Transcending: Turning Pain into Poetry

Writing poetry based in personal experience gives us a chance to focus on small, manageable pieces of past events and transform them into art. When we turn our painful memories into poetry, we remember our experiences, validate them and examine them from a new perspective. As we write, we clarify our relationship to what we are writing about. We find its meaning.

Poetry making is also a healing process because after we've vividly remembered and felt our feelings, we must pull back, detaching to become authors. As we work to shape the poem we can say, "That's what happened to me days or weeks or years ago, but it isn't me. I am much more than that. I am the poet writing this poem now."

This act of poem making empowers us because it allows us self-expression and gives us a chance to realize that we have the ability to change, to transform our sadness or anger or betrayal or jealousy into something else again.

When we complete this act by sharing what we've written with others, we learn that it is okay to communicate our innermost feelings. Not only is the process of writing a healing tool, our poems, themselves, can become healing agents for others.

To get started, write from the heart (or the gut) with fire and with passion . Be as open and honest as you can be. Allow yourself to be freewheeling and creative, playful, outrageous, nonsensical.

Don’t even try to get it right the first time. Too often we stop ourselves from tapping into the healing power of poetry by sacrificing what we need to say on the altar of imposed meter and rhyme scheme. Poetry doesn't have to rhyme, nor does it need a specific rhythm. As long as it sounds good and looks good on paper, it's a poem…and you are a poet.

Creative Write:

Do a ten-minute timed writing about a specific incident, something that occurred during a brief period of time. Don’t try to write a poem -- just write everything you recall. If you become stuck, start listing details. Name names. What books were on the bedside table? Who were the actors in the movie? What were the names of the flowers in the garden? List sensory impressions that the memory evokes: a sight, sound, taste, texture, smell. Toss in some colors. Season the mix with a metaphor or two. (What does it remind you of?) Add a few of your all-time favorite words.

When you’ve finished writing, circle the words, phrases and images that jump out at you. Start arranging them on the page, creating line breaks by intuition . Try to have something interesting in every line. Play with some really short lines. How about some long ones? Experiment with enjambment, carrying the sense of one line into the next:

"The orange sky broke in half. Crying,

I came home."

Read your poem aloud and listen to the sound of your voice speaking the truth. Read your poem to a friend. Email your poem to me at kaymporter@peakpeak.com . I’d love to read it.