetry is in everyday life. In fact, we are surrounded by many poems every day, such as the music we listen to. You can introduce them to traditional forms of poetry, which often follows particular rhyme schemes and a standard sentence structure, or contemporary poetry, which is typically written in free verse.

To further spark inspiration, we’ve compiled a list of poetry books kids and families love. For instance, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Dragon! is a hilarious read-aloud poem packed with hysterical illustrations and a fun rhyme scheme that brings the classic song to life. Your little one will love following along as the Old Lady swallows everything from an astronaut to a princess to a dragon!

Meanwhile, kids will delight in charming titles, like Lovely Day and Love from Giraffes Can't Dance , that share sweet stories about the beauty in our everyday lives. Plus, inspiring titles like T o Change a Planet will empower even the youngest readers to make the world a better place.

Shop poetry books to inspire creativity below! You can find all books and activities at The Scholastic Store .

For more quick tips and book recommendations, sign up for our Scholastic Parents newsletter!

You'll also get 10% off your first order at the Scholastic Store Online.

The Power Of Poetry: A Beginner’s Guide To Writing Poetry

The Power Of Poetry
Additional Resources

Interest in poetry has been on the rise lately. Among students and children, surveys suggest that today around a quarter of them read poetry recreationally and around a fifth write poetry recreationally , which is a significant increase compared to the last decade. Similar significant increases in interest in poetry have been seen among adults, especially young adults .

Since the interest is clearly there , it would make sense to incorporate poetry into a curriculum and to use it to increase student’s engagement with learning. To help, we will explain some of the powerful benefits of teaching poetry as well as provide activities and resources that will assist in teaching poetry to students and children.

The power of poetry

Poetry can be a powerful tool in the classroom. Research and scientific studies have shown that students who engage with poetry as part of their learning demonstrate higher reading skills, creative writing skills, and enthusiasm for literature . Poetry also gives students the opportunity to increase their vocabulary and oral communication skills. Poetry also often allows students to gain higher cultural awareness by being introduced to views, experiences, and societies beyond their own. In addition to all of that, reading poetry has been shown to be good for a person’s mental health and can help students learn empathy and compassion for others .

So, it should go without saying that there are lots of benefits to teaching students poetry. But are there methods to present poetry to students in a way that even those who find poetry intimidating or uninteresting will find engaging?

Poetry activities

To help increase interest in learning poetry, many teachers find it helpful to introduce students to it using different activities. Listed below are just some ideas of activities that may help students find poetry more appealing or exciting.

Have students read their favorite poem aloud. Ask them to explain why they like it and why they feel a connection to it.
Create a poem by having each student contribute a line.
Introduce a new type of poem (acrostic, limerick, haiku, etc.) to students each week and hold a weekly challenge where students write a different style of poem.
Have students memorize a poem and recite it back.
Have students write poetry about their favorite thing from popular culture or from the perspective of a favorite fictional character.
Ask students to find a song they like and see if they can find what poetic techniques the artist used, such as rhyme scheme, metaphor, or personification, for example.
Build “pop sonnets” by challenging students to transform a modern song into a specific type of poem or to transform a classic poem into a modern pop song.
Challenge students to make a poem using a weird word list or words that don’t seem to go well together.

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Additional Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com poetry and writing resources

Writing poetry is an exciting way to build vocabulary. And we provide much more than vocabulary resources that can inspire novice and advanced poets alike. Browse our writing guides related to poetry for more ideas.

▶ More Poetry Activities For Kids

In honor of World Poetry Day, we’ve crafted this collection of surefire ways to instill appreciation and excitement for the vast world of poetry.

▶ Learn How To Write a Haiku

Here’s what you need to know to write a traditional or modern haiku. Learn the history of this Japanese form and read a variety of examples from the masters.

▶ Poetic Foot vs. Poetic Meter

Poetry has a lot of moving parts, and a great place to start is by understanding rhythm and sequence. Learn the difference between a poetic foot and meter.

▶ Are There Any Words Without a Rhyme?

It’s the age-old question… or at least the age-old word game question: are there any words without rhymes?

▶ Poetry Terms For Beginners

There’s no better time than now to learn how to talk about the poetry you love. Here are 10 basic terms explained so you’ll be poetry-ready all year long.

▶ Poetry Terms For Advanced Poets

Impress your teachers and friends with your knowledge of these advanced poetic terms that will help you read and understand poetry like an expert.

▶ 12 Essential Types of Poetry

There are many different kinds of poetry out there. Learn more about 12 essential types of poetry to expand your poetry knowledge.

▶ Positive Words Starting With A to Z

Seeing the good in life can be tough. Luckily, we have a long list of positive words to help you out—amazing ones and zippy ones and everything in between.

▶ Negative Words Starting With A to Z

Life got you down? We can’t always make it better, but we can offer creative ways to express your worldly woes with this A-to-Z list of negative words.

▶ Writing Prompts

Whether you are trying to defeat writer’s block, practice writing, or increase your creativity, writing prompts are a great tool to incorporate into your writing routine.

▶ 14 Types of Wordplay

Wordplay is no joke! It’s what makes language so lively, after all. Whip your words into a frenzy with these entertaining types of wordplay.

▶ 12 Steps to Improve Your Writing Skills

Writing a paragraph? An essay? Maybe a novel? Regardless of your project, here are 12 things you can do right away to improve your writing.

▶ Writing Activities For Elementary School Students

Looking for ways to get your elementary student to write more? We’ve compiled activities within 6 themes including poetry, weather, and space.

▶ Writing Activities for Middle School Students

These writing activities for middle schoolers can help them improve their skills and channel creativity. Try out a writing activity yourself, too!

Check out our hub for all you need to learn and teach the essentials of English grammar.

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5 Benefits of Writing Poetry for National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month. According to the Academy of American Poets ( AAP ), which launched the celebration back in 1996, this year (2021) marks the 25 th anniversary of the day established to remind us all of the role poets have to play in our culture.

You may be one of those writers participating in National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo), which is similar to the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) event that takes place every November. Launched in 2003, NaPoWriMo invites writers and poets to write a poem a day throughout the month of April as a way to inspire new creative work.

I was fortunate enough to have one of my early poems, “ Baby’s Choice ,” published many years ago. It opens the book Chicken Soup for the Expectant Mother’s Soul . I wouldn’t call myself a poet, but I have enjoyed writing poems now and then for fun, and this one, in particular, was a gift from my muse.

I’d encourage all interested writers to take part in NaPoWriMo this year, even if you, like me, don’t consider yourself a poet. Here’s why: Writing poetry is good for you!

1. During National Poetry Month, Write a Poem to Spark Your Imagination

Let’s face it: there are times in a writer’s career when inspiration is hard to find. Often these periods occur after a long stretch of hard work, or when you’re exhausted from your day job and/or life in general.

There’s something more accessible about a poem that can help break through that tired, sapped-out feeling. On those days when your novel or short story may seem a little overwhelming, sit back, relax, and let your imagination play with a poem. What a much better choice than avoiding writing altogether.

“Have you ever sat there and not known what to write?” writes writing coach and editor KM Barkley on Writer’s Digest . “Picking up poetry, reading through different excerpts from classic poets can blossom ideas you never knew existed. Reading and writing poetry makes you think of new ideas, but can also dramatically change the way you perceived old ones.”

Poetry Prompt: Listen to one of your favorite songs. When it finishes, write a poem based on the feelings and emotions it brought about in you.

2. Writing a Poem Gives You a Unique Way to Express Yourself

Raise your hand if you wrote bad poems as a kid or a teenager. (I’m raising my hand.) Few writing forms are as satisfying when it comes to expressing our emotions as poetry. There’s something about pouring our feelings into verse that feels particularly satisfying.

“There are a number of reasons why poetry may be particularly well suited to emotional expression,” writes Linda Wasmer Andrews for Psychology Today . “The use of metaphor and imagery may help the writer give voice to emotional undertones that would otherwise be hard to put into words. The use of rhythm may tap into powerful nonverbal responses, much the way music does. And the abstract nature of poetry may make it easier to take a close look at painful experiences, which might feel too threatening to approach in a direct, literal manner.”

Poetry is even recommended for caregivers and the seniors they care for as a way to release pent-up emotion, exercise creativity, and share thoughts and ideas with other people. Young people know that it can also offer a safe way to release anger and frustration while helping to change negative emotions into more positive ones.

Indeed, poetry is often compared to expressive writing when talking about the therapeutic benefits of writing in general. Just as expressive or “free writing” can help you get your emotions onto the page where they may be easier to deal with, poetry can help foster emotional expression and healing.

(Read more about how freewriting can help you manage writer’s anxiety .)

Poetry Prompt: Think of something that upset you this week. Try to capture what happened in a poem, ending with what the incident had to teach you.

3. National Poetry Month Gives You a Chance to Improve Your Language Skills

Teachers and professors often teach poetry because it is such an effective way to improve language and writing skills. The practice can build vocabulary, encourage alliteration, and increase your ease with metaphors, all of which can benefit your prose writing, too. Finding new ways to articulate your thoughts and feelings challenges your creativity, and forces your brain to work just a little harder.

In poetry, for example, it’s not good to use abstract words like “she feels happy.” Instead, a poet may use a more concrete phrase like, “her tomato cheeks radiated warmth” (as explained on iUniverse ). In this way, writing poetry helps you practice coming up with more original ways to describe something or someone.

Writes writing coach Melissa Donavan on Writing Forward:

“Most writing forms attempt to explain something — a scene, a situation, an idea, a set of instructions, an experience. Poetry doesn’t bother to explain. It shows. It paints a picture and pulls you into it….When you master the art of showing readers an idea through imagery, you can easily apply the concept to your other writing, creating work that comes alive in a reader’s mind.”

Poetry Prompt: Recall a favorite holiday (or other) memory and write about it as specifically as you can, so that your reader feels like he or she is there.

4. Writing Poetry Teaches You to Cut Out the Extra

Whereas we can feel free to write as much as we like in stories and novels (particularly in the first draft), when writing poetry, we have to be more concise. The form simply doesn’t forgive excess verbiage, and writing within it can provide the structure we need to improve our ability to get the idea across with fewer yet more hard-hitting words.

“Because poetry is written in smaller chunks,” writes Allison Baldwin on Odyssey , “it forces the reader to convey a lot of meanings and information using few words. Take a haiku, for example. The entire poem is three lines long with exactly 17 syllables. No more, no less. If the writer deviates from the form, they forfeit writing a haiku, instead opting to write something else entirely.”

This focus on brevity also encourages us to use the right words, rather than just any words that might work. We must do away with filler words and look for those that carry their weight and more in the line.

“Poetry forces you to search the language for the perfect word,” writes Kellie McGann on The Write Practice . “Instead of saying how someone ‘slowly walks through the door,’ you might instead say they ‘enter casually.’ In poetry, you must choose each word carefully, as it has to fit with the rhythm and style of the whole piece.”

Poetry Prompt: Think about one of the strangest dreams you’ve ever had, and write a poem about it. Be as concise as you can!

5. National Poetry Month Can Lead to Greater Self-Awareness

Though most any type of writing can lead to greater self-awareness, poetry often encourages us to go even deeper into our own experiences and feelings, which can result in new insights we may not have gained before. In fact, poetry practically demands that we reflect on our own experiences and then use them to communicate to others.

“Writing poetry allows us to tap into our authentic voices, which can lead to self-realization,” writes Diana Raab, Ph.D., on Psychology Today . “It can also be a form of meditation because it encourages a sense of mindfulness and the ability to tap into what we’re feeling, seeing, and experiencing at the moment of writing.”

If you’ve long written poems, you can probably trace your self-development by those poems. They’re likely to reflect your viewpoints and emotions at the time you wrote them—viewpoints and emotions that changed in your later poems.

Parts of the brain tied to daydreaming and memory light up in response to poetry. This could indicate that even reading or hearing poetry encourages self-reflection and introspection. Writing it is likely to do so at an even greater level.

Poetry Prompt: Write a poem to your future self, but do not address that person as your future self. Imagine the person as a superhero, rockstar, or someone else you may admire.

Have you experienced the benefits of writing poetry?

Poetry is such a beautiful way of self-expression. And I find that it can spark creativity. Thank you for sharing, Colleen!

Thanks, Jan! Sounds like you may have a few poems in your desk drawer. 🙂

I love to write poetry although it’s not up to par with other renowned poets. I find it a fresh way to spill out my feelings and pour out my fears and frustrations as well as joys and happy times. It costs less than a therapist and gives me the strength to deal with difficulties. Thank you for this timely article and hope many people will take up poetry for creative expression.

“It costs less than a therapist.” Love that, Kathy! 🙂

Comments are closed.

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15 Benefits of Poetry: An Undervalued & Essential Resource

Published: Nov 7, 2022 · Modified: Sep 16, 2023 by Zina Harrington · Post may contain affiliate links

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The benefits of poetry are undervalued. Poems offer useful, unexpected, everyday perks. This short yet powerful form of literature is an essential resource — especially if you're short on time.

A woman enjoying the benefits of poetry while reading a poem collection on her sofa.

Poetry is an often neglected form of literature that utilizes expressive vocabulary and different aspects of language to express a truth, story, or message.

Reading, writing, and speaking poetry is beneficial for overall well-being, personal growth, and resetting life.

“Turning to poetry, poetry gives rhythm to silence, light to darkness. In poetry we find the magic of metaphor, compactness of expression, use of the five senses, and simplicity or complexity of meaning in a few lines .” — Phyllis Klein

Poems are more than words; poetry is good for our souls and emotional health.

The Power of Poetry

Poetry is one of the most underutilized and underestimated mediums in modern culture. Start taking advantage of the benefits of poetry today!

01. Poetry offers us self-awareness

One of the primary benefits of poetry is it can help us become aware of what’s happening in our hearts, bodies, and minds.

02. Poems help us express ourselves

Reading poetry inspires emotional expression. Poems provide words, phrases, and language to express emotional needs, wants, and desires more eloquently.

03. Reading poetry is therapeutic

Reading poetry is an exploration of one’s feelings. Poems provide a unique way to examine and understand emotions, struggles, and lives.

04. Poetry reminds us we're not alone

Sometimes in powerful self-poems , truths about life are expressed in ways that will make you pause & think, "Are these poems about me?" Poetry can help you better understand yourself and others.

You Might Also Like: 10 Must-Read Poems About Self & Slow Living

A woman reading poems about self at a table with a notebook and pen.

05. Poetry inspires creative thinking

With an emphasis on word choice, cadence, and connotation, poetry invites us to appreciate the beauty of language. At the same time, the use of metaphor, symbolism, and imagery in prose promotes creative thinking.

See an example of the striking aesthetics of poetry in this must-read anthology by Morgan Harper Nichols .

06. Poems offer us wisdom

Another benefit of poetry is that it offers wisdom, life lessons, and perspectives of past generations that might have otherwise been lost.

07. Poetry helps us develop perspective

Poetry reading invites us to look at the world from different perspectives, expanding possibilities and opening the door to resetting our lives.

08. Sharing poetry connects us

When poems are shared, they can inspire, move, and connect you with others. Sharing poetry fosters emotional expression and healing through self-expression, often sparking deep interpersonal connections.

09. Poetry books save us time

The short yet powerful format of poems makes poetry books the best "books for finding yourself" when you're short on time.

Collage of five different poetry book covers.

10. Poems offer healing words

Poetry can comfort and boost mood during stress, trauma, and grief. Poems provide relief from overwhelming and sometimes repressed emotions. The best poetry books are cathartic, helping us process, release, and reset.

11. Poetry encourages us to slow down

When we skip analyzing poetry and start reading poetry for pleasure, it becomes an invitation to slow down. Poems can help you escape reality and encourage you to lead life more intentionally.

12. Poetry pushes and challenges us

Poetry can challenge our beliefs, values, perspectives, and assumptions about life. Reading poetry out loud helps push us to get comfortable with being uncomfortable .

A woman in the privacy of her bedroom who is trying to get comfortable being uncomfortable by reading poetry and saying it out loud.

13. Poetry inspires us to be ourselves

Poems about self-worth encourage us to let go of words like "should" or "supposed to" and rediscover ourselves. Poetry helps us make sense of the world and our place in it.

14. Poetry offers the ability to reflect

Investing in traditional, printed poetry books offers the ability to read a poem daily (without getting lost or distracted online) and truly reflect. Poems can inspire you to take action and reset your own life.

15. Poems can help you reset your life

Consistently reading self-poems as a daily practice is a simple way to keep slow living goals top of mind.

Love this post on the benefits of poetry? Sharing it would make our week. ♥

It would make our week if you took a second to share this poetry post on your favorite social media spot.

That’s how we know we’re on the right track and should continue writing more content like this!

A Pinterest headline collage with a woman writing and reading poems.

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Article Contents

Integrating science and poetry: lessons from the classroom, integrating science and poetry: benefits to conservation, building a science-poetry community, conclusions, acknowledgments, references cited.

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Poetry as a Creative Practice to Enhance Engagement and Learning in Conservation Science

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Stephanie R Januchowski-Hartley, Natalie Sopinka, Bethann G Merkle, Christina Lux, Anna Zivian, Patrick Goff, Samantha Oester, Poetry as a Creative Practice to Enhance Engagement and Learning in Conservation Science, BioScience , Volume 68, Issue 11, November 2018, Pages 905–911, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biy105

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Creativity is crucial to the capacity to do science well, to communicate it in compelling ways, and to enhance learning. Creativity can be both practiced and enhanced to strengthen conservation science professionals’ efforts to address global environmental challenges. We explore how poetry is one creative approach that can further conservation scientists’ engagement and learning. We draw on evidence from peer-reviewed literature to illustrate benefits of integrating science and poetry, and to ground our argument for the growth of a science-poetry community to help conservation scientists develop skills in creative practices as a component of professional development. We present examples from literature as well as two short poetry exercises for scientists to draw on when considering writing poetry, or deciding on forms of poetry to include, in their practice. Opportunity exists to grow science–poetry projects to further our understanding of what such initiatives can offer.

Current interdisciplinary dialogue generally perpetuates the ideology that scientists do science and artists do art. However, research and experience shows that scientists—and society more broadly—benefit from scientists creating works beyond their discipline (Swanson et al. 2008 , Opermanis et al. 2015 ). Broadly, creativity is defined as the production of original and useful ideas (for a broader discussion of creativity, see Stein 1953 , Barron 1955 , Runco and Jaeger 2012 ), and a variety of creative approaches, primarily from the arts, are increasingly appreciated in science education, communication, and practice (Jacobson et al. 2007 , Swanson et al. 2008 , Opermanis et al. 2015 ). For example, in Latvia, the Nature Concerthall brought science and arts (poetry, music, dance, photography, and videography) together as part of an information campaign to enhance public knowledge and awareness of nature conservation issues and resulted in both greater attendance and perceived greater knowledge of biodiversity issues by attendees (Opermanis et al. 2015 ). At the same time, the integration of creative practice in professional development opportunities for scientists is increasing; the last several years have seen multiple speakers at ecology and environmental conservation conferences (e.g., Society for Freshwater Science 2018, World Conference on Marine Biodiversity 2018, Resilience 2017) using different creative practices to highlight the role and value to ecology and environmental conservation of these practices. At the World Conference on Marine Biodiversity 2018, in Montréal, Canada, Linwood Pendleton's plenary, “Rethinking marine conservation science in three acts,” brought together poems, music, video, and dance to demonstrate how creative approaches can help to achieve and celebrate breakthroughs in marine conservation science (Pendleton 2018 ). Research focused on innovation in science also demonstrates that creativity is something we can practice and improve and that proficiency in a fine art, craft, or literary pursuit is a significant predictor of scientific productivity and innovation (Root-Bernstein 2003 ). Poetry, the focus of our article, is one creative practice that conservation scientists can use to enhance their capacity to innovate, to communicate their work in compelling ways, and to enhance their own learning, as well as that of others.

We recognize that there is a well-established body of environmental writing; the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment was established in 1992. We also recognize the growing area of environmental humanities research, which is strongly driven by those working in the arts and humanities. People working in environmental humanities are building interdisciplinary collaboration and research and reflecting on and critiquing actions and inactions when it comes to the use and management of our natural world (e.g., Magrane and Johnson 2016 ). Our article is directed at conservation scientists who have included or who are interested in creating poetry in their practice and are not poetry or literary specialists. The article is directed primarily at conservation science and scientists because of our own backgrounds and experiences, but we draw on examples from and our arguments are applicable to diverse fields. We do not see our article as separate from the ongoing work or research in environmental humanities but complementary to it and supportive of the idea that we require interdisciplinary lenses and creative approaches to action, critique, and reflection when it comes to environmental conservation and sustainability. Indeed, conservation scientists can benefit from engaging the writing and research of the environmental humanities; doing so would reinforce what we present below and would potentially encourage new and broader interdisciplinary research opportunities and directions. In the present article, we encourage a more explicit linking of conservation science and poetry by engaging scientists in poetic practice that can shape their work and believe this goes beyond wilderness literature, nature poems, and ecocriticism to consider how scientists can learn from creative practices in poetry to enhance their scientific practice.

Our focus in this article is on the unity of science and poetry, and we draw from evidence in science education, creativity, and problem-solving literature to demonstrate the potential benefits of science and poetry integration and ways in which conservation scientists can use poetry with their science as a component of professional development. To further illustrate, we reflect on our experiences and provide resources from our own ongoing science-poetry projects. To support a growing science-poetry community, we highlight new approaches of integrating science and poetry that may foster creativity and inspire others to find their own ways of building creative practice in their science.

Across diverse scientific fields, students have expressed a sense of enhanced engagement and enjoyment when poetry is integrated with their core subject. For example, Furlan and colleagues ( 2007 ) merged poetry writing and illustration in a college-level chemistry course. Their students noted that including poetry in the assignments not only made chemistry more enjoyable but offered a creative way to learn and communicate with others about chemistry. Similarly, Celly ( 2009 ) demonstrated the use of limericks for business management students to develop creative expression and reflect on their experiences as consumers to enhance topic engagement and deepen learning. In both examples, when poetry was integrated with core content, students were more engaged rather than being passive recipients of knowledge or information (Furlan et al. 2007 , Paiva et al. 2013 ). Enhanced engagement can result in a topic or problem being perceived as more enjoyable or accessible, because individuals can more effectively participate, both cognitively and emotionally (Lin et al. 2013 ).

Integrating poetry with science can also enhance opportunities for communication with others about a subject or problem. To illustrate, in his role as a middle school science teacher, Patrick Goff (article coauthor), searched ways for his students to exercise their creativity during a science module focused on human impacts to Earth's ecosystems. In his search, Goff found several initiatives led by conservation scientists who were using poetry to communicate about the environment and conservation on the social media platform Twitter. Inspired by the various conservation-poetry projects, Goff integrated haiku into his course. He considered poetry writing an opportunity for his students to showcase their creativity while learning about how humans affect Earth's ecosystems, to learn and communicate about these impacts, and to share their emotions about these impacts, beyond the boundaries of traditional pedagogical tools and approaches (e.g., reading from textbooks). In turn, Goff asked his students to select a topic related to human impacts on Earth's ecosystems, research it, and then write a haiku about it. He also shared some of the students’ haiku on Twitter, with their consent, to expand the potential audience reading the poems and to solicit potential feedback for the students. Goff's approach complements a framework suggested by Frye and colleagues ( 2011 ) to extend acrostic poetry into different content areas to bring ownership to students’ understanding. Goff found the succinct structure of haiku appealing from an instructional point of view; the short form demonstrated to his students the importance of selective word choice and the value of concentrated reflection on the topic. The students also expressed enjoyment in writing the haiku as an alternative to other modes of writing or assessment and in having their poems shared with others and receiving feedback.

The attitudes expressed by Goff's students about the integration of poetry in their science curriculum align with broader findings demonstrating the impact of topic engagement on learning (Paiva et al. 2013 ). Social and behavioral science studies have shown, for both children and adults, that activities that generate enjoyment or humor in an educational setting can stimulate learning, because students are more relaxed and less bound by rules (Lucardie 2014 ). An added benefit of short-form writing such as poetry is the potential to receive relatively rapid feedback when sharing ideas, which is important in learning environments (Hattie and Timperley 2007 ).

Poetry can allow scientists to engage, learn, and generate new ideas by enabling them to gain distance from an immediate problem or topic. By stepping away from a scientific problem and exploring poetry, scientists can foster creativity through what is commonly referred to, in creativity research, as an incubation period . This is a process whereby initial conscious thought is followed by a period during which one refrains from task-related conscious thought (Gilhooly et al. 2013 , Ritter and Dijksterhuis 2014 ). Incubation periods allow scientific ideas to percolate, and Aslan and colleagues ( 2014 ) discussed how incubation periods, or relaxed reflection, are an essential element of the creative process and highlight the importance of these periods for conservation scientists, who are likely to jettison periods of reflection in their working process. Importantly, incubation periods can illuminate hidden relationships, allowing for altered or changed views (Aslan et al. 2014 ), and drawing on activities dissimilar in nature to the target task, such as writing poetry, has been shown to have stronger effects on creative performance than an interpolated activity similar to the target task (Gilhooly et al. 2013 ). If creative performance and idea generation were the target of such incubation periods, conservation scientists could benefit from injecting an incubation period in their practice by writing on topics unrelated to the target task.

Integrating poetry as a component of daily writing could also assist conservation scientists with digesting and learning complex topics. Poetry, particularly shorter forms, such as haiku, can allow scientists to quickly capture and express new ideas. Pollack and Korol ( 2013 ) demonstrated the use of haiku as a means to convey neurobiological concepts succinctly by focusing on the most salient features of observed processes. Similarly, scientists can record creative impulses or intuitions related to a subject or problem without the constraints imposed by traditional scientific writing for journal publications. Breaking down thoughts on a topic in smaller, succinct thoughts or phrases could also help scientists to identify key themes or elements of a topic that need to be addressed or communicated clearly in their scientific writing or presentations.

Here I’m thinking of your found poems which are created from phrases pulled from your published scientific articles. In order to better understand these poems, your readers may be pushed to develop their understanding of scientific concepts. Even more interesting is that by creating something new out of your previous publications, you are demonstrating that knowledge is always in process, even for experts. That knowledge is not fixed, or unattainable, is, I think, a reassuring realization for nonspecialist readers, and it may even invite them to create their own interpretations of your poems and put their gleaned scientific understanding to work against environmental injustices.

Through poetry, scientists can also potentially relate scientific topics to day-to-day activities or events and can transcend disciplinary boundaries to reach new audiences who might otherwise not be aware of or engaged with conservation issues. At the same time, as was highlighted by Follett ( 2016 ), many readers of Anand's poetry will have to embrace the discomfort associated with treading into new ideas or concepts, and the same could be true for scientists who read poems (not associated with science per se) and do not necessarily understand the concept or point being expressed. Embracing such discomfort can be beneficial in preparing the mind to take risks that lead to greater innovation, not only in poetry, but also in science.

As El Niño builds, Pacific Warm Pool expands, ocean gains more heat

Haiku and image related to main topic in the IPCC State of the Climate in 2013 Executive Summary. Haiku and image by Gregory Johnson.

Ultimately, as conservation scientists, we aim for our work to be understood and used by the individuals seeking or encountering it. Although scientists might have some reservations about poetry as a method of inquiry, when viewed more broadly, the affective nature of poetry can be a mechanism for users of scientific content to experience deeper learning and connection about otherwise unfamiliar topics. Through word play, sound, formal constraints, and aesthetics, poetry affectively engages the reader while effectively allowing the exploration of complex or unfamiliar topics.

Oh poor, poor ratfish So chock full of parasites Anus copepod.

There is a need for a more inclusive definition of creativity in the science community. Scientists are (a) exploring the use of poetry to communicate about conservation and are using these efforts to (b) raise awareness about specific topics, programs, and initiatives. There is a growing (c) science-poetry community that is (d) encouraging conservation scientists to integrate poetry into their practice.

The interest and uptake of conservation-inspired poetry because of Project Conservation Haiku further highlights the potential for poetry to enhance scientific engagement and learning.

Through Project Conservation Haiku, the authors also built collaborations with other scientists who write poetry related to conservation. These collaborations led to the formation of SciBards (#SciBards on Twitter), a small community of conservation scientists who write, read, speak, and share poetry (figure 2c and d ). The SciBards community interacts primarily via social media, although individual and collaborative projects beyond social media have developed. For example, through the SciBards community, four of this article's coauthors, jointly facilitated a workshop at the 4th International Marine Conservation Congress to share their science-poetry experiences and bring poetry to conservation scientists. The “Using a pencilfish to write whales” workshop blended poetry, history, and science to address the relationship between science and poetry from several angles. At a conference in which science communication was a recurring theme, this workshop investigated a form not typically considered a science communication tool.

Cantonese delicacy Shark Fin Soup Significant global Problem.

