Learning & Teaching: ...Reflection through Poetry

25 May 2021

...Reflection through Poetry

Can writing a poem support personal or professional development?

The potential benefits of reflecting on experience, and specifically written reflection, are documented throughout this site and in a wealth of published literature.

Poetry has documented and influenced human civilization for centuries, encapsulating significant events and powerful emotions, often with economical brilliance.

This post reflects on the impact of poetry writing - from the perspective of a poetry retreat facilitator - and draws this together with ideas of reflective writing, to present a developmental writing exercise.

Jonny Walker is an East London teacher with a passion for poetry. During his initial years as a teacher he worked with different schools on English and literacy projects. His projects developed over time, one of them becoming a poetry retreat.

He invites students from across London to a 4-day residential poetry retreat in the New Forest or on the South Downs. He brings the teachers together, along with students from different schools. They collaborate, work and write. He says...

Poetry lets you know about people and their lives. I have learned more about some of the students in a couple of days on the retreat than I have done in the rest of the year working with them in school.

While original plans were to provide inspiration for students, from the unfamiliar, natural environment, they quickly discovered that what the students actually wanted to do was to use the time and space to reflect on their own lives. They were away from their everyday experiences, and were enabled to look at their lives and relationships differently.

Jonny generates a "creative space" and the security for participants to feel ready to share their thoughts, opinions and ideas. With a little trust and some modelling, students are willing to share feelings and vulnerabilities. They get to know one another very well.

The process of articulation - written or spoken - can develop your awareness and also teach you about yourself. He says...

Sometimes it is only once you start writing that you realize what you've been thinking about. Especially for teachers, not only doing a very hard job, but doing that job in these hard times, you've got a lot in your head. Poetry can be a way for you to process these things by writing them down.

Writing down even just a fraction of what's on your mind - a single thought - removes it from the general jumble of your thoughts, and generates some space and time to look at it and think about it in a new way. The process is not context dependent, nor tied to worries or pressures, and can therefore give you some objectivity - a new or alternative perspective on otherwise familiar thoughts.

And that's what we're looking for - awareness, possibly insight, better understanding, and possible positive action. But can poetry facilitate this? Can writing a poem support personal or professional development? Here's an exercise to try:

1. Choose a person - personal or professional - a relationship you'd like to reflect on.

2. Ignoring grammatical rules and poetic conventions - there's no need to rhyme unless rhymes present themselves - just let the words out. Write: