Poetry as Therapy

I have written about this before in many places, and spoken to many people about the benefits of sorting out your head through creative writing. I know it has worked for me, and I know it has worked for other people.

At my writing group we have people with their own skills and their own issues. All of us use our writing to look at the world and at our own lives in some way.

That is what creative writing is, looking at life as we see it and sometimes gaining more control. Some see it as comedy, some tragedy, and these viewpoints affect the kind of writing we create. It doesn't matter whether what we write will ever become a best-selling novel or a much acclaimed poetry collection. What matters is that we are becoming surer in what we think, and we become more whole as human beings.

A website I recommend to others go is one that a writing group member has mentioned several times to the group. I visited the site recently and I was impressed. Anyone interested in writing poetry, even if they don't have any deeper issues they wish to explore, can do the poetry writing exercises and perhaps create something new and special in ways they may not have written before.

The website is Poetic Medicine Institute. It works for me and it can work for you too. We all find our inspiration for our creativity in our own ways and this website has certainly helped me with my creativity. I wrote a poem within a few minutes of looking at the first poetry exercise, and I went places with the poem I would not have gone if I had just sat down with only pen and paper to write it, with nothing there to guide me. Having a list of words to choose from, words given to you by another, leads you to new places.

I strongly believe these new places are already there in our heads, hidden until a light is shone on the darkness and the words can come out and begin to make connections. Connections lead to more connections and can lead to clarity, or at the very least the connections will lead to things to think further on. They lead to becoming more whole as a human being.