Reflecting on our experiences in the “Using a pencilfish to write whales” workshop, we determined that one way to grow a science-poetry community is to share examples and perspectives, such as those that we have set out in this article, from our own as well as others’ experiences with poetry and science–poetry integration. To further inspire conservation scientists to integrate poetry in their daily practice, we present two short poetry exercises. The first poetry exercise is adapted from Maxine Hong Kingston's To Be the Poet (2002), based on a method for writing poems that was shared with her by Ted Sexauer, a member of Kingston's Veterans’ Writing Workshop. The original exercise was adapted and expanded by Christina Lux (article coauthor) and is well suited for scientists with little to no background in creative writing.

Step 1. Close your eyes and become aware of your emotions or bodily sensations. Now, open your eyes and begin jotting down notes about what you observe in your immediate environment. Close your eyes again, sit with the emotion or feeling that emerges in your body; write it down and again observe your environment, jotting down your immediate impressions. Repeat this step until you believe you are done.

Step 2. Look back at your notes. What images or descriptions are most striking to you, which ones do you feel you might want to keep? Circle them. Begin a new draft, pulling from those circled ideas. Is a concept emerging? Consider this draft your seed . You can leave the seed and come back to it, or you can continue to develop it.

Step 3. Your seed contains patterns that you can now sharpen, uncover, and highlight, depending on the message you want to convey in the poem or the concept that you want to explore. Is there a pattern emerging from the words you’ve laid out on the page? Do you notice a cadence or rhythm in your draft? If you see a pattern emerging, think about the form that will best reflect or deepen the sense of the images in your poem, and further develop the writing.

Step 4. Choose what to do with the poem: share it on social media, publish it in a journal or magazine, read it at a poetry reading, pair it with the work of an artist, or keep it for yourself.

The second poetry exercise is drawn from Oester ( 2016 ) and from several exercises that we have led, or read about (e.g., Wolters and Wijnen-Meijer 2012 ). This second exercise offers scientists a framework to develop a short poem about their research, a question, or broader ideas about science practice.

First, identify your muse: an objective, a topic, or an experience that you want to write about. Now think about and even write down what you are trying to accomplish. Write down everything you can think of about your muse, inspiration, experience, or story. Don’t edit, just write. Set down the writing and thoughts for at least an hour. Return to the writing, read it over, and begin to clarify the idea that you are trying to accomplish or convey. Develop line breaks in your writing to create a juxtaposition, to evoke sensation or drive a narrative forward. Edit as needed, potentially ruthlessly, until you have a poem you are satisfied with, one that aligns with whatever type of poem you want to create (e.g., haiku, sonnet, or limerick). Consider sharing your work with others for reactions and feedback. Potentially revisit your poem again, and revise as you see best. Finally, reflect on your poem, and share with others if you wish.

A more detailed overview of poetry and the basics of writing it are set out in a short course by Oester ( 2016 ). Such exercises can be used by scientists to further develop or refresh their poetry writing. We encourage scientists to draw on these resources and to share their poetry and creative processes with others—scientists and nonscientists alike.

We support recent calls from Aslan and colleagues ( 2014 ) and Zavaleta and colleagues ( 2017 ) for a broader and more inclusive definition of creativity to be promoted in the conservation science community and in other scientific communities more broadly. There is considerable evidence that exercising creativity through poetry writing, reading, or speaking can develop, maintain, and enhance empathic and innovation skills. Integrating creative practices, such as poetry writing, and developing these skills should be essential components of professional development and practice of conservation scientists. Accordingly, whether in the office, lab, or field, writing and sharing poetry can foster creativity and enhance conservation scientists’ engagement and learning of unfamiliar topics. We base this assertion on the benefits and opportunities detailed in the literature and on those we have observed in our own interdisciplinary practices and projects that integrate poetry with conservation science. Additional benefits to conservation science and practice derived from poetry integration could likely be elucidated through additional work on this topic. Indeed, the potential benefits of science–poetry integrations remain poorly explored (although the effectiveness of poetry as a science communication tool is being investigated; Illingworth 2016 ). Opportunity exists to grow projects and further our understanding of what such initiatives can offer. Identifying approaches that effectively bring together diverse perspectives and tools to inject creativity into complex problems will strengthen our ability to overcome some of society's toughest challenges (NASEM 2018 ).

We thank three anonymous reviewers and two editors for their helpful feedback and suggestions to improve the quality of our manuscript. We also thank the students of Beaumont Middle School for sharing their poetry with us; notably, their poetry was only shared when they agreed to it, using district-approved disclosure forms, and in line with the US Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act. Thanks also to Jeremy Hoffman and Gregory Johnson for thoughtful discussions about their science-poetry practice and to participants of the “Using a pencilfish to write whales” workshop for their interest and participation. We extend thanks to all creators who contributed poetry and art referenced in our article and to those who share their poetry and art through the #SciBards network. SRJH recognizes travel support from the Society for Conservation Biology European Section, which allowed her to attend the 4th International Marine Conservation Congress, and funding from the Welsh European Funding Office and European Regional Development Fund under project no. 80761-SU-140 (West).

Author Biographical

Stephanie R. Januchowski-Hartley ( [email protected] ) is affiliated with the Department of Biosciences at Swansea University, in Swansea, United Kingdom. Natalie Sopinka is affiliated with Canadian Science Publishing, in Ottawa, Ontario. Bethann G. Merkle is affiliated with the Wyoming Migration Initiative, in the Department of Zoology and Physiology at the University of Wyoming, in Laramie. Christina Lux is affiliated with the Center for the Humanities at the University of California, Merced. Anna Zivian is affiliated with the Ocean Conservancy, in Santa Cruz, California. Patrick Goff is affiliated with Beaumont Middle School, in Beaumont, Kentucky. Samantha Oester is affiliated with the Environmental Science and Policy Department at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Virginia.

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Huffington Post . 2013 . Haikus are a creative alternative to reading this 2,000-page report . Available from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/19/ipcc-haikus_n_4467451.html (accessed December 2017) .

Illingworth S. 2016 . Are scientific abstracts written in poetic verse an effective representation of the underlying research? F1000Research 5 : 91 .

Jacobson SK , Mcduff MD , Monroe MC . 2007 . Promoting conservation through the arts: Outreach for hearts and minds . Conservation Biology 21 : 7 – 10 .

Johnson GC , Birnbaum AN . 2017 . As El Niño builds, Pacific Warm Pool expands, ocean gains more heat . Geophysical Research Letters 44 : 438 – 445 .

Kingston MH. 2002 . To Be the Poet . Harvard University Press .

Lin HS , Hong ZR , Chen YC . 2013 . Exploring the development of college students’ situational interest in learning science . International Journal of Science Education 35 : 2152 – 2173 .

Lucardie D. 2014 . The impact of fun and enjoyment on adult's learning . Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 142 : 439 – 446 .

Magrane E , Johnson M . 2016 . An art-science approach to bycatch in the Gulf of California shrimp trawling fishery . Cultural Geographies 24 : 487 – 495 .

Morin D. 2008 . Introduction to Classical Mechanics . Cambridge Press .

NASEM, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine . 2018 . The Integration of the Humanities and Arts with Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Higher Education: Branches from the Same Tree . National Academies Press .

Oester S. 2016 . Poetry 101: The basics to get you started . 4th International Marine Conservation Congress, St John's, Newfoundland .

Opermanis O , Kalnins SN , Aunins A . 2015 . Merging science and arts to communicate nature conservation . Journal for Nature Conservation. 28 : 67 – 77 .

Paiva JC , Morais C , Moreira L . 2013 . Specialization, chemistry, and poetry: Challenging chemistry boundaries . Journal of Chemical Education 90 : 1577 – 1579 .

Pendleton L. 2018 . Rethinking marine conservation science in three acts . 4 th World Conference on Marine Biodiversity, Montréal, Canada. http://www.wcmb2018.org/assets/wcmb-final-program_may-11-18-web.pdf (Accessed 04/07/2018) .

Pollack AE , Korol DL . 2013 . The use of haiku to convey complex concepts in neuroscience . Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education 12 : A42 – A48 .

Ritter SM , Dijksterhuis A . 2014 . Creativity: the unconscious foundations of the incubation period . Frontiers in Human Neurosciences 8 : 215 .

Root-Bernstein R. 2003 . The art of innovation: Polymaths and universality of the creative process . 267 – 278 in Shavinina LV , ed. International Handbook on Innovation . Elsevier Science .

Runco MA , Jaeger GJ . 2012 . The standard definition of creativity . Creativity Research Journal 24 : 92 – 96 .

Silverman I. 2016 . In defense of the play-creativity hypothesis . Creativity Research Journal 28 : 136 – 143 .

Stein MI. 1953 . Creativity and culture . Journal of Applied Psychology 36 : 311 – 322 .

Swanson FJ , Goodrich C , Moore KD . 2008 . Bridging boundaries: Scientists, creative writers, and the long view of the forest . Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 6 : 499 – 504 .

Wolters FJ , Wijnen-Meijer M . 2012 . The role of poetry and prose in medical education: The pen as mighty as the scalpel? Perpectives on Medical Education 1 : 43 – 50 .

Yeo R. 1993 . Defining Science: William Whewell, Natural Knowledge and Public Debate in Early Victorian Britain . Cambridge University Press .

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Zwart H. 2014 . What is Nature? On the use of poetry in philosophy courses for science students . Teaching Philosophy 37 : 379 – 398 .

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5 Ways You Benefit from Writing Poetry! (from The pARTnership Movement)

Posted by richard jaffe, apr 04, 2013 0 comments.

April is National Poetry Month , inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets to celebrate poetry and its vital role in American culture. The academy sponsors events such as the star-studded Poetry & the Creative Mind Gala (April 17 at Lincoln Center in New York City) and mass-appeal activities like Poem in Your Pocket Day (April 18), when everyone is encouraged to carry a poem.

I love April, and not just because of my birthday and all those Final Four games!

