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Using Poetry to Promote Talking and Healing
On sale
5th May 2016
Price: £15.99
Poetry can prove a great way into difficult conversations in therapeutic, classroom or family settings. This book is a clear and practical guide to the use of poetry as a therapeutic tool to help explore issues surrounding mental health and emotional wellbeing.
The first part of the book provides guidance on different methods of using poetry to open up discussion. The second part consists of a collection of over 100 poems written by the author, on topics such as bullying, anxiety, bereavement, depression and eating disorders, with a range of therapeutic activities that can be used alongside each poem. The third part focuses on ways to support and encourage clients to write their own poetry and includes 50 poem writing prompts and examples.
A complete resource for anyone considering using poetry to explore difficult issues, and a creative way of exploring important mental health issues in PSHE lessons, this book will be of interest to youth, school and adult counsellors, therapists, psychologists, pastoral care teams, PSHE co-ordinators and life coaches, as well as parents.
The first part of the book provides guidance on different methods of using poetry to open up discussion. The second part consists of a collection of over 100 poems written by the author, on topics such as bullying, anxiety, bereavement, depression and eating disorders, with a range of therapeutic activities that can be used alongside each poem. The third part focuses on ways to support and encourage clients to write their own poetry and includes 50 poem writing prompts and examples.
A complete resource for anyone considering using poetry to explore difficult issues, and a creative way of exploring important mental health issues in PSHE lessons, this book will be of interest to youth, school and adult counsellors, therapists, psychologists, pastoral care teams, PSHE co-ordinators and life coaches, as well as parents.
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Reviews
Using Poetry to Promote Talking and Healing is a humble guide for both professionals of mental health and the public in general. By providing a heart-warming insight of a very personal experience, Pooky Knightsmith allows the reader to identify himself with the ordinary struggles of human existence in an effortless manner. An undeniable prolific written testimony of ascendancy and bravery, this book is a major trigger to personal change. The reader - and artist-to-be of its own piece of life story - is invited to set himself free of inner criticism and follow its instincts. The book offers an unexpected myriad of creative tools able to facilitate the expression of feelings. A specially worthwhile reading for any mental health professional eager to introduce creative possibilities in the therapeutic context. These tools might well work as the preface of a joint story written between therapist and client.
At last! A book that values and uses poetry as a therapeutic tool, as a way of helping us make sense of ourselves. Unlike so many stereotypes about poetry, this book is practical, unpretentious and heartfelt, with applications for helping people - young and old - way beyond mental health settings. Pooky Knightsmith has opened a very creative box for us to use.
If you are "poetry-impaired" like me, Dr. Knightsmith's book is a revelation. Poetry is a language many of my depressed and suicidal adolescent clients speak fluently, but one I have never had much confidence using in my therapy. This beautiful, honest, and instructive book has given me another tool to use in my work.
In this informative and powerful text, Pooky shows us how we can find our voice within the poetic words of others and in the creation of our own poetry. Poetry offers a medium of self-expression that captures so much more than words and rationale. As such, poetry offers an ideal place to find empathy, meaning and solace. To believe that "someone else understands, and someone else is listening."
Poetry's many attributes include the capacity to absorb secrets and express pain too deep to talk about. Its ability to be a creative and healing tool for poets of all life stages and ages is as limitless as your imagination. Pooky's timely, easy-to-read and user-friendly book explores how the writing and reading of poetry can be a valuable resource for communicating with the self and others.
This is a remarkable and original book. Pooky's poems, born out of her own experience and that of those she has worked with, offer us real insight into the complexities of living with and recovering from mental ill-health. The careful structure of the book encourages exploration of relevant themes and is a welcome addition to supporting recovery, when used within a therapeutic setting.
This is a remarkable resource not only for therapists but also for teachers of English, creative writing and drama. The prompts for discussion are very varied and raise issues of technique and the impact of a writer's choices as well as subject matter. The sections defining poetic forms and providing ways in to writing are brilliant for the classroom, and then there is the astonishing anthology ...
This is an incredibly impressive and valuable book. Given its powerful and personal insight, it will in my view be perfect for use with professional therapists working one-to-one with clients. While the book is rightly intended for use in a one-to-one setting and not in the classroom, I have learnt much from reading it which will influence my work with the PSHE Association.
Whoever you are, whatever you do, here is a profoundly personal and moving insight into the world of emotional and mental ill-health. But this book is much more than that. Whilst many will identify with the dark depths of emotion within her poems, Dr Knightsmith's greatest achievement is in offering teachers, carers and friends not only a valuable resource to enable empathy, but also a starting point to aid and encourage recovery.