The engagement of art in therapy is an established practice dating at least back to the 1940s [1]. While we might often think first of visual art, not far behind is surely music or sound therapy, and dance or movement therapy. Writing is frequently used as a therapeutic tool, the ‘unsendable letter’, as I like to call it, or journalling, for example. Poetry on the other hand, may be a little less obvious or common.

While this will mostly be my own reflection, I have provided a small number of references where appropriate and some more evidence-based material via links below (Additional Reading). Before I start waxing my own lyricals, however, I will cite how research has worked to demonstrate how writing by hand engages the brain actively and more extensively than typing [2,3]. The crafting of letters, words and sentences intricately connects to our neurology in a way that tapping our fingers on keys doesn’t. Hand writing cross-connects our motor, cognitive and emotional regions making it neurologically and cognitively beneficial. Critically for therapeutic needs, it can help us process emotions and experiences by engaging and utilising cognitive and movement processes.

On the spectrum of writing, poetry tends to the least cognitive, most emotional end. It has its own spectrum, from more a cerebral (masculine) approach with more of a focus on technicalities, to a felt and expressive (feminine) drawing from the depths of Self. It can be abstract or literal, rhyming and strongly rhythmic or more meandering and musing, complete in a couple of lines or several pages long. It engages words in a different way to prose; it is that which is woven through and between the words that are the real content of poetry. That woven thing is generally a reflection of something felt within, which can’t be neatly packaged in regular word patterns and mere description of events.

The power of poetry is in the creation of something tangible from what is otherwise intangible and inexplicable, and this comes through the most feminine side of poetry; a process of soulful creation. The range of feeling states poetry may reflect is endless; from quirky and clever, to joy and bliss, to wordless pain and crushing grief. It’s not just the writer who can benefit, as it affords the reader/listener the opportunity to connect to their own inner experience of that which is expressed through the lines of a poem.

Of special interest to me with poetry is the engagement of feelings that have been unclaimed, suppressed, or rejected within us. Such things can go back to our childhood when we encountered a big or uncomfortable feeling state that we weren’t ready to deal with, or perhaps didn’t have the caring support we needed to be able to engage with it. We may have experienced trauma or neglect that sits deep and heavy within us. It can be something that happened later in life that was strange and shocking such that we have no available means to integrate it. It can be an ephemeral sense of goodness or rightness that might make no logical sense.

Poetry can offer us that access we otherwise would not have, and a way to work with a feeling state. In creating from it we do more than just be in it; we are doing something. We do and then we have a real representation of it. For the darker, more difficult side of feeling, it creates something that is finite and bounded, it begins and it ends, just like a natural healthy emotional process does. It gives us something precise, a form, within the bounds of which we can engage with something that may otherwise feel boundless and formless.

For the fleeting lighter feelings it does the same and the opposite. It creates something finite and formed, but it also acts to stretch those feelings out, feel them deeper, hold them longer, and be able to return to them and feel them all over again. Poetry can both clear the dark, and bring more light into the world, both processes that are sorely needed, the former of which has often been avoided or overlooked, particularly as you go back generations. And you don’t need to go that far; the deep feeling world, the feminine, has long been maligned and denied and still largely (or at least loudly) is.

When it comes to difficult or heavy feelings, we need to get to the truth of them before we can find what might be beyond them. If we never enter, or engage with them, we will remain forever trapped by their presence. Or rather, they will remain in the way of our free movement towards whatever we may wish to move towards. Unfelt feelings don’t disappear; they hide within us. But they will show up in other ways, whether internally like body pains or illnesses, coming through in dreams, or externally such as through events or relationships that engage those same feelings.

So the trite but true saying goes; you have to feel it to heal it. We cannot clear or integrate feelings we cannot feel.

When I put together my book Thinking in Poetry, I had only established a vague sense that it was intended as a sort of healing process. When I was young, I discovered poetry as a tool to engage these feeling states within me, many of them dark, painful, and hard to meet. I purposefully included poems from that time that I felt a little (or a lot) uncomfortable about including, whether because of the content or a juvenile expression (I wrote many of them as a teenage after all). But I know I am not the only one that feels such things or has difficulty engaging with them. Excluding them would have defeated the purpose of the book; facing a pain is a necessary part of healing.

It then moves through a lifetime (so far), with some of the later poems in particular reflecting something else; something light and loving and peaceful. I wish I had access to such states when I was younger, but maybe that’s a bit of the point of the whole experience. The deeper we go into the dark, the brighter the light we need to cultivate to come out.

Another way to conceive it however is that our own light, our truest Self, can lie beneath the layers of the dark that we may have learned to take on in order to survive in this world. From this view, we would not be able to find such lightness within had we not first had to meet and integrate the dark. While working with the dark remains an ongoing process, to be able to also experience these moments of intense grace, to capture them into words, makes facing the dark an entirely different experience.

As Carl Jung says, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious”. I’m not going to go ahead and claim enlightenment, who would do that… but I do claim that my book is a reflection of the meaning of Jung’s words. By using poetry, it provides an opportunity to feel a healing journey, rather than just hear the story of one.

Anyone can find a dangling, luring light outside themselves to follow, but it is within our own darkness that our most powerful, true, and enduring light lies. We need to be able to feel these things within ourselves to evolve.

Poetry, whether written, read, or heard, is one way to plumb the dark and find our spark.

There. It seems fitting to end on a rhyme.

References

1. Bitonte, R. A., & Santo, M. D. (2014). Art therapy: an underutilized, yet effective tool. Mental illness, 6(1), 18-19. Retrieved 2 Nov 2025, from https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4253394/
2. Marano, G., Kotzalidis, G. D., Lisci, F. M., Anesini, M. B., Rossi, S., Barbonetti, S., Cangini, A., Ronsisvalle, A., Artuso, L., & Falsini, C. (2025). The Neuroscience Behind Writing: Handwriting vs. Typing—Who Wins the Battle? Life, 15(3), 345. Retrieved 2 Nov 2025, from https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11943480/
3. Rutledge, P. B. (2024). Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Your Brain. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/positively-media/202403/writing-by-hand-can-boost-brain-connectivity

Additional reading

• Blogs
• The Healing Power of Poetry: Appreciating a Primal Pleasure
• The Therapeutic Power of Poetry: What’s the Evidence?

• Reports
• Identifying the Mechanisms of Poetry Therapy and Associated Effects on Participants
• The Uses of Poetry: Measuring the Value of Engaging with Poetry

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