We would be wise to celebrate America’s poetry because it’s an art form that does as much—sometimes even more—for the writer as the reader. Poems inspire, educate, and cleanse. And now that writing has become more abbreviated with blogs, text messages, tweets and the like, the time is perfect for poetry to make a big comeback.

The process of exploring my thoughts and feelings and expressing them in symbolic word images exercises my creativity in a fun way. I think it makes me sharper and, the more I explore the well of my imagination, the faster it fills again.

Everyone can benefit from writing poetry, whether they want to share it or not, because it:

1. Improves cognitive function. Learning new words (I’m never without a Thesaurus), working out meter (math!), and finding new ways to articulate our thoughts and feelings (communication) are all good for the brain. Want to get smarter? Write poetry!

2. Helps heal emotional pain. Grief is one of the most painful emotions we experience, and it’s also the source of some of the world’s most inspirational poetry. When I have experienced a profound loss, the act of putting my feelings into words or memorializing and paying tribute to those who I lost is extremely cathartic.

3. Leads us to greater self-awareness. Most of us don’t have the time or desire to just sit and aimlessly ponder the meaning of our lives or what makes us deeply happy. Writing poetry gives us a constructive way to do that. Not only does it help us explore and gain insight, we have something to show for all that “inner reflection” when we’re done.

4. Provides a gift of inspiration or education to others. One thing we know—we are not alone! Universal questions, fears, and emotions are called ‘universal’ because everyone, no matter what country or culture they’re raised in, experiences them. Once we’ve done the work of exploring and finding our own answers, we can help others by sharing them. I like to share my poem ‘Eternal Happiness’ because it describes what I’ve found to be the source of my own eternal happiness.

5. Helps us celebrate! For some things, balloons and cake just don’t suffice. Proposing to my wife, the births of my children, their Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, falling in love—these were among the most emotionally powerful, joyful times of my life. Thanks to the poems I wrote at the time to capture those feelings, I can experience them again and again.

If you’ve never tried your hand at poetry, I encourage you to give it a go in April.

You can share your poem with me by tweeting a link to @rbjaffe or posting to my Google+ group, “Inspirational Poetry."

(This post is one in a weekly series highlighting The pARTnership Movement , Americans for the Arts’ campaign to reach business leaders with the message that partnering with the arts can build their competitive advantage. Visit our website to find out how both businesses and local arts agencies can get involved!)

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Creative Hobbies Can Really Benefit Your Mental Health

Key takeaways.

British data suggests that engaging in a creative pursuit can boost levels of happiness and the sense that life is worth living

This was true even for folks who were unemployed or had low incomes

Creative pursuits' mental health boost exceeded that typically supplied to people by their jobs

FRIDAY, Aug. 16, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Painting, woodworking, writing: Whatever you turn to creatively, it could equal or exceed work in terms of maintaining mental health, new research shows.

“Crafting and other artistic activities showed a meaningful effect in predicting people’s sense that their life is worthwhile,” said study lead author Dr. Helen Keyes , of Anglia Ruskin University in the U.K.

“Indeed, the impact of crafting was bigger than the impact of being in employment," she added. "Not only does crafting give us a sense of achievement, it is also a meaningful route to self-expression. This is not always the case with employment.”

The new study was published Aug. 16 in the journal Frontiers in Public Health . It involved almost 7,200 participants in the annual Taking Part survey, conducted by the UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Folks were asked about their level of participation in cultural, digital and sporting activities.

People were also queried about their levels of loneliness and "sensations of happiness, anxiety and life satisfaction, and to give their impression of whether life is worthwhile," according to a journal news release.

More than a third (37.4%) of respondents said they'd been involved in some kind of arts or crafts activity over the past month.

People who engaged in a creative pursuit scored higher in terms of happiness, life satisfaction and the sense that life is worthwhile, compared to folks who weren't involved in arts or crafts, the researchers found.

“The well-being effects were present even after we accounted for things like employment status and level of deprivation," Keyes said in a journal news release. "It seems that crafting can contribute positively to your well-being above and beyond these other aspects of your life.”

Perhaps because many arts and crafts are done while alone, engagement didn't seem to affect people's levels of loneliness.

The study was only designed to show associations, so it could not prove cause and effect.

In her own life, Keyes said she's an avid devotee of DIY projects such as painting and decorating.

“There is certainly something immensely satisfying about seeing the results of your work appear before your eyes,” she said. “It feels great to focus on one task and engage your mind creatively.”

Policymakers might want to take guidance from the new findings, Keyes said.

“Governments and national health services might consider funding and promoting crafting, or even socially prescribing these activities for at-risk populations, as part of a promotion and prevention approach to well-being and mental health,” she said.

More information

Find out more about the benefits of being creative at the American Psychiatric Association .

SOURCE: Frontiers journals, news release, Aug. 16, 2024

What This Means For You

Looking to boost your levels of happiness and purpose? Try taking up a creative art or craft.

English - Creative Writing Emphasis

Focus on the craft of writing with the support and instruction of an array of well-published, award-winning faculty.

Tell Your Story

This growing major is an excellent choice for those who love to read and write, and are passionate about expressing themselves through language. Classes include multi-genre writing workshops, as well as those that focus on specific types of writing such as playwriting, novel writing and creation of essays, short stories, and poetry. Through unique projects and class discussions, you'll foster creativity, insight and empathy — skills that are highly sought after by writers. A variety of electives and course topics throughout the emphasis allow you to study the areas that interest you and best align with your career goals.

While pursuing your degree, you'll experience the incredible benefits of small class sizes. Our courses allow for personalized learning, individualized mentoring, and the formation of meaningful, lasting connections. Your professors and classmates will know you by name and do all they can to help you achieve your personal and professional goals.

Graduates of the program leave with the knowledge and skills to create original and effective poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction works.

Whether you dream of publishing a novel, sharing your poetry, crafting blogs or writing a play, a bachelor's degree in creative writing from UW-Eau Claire can help make anything possible.

Program Details

two female students at a table for a tutoring sessions, laptops on the table, both are looking at the screen

As a creative writing major or minor, you'll have the unique opportunity to work as an academic apprentice. Facilitate class discussions, assist teams with group work, answer questions, provide input for class activities, and assignments and teach part of a class session. Or tutor other students outside of the English department by becoming a Center for Writing Excellence writing assistant. These experiences provide a chance for you to build skills in leadership, interpersonal communication, and problem-solving, while also enhancing your writing abilities.

Endless undergraduate research opportunities are available to students at UWEC. Some of the exciting projects taken on by students and faculty in English involve conducting research and interviewing research subjects. Your work could lead to presentations at local and national research conferences, providing you with even more learning and networking opportunities.

Joining a student organization at UWEC builds your skill set — and your resume. You may mentor current and potential students, organize events, or give back to the community. You'll also meet students who, like you, are interested in English and all that it offers. A popular student org for creative writing majors is NOTA, or None of the Above, which is a campus literary magazine — entirely student-run — that publishes a biannual collection of the top student submissions in the categories of art, poetry, and prose.

Writing in a new and different environment can lead to some pretty incredible work. Find inspiration while studying abroad in places like England, France, Italy, Spain, Costa Rica, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, South Korea, South Africa, or Japan. Or join faculty on a cultural immersion program to renowned places right here in the U.S. These enriching academic experiences are exactly the kind of high-impact practices that set UW-Eau Claire apart from other institutions, making UWEC an excellent place to pursue your creative writing degree.

Blugold Stories

Some people might stay away from English classes because they think they're bad writers. I would say no one is a bad writer. Writing, like art, is very subjective, and I promise you there is someone out there who will share your story and see the light in your writing. If you're interested in expressing yourself or just have feelings you need to work through, creative writing is something that you should try.

Creative Writing and Teaching - English and Language Arts Major Maggie O'Brien smiling

I had no idea how much I would be welcomed and how much all of my professors genuinely care about me. They are so willing to just have a chat or I can come to their office hours. It's just something that is so nice and I didn't know I was going to have that.

Just the facts

100% Employed or Continuing Education Every 2022-2023 graduate from this major is currently employed or continuing their education.

5 Majors, 4 Minors, 3 Certificates Our personalized curriculum builds your skillset and talent for the future you want.

Where can the english - creative writing emphasis program lead me after graduation?

Graduates of UW-Eau Claire's English - creative writing emphasis degree leave with the knowledge, tools, skills, and passion to become successful, published authors.

Example Careers

Content manager
Content writer
Technical writer
Social media director
Freelance writer

The English - creative writing emphasis bachelor's degree includes countless opportunities to create and evaluate forms of verbal art, including poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Coursework throughout the program will help you to become a better reader and writer of imaginative literature. Pair your studies with a minor or another major in areas like history, marketing, journalism, public relations, communication studies, political science or graphic design for even more career opportunities.

Here are a few courses in English - Creative Writing Emphasis at UW-Eau Claire.

Introduction to Creative Writing

Introduction to creative writing with opportunities for the student to create and evaluate several forms of verbal art (poetry, fiction and/or nonfiction).

Creative Writing Workshop - Fiction

Special emphasis on class discussion and personal conferences for advanced writers of fiction.

Creative and Narrative Nonfiction

Survey of nonfiction works (reportage, autobiography, travel, and nature writing) which combines factual reporting with literary techniques to reveal American society.

Get More Info

Related Programs

Thinking about studying english - creative writing emphasis? You might also be interested in exploring these related programs.

What's Next?

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What is a Creative Writer and What Do They Do?

Graphic treatment of a creative writer sitting at a laptop working with letters coming out of the laptop and a lightbulb behind them.

Understanding the Numbers When reviewing job growth and salary information, it’s important to remember that actual numbers can vary due to many different factors — like years of experience in the role, industry of employment, geographic location, worker skill and economic conditions. Cited projections do not guarantee actual salary or job growth.

Many of life’s great stories that are told in the form of literature, film, short stories and poetry, among many other outlets, first get their start in the minds and on the pages of creative writers.

