Reading and writing poetically for well-being: language as a field of energy in practice

Abstract

While recently revisiting three years of post-workshop feedback from participants in a Writing and Poetry for Well-being program that I offered through a major medical center for cancer survivors as post-treatment rehabilitation, I realized that a concept I had developed for language pedagogy in 2005, namely that “language is a field of energy,” might serve to explain why the workshop participants (several of them returning across time) regarded the workshops as significantly transformative. The concept, “language as a field of energy,” appears to offer explanatory power for the therapeutic benefits of incorporating poetry reading and writing. In the process of engaging with language imaginatively and playfully, participants in a series of workshops I provided for a cancer survivorship arts-based program, found avenues for understanding the role of language in shaping and reinforcing what and how we think and feel.