Creative writing is a professional discipline that is unique in many ways and has the potential to take your career in a vast array of different directions.

If creative writing is a field you’re interested in pursuing, it’s important to keep in mind that while it can be a challenging and competitive profession, it also offers a number of distinctive benefits.

What Are the Different Types of Creative Writing?

“Creative writing” is a broad term that, when it comes to professional careers, encapsulates many different forms of writing.

“There are so many genres,” said Melissa Hart , an instructor in the online Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in Creative Writing at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU).

Hart, who has a Bachelor of Arts in Literature and an MFA in Creative Writing, has authored seven fiction and nonfiction books and published articles and essays in The New York Times, Smithsonian, CNN, The Washington Post, Slate and The Los Angeles Times, among others.

She said the career pathways for creative writers are virtually unlimited.

“Creative writers can be poets and screenwriters, personal essayists, novelists, short story writers,” Hart said, explaining that even within the world of creative writing , there are a number of creative avenues you can take. Some of these include:

Flash fiction
Hybrid forms
Researched nonfiction
Writing that embraces audio and video

What Are the Main Duties of a Creative Writer?

Much like their earning potential, the daily duties of a creative writer can vary greatly depending on what projects they’re working on at any given time, Hart said.

“I think duties differ writer to writer,” she said. “In my work, I practice writing almost every day — usually rough drafts, and then revisions, of novel chapters and nonfiction book chapters, magazine and newspaper articles and essays and newsletter posts.”

According to the BLS , how you spend your days as a creative writer depends largely on what type of writer you are, some of which include:

Biographer – writing about the accounts of an individual’s life.
Copywriter – working in advertising and marketing writing persuasive ad copy.
Novelist – authoring books of fiction based on imaginary plots and characters.
Screenwriter – creating scripts for movies and television.
Speechwriter – developing orations for government leaders, political candidates and business leaders.

And in today’s digital world, another form of writing that continues to thrive is blogging , which is defined by global website development leader Wix as articles posted to a website focused on a specific area of interest.

Social media writing , too, continues to emerge with many large organizations like Mailchimp establishing specific standards for its social media writing.

What Credentials Do You Need to Become a Creative Writer?

Hart pointed out that creative writing is a unique profession in that it doesn’t require a degree or academic credential of any kind in order to succeed.

“You don't need any credentials," she said. "You just need an open mind and a willingness to learn your craft in the genre that most interests you.”

However, high-quality college programs in creative writing can be an excellent way for writers who have natural talent and abilities to further develop their skills, Hart said. For instance, in the SNHU online Bachelor of Arts (BA) program in Creative Writing and English, students develop and sharpen their skills in a number of areas, including:

Writing and editing techniques
Literary form, genre, structure, style, analysis and critical thinking
Application of storytelling elements
Use of genre conventions and techniques
Professional portfolio building

There is also an abundance of resources you can look into on your own to better position yourself for a career as a creative writer .

“There are piles of books, for instance, on how to write children's fiction,” Hart said. “Ditto poetry, screenplays, creative nonfiction... and there are so many resources online, as well.”

Is Creative Writing a Skill or a Talent?

Another aspect of creative writing that makes it a unique professional field, Hart said, is that it involves both natural talent and skills that can be learned.

“Perhaps a person is born with an innate talent for storytelling, but reading and practicing and studying creative writing for years will give you the skills you need to write fiction and nonfiction and poetry that appeals to readers,” she said.

Hart said that she’s had a love of language since the age of five, which is when she started writing short stories. It was her passion for writing and storytelling that inspired her to work hard developing her skills.

“All that practice gave me skills as a creative writer,” she said. “I believe I developed a talent for writing in particular genres because I studied them so deeply.”

Is it Hard to Learn Creative Writing?

While for many, learning to be a creative writer could be characterized as hard, Hart explained that “time consuming” is probably a better way of putting it.

“For instance, I just spent three years learning to cross-country ski when I’d never been on skis before,” she said. “I think it generally takes people at least three years to grow adept at creative writing in a particular genre because you’re constantly reading and deconstructing literature and thinking about it and writing and rewriting and rewriting some more.”

That said, among the many benefits of a career in creative writing is the flexibility and freedom it provides, Hart said.

“Creative writers can work anywhere they want,” she said. “I've written novel chapters in my car outside my daughter's dance studio, on airplanes, on the bank of a local river while my kid looked for newts.”

According to Hart, many of her students work in a corner of their house with noise-canceling headphones, while others write on their lunch breaks or in bed late at night.

“You can train yourself to get into a creative writing space the moment you open your laptop,” she said. “It just takes a while.”

Find Your Program

Is creative writing a good career.

What determines if writing is a “good” career will vary person to person, but there are a lot of considerations to keep in mind if it’s a path you’re interested in following, Hart said.

“It’s a good career for me, because I get to write about topics and issues which interest me,” she said. "However, it's my husband who has the great health insurance. If I didn't have health insurance, it might not be a viable career option because freelance writers and authors don't get subsidized health insurance — we must pay for our own."

While freelance writers and authors typically do find and fund their own health insurance, there is a growing number of writer unions and guilds that can assist with health insurance plans, according to Find the Plan , an online hub for freelance writers. And non-freelance copywriters, social media writers and blog writers usually get health benefits through the organization for which they work.

Does Creative Writing Pay Well?

Unlike other professional fields — in areas like business, engineering, education, medicine and law, among others — that typically have a salary range based on experience and the level of your degree, there is a vast disparity in what creative writers earn.

While high-profile, bestselling authors can command six-figure advances for their work, they comprise just a small fraction of those earning a living as creative writers, Hart said.*

“Most of us are midlist writers, earning modest advances and royalty checks,” she said. “It's interesting to note that I can earn as much off of two 4,000-word researched essays for magazines as I can for one of my young adult novels.”

Hart said that it’s common for creative writers to generate their income from a combination of different forms of writing for a variety of outlets, along with other professional activities where they’re paid for their professional expertise. For example, Hart said she earns her living through a combination of:

Fiction writing
Nonfiction writing
Private teaching and instruction through her website
Teaching college-level creative writing

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the mean annual wage for writers and authors in 2023 was $87,590.*

“But creative writing isn't about the money, for me,” she said. “It's about getting to join the conversation and put something beautiful and inspiring out into the world.”

Discover more about SNHU's online bachelor’s in creative writing : Find out what courses you'll take, skills you'll learn and how to request information about the program.

*Cited job growth projections may not reflect local and/or short-term economic or job conditions and do not guarantee actual job growth. Actual salaries and/or earning potential may be the result of a combination of factors including, but not limited to: years of experience, industry of employment, geographic location, and worker skill.

Cary Jordan is an Iowa-based writer with more than 20 years of writing and editing experience on a wide range of issues related to higher education. Cary has held administrative and cabinet-level positions at multiple colleges and universities, and his writing has spanned topics related to undergraduate education as well as graduate education in the areas of business, law, medicine and engineering, among others.

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About southern new hampshire university.

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SNHU is a nonprofit, accredited university with a mission to make high-quality education more accessible and affordable for everyone.

Founded in 1932, and online since 1995, we’ve helped countless students reach their goals with flexible, career-focused programs . Our 300-acre campus in Manchester, NH is home to over 3,000 students, and we serve over 135,000 students online. Visit our about SNHU page to learn more about our mission, accreditations, leadership team, national recognitions and awards.

Creative hobbies may greatly benefit mental health

Painting, woodworking, writing: Whatever you turn to creatively, it could equal or exceed work in terms of maintaining mental health, new research shows.

"Crafting and other artistic activities showed a meaningful effect in predicting people's sense that their life is worthwhile," said study lead author Dr. Helen Keyes , of Anglia Ruskin University in Britain. Advertisement

"Indeed, the impact of crafting was bigger than the impact of being in employment," she added. "Not only does crafting give us a sense of achievement, it is also a meaningful route to self-expression. This is not always the case with employment."

Work stress may increase risk of heart rhythm disorder
Study: Your body experiences 'massive' biomolecular changes in your 40s and 60s
United States remains last for life expectancy among English-speaking countries

Folks were asked about their level of participation in cultural, digital and sporting activities.

More than a third (37.4%) of respondents said they'd been involved in some kind of arts or crafts activity over the past month. Advertisement

"The well-being effects were present even after we accounted for things like employment status and level of deprivation," Keyes said in a journal news release. "It seems that crafting can contribute positively to your well-being above and beyond these other aspects of your life."

Perhaps because many arts and crafts are done while alone, engagement didn't seem to affect people's levels of loneliness.

The study was only designed to show associations, so it could not prove cause and effect.

In her own life, Keyes said she's an avid devotee of DIY projects such as painting and decorating.

"There is certainly something immensely satisfying about seeing the results of your work appear before your eyes," she said. "It feels great to focus on one task and engage your mind creatively."

Policymakers might want to take guidance from the new findings, Keyes said.

"Governments and national health services might consider funding and promoting crafting, or even socially prescribing these activities for at-risk populations, as part of a promotion and prevention approach to well-being and mental health," she said. Advertisement

More information

Find out more about the benefits of being creative at the American Psychiatric Association .

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September 24 @ 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm

The Surprising and Inevitable Art of the Glosa

Learn from other poets and experiment with new uses of language by writing a glosa!  The glosa is a structured poetic tradition that involves borrowing lines from other texts. This art of “glossing”—elaborating or commenting on a text—allows writers to deepen their relationship to other poems, consider the ways their writing is in conversation with other writers, and build on other writers’ ideas.  Please bring four lines from a poem or song to this workshop to try out this form of poetry.

This in-person workshop will be delivered by visiting instructor, Anna Lee-Popham.

Please note:

Registration for this event is limited. A light lunch will be provided. Registrants will be asked to submit their dietary requirements. Event location is TBD.

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Tuesdays, Oct 15 - Nov 19 10:00 am - 12:30 pm

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Poetry 1: Learning to Write Poetry

Whether you’re brand new to poetry or just need a refresher on the craft of writing poems, this class will focus on the fundamentals of what makes a great poem. With a strong emphasis on how to read a poem as a writer, this class mixes both traditional and formal poetry with modern contemporary examples and covers the basics of form and language. This class will help you build your toolbox of literary devices to begin crafting poems on your own with prompts and guided examples. We’ll explore voice, imagery, word choice and line in a stimulating and supportive environment.

Get your certificate! Register for Poetry 2 and 3 and save 35%

Use code cohort2025 at checkout!

Please note: This class or event is hybrid. Some attendees will be in-person and some will attend online. T here may be a limited number of in-person seats available. If you are participating online (using Zoom or a similar live platform), students or attendees should have a stable internet connection. Class participants: you should have a computer or device with a webcam and microphone; and your Zoom link will be automatically sent to you after you register. Check your spam box if you don't see it.

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November 19

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Mosab Abu Toha

Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet, short-story writer, and essayist from Gaza. His first collection of poetry, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear , was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and won the Palestine Book Award, the American Book Award, and the Walcott Poetry Prize. Abu Toha is also the founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza, which he hopes to rebuild. He recently won an Overseas Press Club Award for his “Letter from Gaza” columns for The New Yorker. His new collection of poetry, Forest of Trees , is out in October 2024.

On processing trauma through writing

I first became aware of your work when I read the essay that you wrote for The New Yorker about your experience fleeing Gaza, which included being kidnapped by the Israeli military. I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about the process of writing that essay, because it was published quite soon after that happened.

I was kidnapped on November 19th (2023), and I was released on November 21st. I stayed in the hands of the Israelis handcuffed and blindfolded for about 53 hours. During that time, I was in constant fear for my wife’s and my children’s lives—I did not know where they went. I was worried about the safety of my parents and my siblings, who I left behind in northern Gaza. And when I was temporarily placed in a tent along with other kidnapped people from Gaza, I could hear the artillery firing shells into the parts that I evacuated [from].

Thanks to everyone who wrote about me , I think a lot of pressure was put on the Israelis to release me. So, I was released and I was really surprised because it was very quick. The second day I was called by some Israeli soldiers to go out. And then it took them a few hours to drop me at the same checkpoint where they kidnapped me from, and that would be the next journey for me to find my wife and my children. I did not know where they were, there was no internet connection, there was no phone signal. So, I started to look for them and it took me about three hours to find them. And luckily they were staying with my wife’s relatives in a school shelter in the south of the Gaza Strip.

The moment I was released, I was [contacted] by The New Yorker editors, especially David Remnick , who asked me to write about this. So, of course, immediately I started writing down everything I could remember.

Did you know right away that you wanted to write about this experience?

I’m the kind of person who—I don’t know if I’m lucky or unlucky—reflects on his experiences. Because these experiences are not superficial. These experiences have been imprinted in my heart, and I felt every bit of it. So, I found myself retelling the story from the time we decided to leave North Gaza. We were, of course, scared to take the journey because the Israelis could bomb us any time. That had happened with a few families. So I started to narrate these stories of some of the bombings that happened the night before we decided to leave North Gaza. My wife’s grandparents and her uncles were in a school that was bombed in the early morning one day before we left. That was one reason why we decided to leave.

I have these stories with me. The hard part was about reflecting on my feelings, not my experience. There are two parts to any story, the experience and the feelings. The emotions that come with this experience. And this is what poetry is to me.

So, I started writing everything down. I wrote about half of the piece in [the shelter] I was in. I sometimes had to walk in the street to look for an internet connection. I was sitting in the street along with hundreds of other people. Then the second half [of drafting] and editing process took place in Cairo.

Did the experience of writing this essay helped you to process what had just happened to you?

Whenever I write, whether it’s poetry or essays, or even a short story in the Arabic language, the fact that I’m writing about myself is also representative of what other people are going through. Writing about these things helps me to relieve some of the pain that I’m feeling for myself and for others.

Writing about the collective story, the story of so many people who were killed, or who lost their parents—I know of two people who are still buried under the rubble of their house. And I met with two survivors of that airstrike, which killed at least 40 people and destroyed the building. They were in Egypt. They told me that they wanted to go back to Gaza, and I [asked], “Why? A lot of people pay money to go out in Gaza.” She said, “I want to go back and retrieve the body of my father and my sibling.” So, the fact that I’m writing about these people gives me a sense of victory that I am still alive to tell these stories. My life has a meaning not only to me, but also to other people.

It sounds like along with feeling that you’ve survived, there is also maybe a sense of responsibility to share those stories of the people who have been lost?

Yeah, the fact that I am alive is one thing, and the fact that I can continue to write is another, because many people survive atrocities. It’s not that they kept silent, but they were forced to be silent, either because they’re still traumatized. I myself am traumatized. I still have nightmares. And also my children have nightmares. For me, it’s about writing about myself, whether it’s something that happened to me last year, last month or yesterday, or things that other people experienced, but they did not survive to tell us the rest of the story. So, my position as a poet is to either rewrite the story or to complete it.

How and when did you find poetry as a vehicle for sharing your creative identity or words with the world?

I was born in 1992 in a refugee camp. I’ve never seen a foreigner who came to visit Gaza for the sake of visiting. I mean, the only foreigners that would come to Gaza were journalists, or doctors, or human rights activists. No one came to Gaza to talk to the people of Gaza. So, the first time I found myself writing, I didn’t realize what I was writing, that it had some effect on people, and it had some art in it. It was in 2014. I was posting about everything that I was witnessing, every feeling that I felt. I think having a platform [on] Facebook at the time helped me realize how important my work would be, because people started to follow me and to comment on my posts and compliment my writing.

The fact that there were some people who were listening encouraged me to continue holding my pen and penning more and more pieces of writing. I wouldn’t call them poems at the time.

When I write in Arabic, I’m talking to myself about myself. I’m talking about humanity addressing myself or trying to understand it. But when it comes to writing in the English language, of course I’m not talking to myself because it’s not part of me. I was not born with it. I found it in me later. So, writing in the English language means that I’m talking to someone else, because the people outside are eager to learn. Having that audience in front of me meant that I should continue addressing these people, and that’s where poetry came from.

You’ve emerged as one of the most prominent voices responding to the war in Gaza through poetry. Why is poetry needed in times like these?

I think poetry is one of the most successful mediums for someone to reflect on the horrors of war. I can’t imagine a painter painting something about the war these days. I can’t imagine someone writing a novel these days about the war. But when it comes to poetry, because poetry is about the experience and emotions, we are quick. I mean, writing a poem could take me five minutes or 10 minutes because it’s just there. It just needs a pen or maybe a table to start and write it.

So, I think poetry is maybe one of the only tools that emerges from under the rubble of a bombed city. Israel is not only killing houses or neighborhoods, they are killing the city itself. Because if you look at Gaza, it doesn’t look like a city. It looks like a graveyard, really. I think poetry is the most direct way of communicating the horrors of the war and the siege.

In terms of using poetry to push for change, is there any advice that you’d like to share with other writers?

I think a poet does not have too many options. The poet can find themselves talking to the human in others. So, I’m not talking about the history of Palestine [or] Israel, I’m talking about now. I’m just talking about this moment. Let’s put history aside and talk about the central issue, which is humanity. Humanity comes first here.

So, in moments of war, and when it comes to writing about us as human beings, put everything aside. Just talk about what has been brought to every single one of us human beings, not as a Palestinian, not as a Christian or a Muslim or a Jew. Just forget about these things. These things came to us after we were born. I was not born Palestinian. I mean, I was in my mother’s womb without knowing Arabic or Islam, or knowing even my name. The priority should be to every single human being in this world. So, I think poetry’s focus should be on the I. Not on he, or she, or they, or it. I, let’s protect the I.

Yeah. It sounds like part of your advice is to find the universals of humanity that can take us beyond all the boxes that we use to define and categorize humans.

Exactly. If I’m going to read a poem about what happened to Native Americans or what happened to Jews in the Holocaust, I’m going to relate to everything. If I’m going to read a memoir that was written about the genocide in Bosnia, I’m going to relate to everything. I mean, what is the purpose of writing if we are not going to learn from it?

Our readers are largely American artists. And I was wondering if you have any messages or requests that you’d like to convey to working American artists in this political moment?

We are both part of this world. Not only are [Palestinian artists] the ones who are supposed to document the horrors of what’s happening in Gaza, but everyone. Not only artists, but everyone, everyone in the outside world who is witnessing this. Whether they’re watching news, looking at images, photos, and videos that are emerging from under the bombardment. Everyone is supposed to reflect on what they see. Because not only am I in pain as a Palestinian, but everyone who’s watching us [is] also in pain.

So, their part comes here. Everyone in the outside world needs to be part of this moment. Because this attack is not only against the Palestinian people, it’s also against the people who see value in the lives of the Palestinians.

Can you tell me about your plans for the future?

Of course, I’m writing more and more poetry. I have a poetry book that’s forthcoming from Knopf in October this year. It’s called Forest of Noise . I’m writing an essay for The New Yorker about [being] a Palestinian, trying to travel from one country to another, from one state to another. And I think my next project would be a memoir. This is a big project, but I haven’t yet started on it. I can imagine myself writing about so many things.

I have some short stories in the Arabic language, but I don’t think that I’m going to work on this right now. There is no urgency or any necessity, especially during these times. But rather, I think talking and addressing the outside world, especially the English-speaking world. I mean, I talk about the English-speaking world, because the Balfour Declaration , which unjustly promised Palestine to the Jews in 1917, was written in the English language. So, unfortunately, the English language is of course the language of colonialism, and not only for the Palestinian people, but for many, many nations.

It’s interesting to think about using the language of colonization and imperialism in an effort to combat them. It seems like is part of what you’re doing through writing in English is using it as a way to reach the people who are in those seats of colonial power.

Yes, exactly. I hope that my first book and my second book will be read by people who are unfortunately contributing to the misery and the devastation of my country. My message is peace and justice in this poetry. I think that in times of atrocities, the people who should speak to the public, speak on TVs, should be the poets and the artists—not politicians, not political analysts.

At the end of your New Yorker essay, you talked about the concept of raising hope, and likened it to cultivating crops. And I feel like when I read your poetry, I see so much resilience and hope in your work. How do you cultivate hope?

Hope lies in the fact that we are here and there are things around us that wish us to continue growing. When I see the thousands, hundreds of thousands and millions of people taking to the streets and asking, demanding a ceasefire, I can see hope here. Because these younger generations are the generations who hopefully will be leading the world in 10, or 15, or 20 years from now.

These people who are taking to the streets and who [made the] encampments give me hope because they are watching the history in front of them. They’re not reading about the past. No, they are watching the present. So, I see hope in that generation. And I see hope in the fact that Palestinians love life. I can tell about my father who planted some plants in our bombed garden, and he’s eating some eggplant, some pepper, some cabbage. I mean, we are planting this hope next to the rubble of our bombed house. [The Palestinians] continue to plant. And this is what hope is to me. They continue to plant their hope next to a bombed building. Here lies hope for me.

Mosab Abu Toha recommends:

A song by Marcel Khalifa called “My Mother,” words of Mahmoud Darwish’s poem.

Drink black tea with dried sage leaves. You will love it.

Read Out of Place by Edward Said.

Visit the children of Gaza when the genocide is over.

Eat a lot of strawberries if they were planted in Gaza. My friend Refaat Al-Areer would recommend this highly.

poet, writer, librarian

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The Personal Benefits of Writing Poetry
Self-awareness: Through raw expression of our thoughts and feelings, poetry can help us become more attuned to what's going on in our hearts and minds. Creative thinking: With its emphasis on symbolism, metaphor, and imagery, poetry writing fosters and promotes creative thinking. Connections: Many people write poetry privately, but when poems ...
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COVID-19 Literature Mental Health Neuroscience Wellbeing Writing. Poetry can provide comfort and boost mood during periods of stress, trauma and grief. Its powerful combination of words, metaphor and meter help us better express ourselves and make sense of the world and our place in it.
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Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash 2. Writing Poetry. Now let's look at the second main category of research: whether writing poetry can aid our mental health. Studies show that putting ...
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Reading and writing poetry can have therapeutic benefits, improving mood, reducing stress, and alleviating symptoms of depression and anxiety. The impact of technology on poetry has created both opportunities and challenges, but the future of poetry in the digital age remains promising as long as the integrity of the art form is preserved.
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The benefits of poetry in medicine and public health today. ... it creates bonds between people. Poetry, and the creative introspection it fosters, can help individuals feel more connected to themselves, to those around them, and to the external world as a whole. ... Writing poetry also allows one to strengthen an individual's sense of ...
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Poetry is uniquely suited to help you get deeper and more emotional, and change the framing of a difficult time, all of which support mental health and, of course, creativity.
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Reaping the benefits. To see how creative writing impacts students, I invite them to rate their resilience through a self-compassion survey at the start of the school year and again in the spring. Last year, two-thirds of students surveyed increased in self-compassion; Alejandro grew his self-compassion by 20 percent.
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Poetry Writing 101, your guide to crafting beautiful verse. ... Some of the key benefits of poetry writing include: Emotional catharsis: Poetry allows individuals to explore their emotions and feelings in a safe and creative way, helping to release pent-up emotions and reduce stress and anxiety. ... "Poetry Writing Exercises & Writing Prompts ...
Importance of Poetry
Poetry is a form of creative writing that exists in cultures around the world. It is very important to the literary and cultural landscape of humanity for a wide range of reasons.
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The Benefits of Creative Writing. 1. Why Learn Creative Writing: Improved Self-Expression. Improving your writing skills leads to stronger communication. When you practice finding the right word in a story or poem, you engage the same parts of your brain that are active in everyday writing and speaking.
The Personal Benefits of Writing Poetry
Creative thinking: Poetry writing nurtures and encourages creative thinking due to its emphasis on symbolism, metaphor, and imagery. Self-awareness: Poetry can make us more aware of our innermost ideas and feelings by allowing us to express ourselves honestly. Developing perspective, empathy, and world views: Perspective, empathy, and worldview ...
The purpose of poetry
Indeed, poetry is a regular topic in almost all literature courses at UD, said Ernest, who will often use poetry to launch the theme of a class. Devon Miller-Duggan, associate professor of creative writing in the Department of English, said that poetry is beneficial in areas far beyond the English classroom and in all aspects of life.
Do You Know These Benefits of Writing Poetry ...
writing poetry is a complex process. it requires us to combine the words, hidden meaning, symbols, rhymes, and rhythmic. this process makes our brain active and stronger. Poetry helps us train our brain into being sharper and working smoothly. As a result, our overall cognition, memory, and focus are improved.
Why Poetry Is Important
Poetry is an important form of creative writing that centers around the expression of complex feelings and experiences. The interplay of certain words and rhythm makes poetry a powerful tool for building foundational literacy and writing skills, including reading comprehension, phonemic awareness, self-expression, and storytelling.. Beyond that, encouraging kids of all ages and interests to ...
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For students who are poets (and may or may not know it!), these resources, tips, and tricks will make learning and teaching poetry engaging and fun.
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In poetry, you must choose each word carefully, as it has to fit with the rhythm and style of the whole piece.". Poetry Prompt: Think about one of the strangest dreams you've ever had, and write a poem about it. Be as concise as you can! 5. National Poetry Month Can Lead to Greater Self-Awareness.
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The benefits of poetry are undervalued. Poems offer useful, unexpected, everyday perks. This short yet powerful form of literature is an essential resource — especially if you're short on time. ... Reading, writing, and speaking poetry is beneficial for overall well-being, personal growth, and resetting life. ... 05. Poetry inspires creative ...
Poetry as a Creative Practice to Enhance Engagement and Learning in
An added benefit of short-form writing such as poetry is the potential to receive relatively rapid feedback ... or speaking can develop, maintain, and enhance empathic and innovation skills. Integrating creative practices, such as poetry writing, and developing these skills should be essential components of professional development and practice ...
5 Ways You Benefit from Writing Poetry! (from The ...
April is National Poetry Month, inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets to celebrate poetry and its vital role in American culture.The academy sponsors events such as the star-studded Poetry & the Creative Mind Gala (April 17 at Lincoln Center in New York City) and mass-appeal activities like Poem in Your Pocket Day (April 18), when everyone is encouraged to carry a poem.
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Hybrid creative writing examples: Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and Art Spiegelman's Maus. Benefits of creative writing. Creative writing offers many rewards to writers and readers alike, as well as to society at large. As a writer, you can express your ideas in a variety of ways, create an outlet for your creativity, and even launch a writing ...
Full article: The Uses of Poetry
Poetry gives teachers an authentic text in which to work on phonics, phonemic awareness, and language development skills such as rhyme, word families, and alliteration …. Poems provide a simpler context for students to practice these skills, using text that is at their interest and academic levels.
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FRIDAY, Aug. 16, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Painting, woodworking, writing: Whatever you turn to creatively, it could equal or exceed work in terms of maintaining mental health, new research shows. ... Find out more about the benefits of being creative at the American Psychiatric Association. SOURCE: Frontiers journals, news release, Aug. 16, 2024.
English
Graduates of the program leave with the knowledge and skills to create original and effective poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction works. Whether you dream of publishing a novel, sharing your poetry, crafting blogs or writing a play, a bachelor's degree in creative writing from UW-Eau Claire can help make anything possible.
What is a Creative Writer?
Creative writing is a professional discipline that is unique in many ways and has the potential to take your career in an array of different directions. ... film, short stories and poetry, among many other outlets, first get their start in the minds and on the pages of creative writers. ... among the many benefits of a career in creative ...
Creative hobbies may greatly benefit mental health
Painting, woodworking, writing: Whatever you turn to creatively, it could equal or exceed work in terms of maintaining mental health, new research shows. "Crafting and other artistic activities ...
The Multifaceted Benefits of Creative Writing
Emotional and Psychological Well-being: Creative writing provides an outlet for expressing and processing emotions, leading to improved mood and psychological health. It allows writers to articulate their emotions and experiences, fostering emotional resilience and self-awareness . Physical Health Improvements: Surprisingly, the act of writing ...
Creative Writing Series: Writing Poems that Spring from Poems
Learn from other poets and experiment with new uses of language by writing a glosa! The glosa is a structured poetic tradition that involves borrowing lines from other texts. This art of "glossing"—elaborating or commenting on a text—allows writers to deepen their relationship to other poems, consider the ways their writing is in ...
Poetry 1: Learning to Write Poetry
This class will help you build your toolbox of literary devices to begin crafting poems on your own with prompts and guided examples. We'll explore voice, imagery, word choice and line in a stimulating and supportive environment. Get your certificate! Register for Poetry 2 and 3 and save 35%. Poetry 2 Poetry 3. Use code cohort2025 at checkout!
Poet Mosab Abu Toha on processing trauma through writing
Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet, short-story writer, and essayist from Gaza. His first collection of poetry, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and won the Palestine Book Award, the American Book Award, and the Walcott Poetry Prize.Abu Toha is also the founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza, which he hopes to rebuild.

The Personal Benefits of Writing Poetry

Emotional and Intellectual Benefits of Writing Poetry

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The Economy of Language in Poetry

Poetry as a Tool for Self-Reflection and Self-Expression

Connecting with Emotions

Finding Meaning in Life Experiences

Overcoming Challenges Through Poetry

Poetry as a Universal Language

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