Journal of Poetry Therapy

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Writing poems: a waste of time or a savior of life –

an autoethnographic exploration

Daneshwar Sharma

To cite this article: Daneshwar Sharma (2020): Writing poems: a waste of time or
a savior of life – an autoethnographic exploration, Journal of Poetry Therapy, DOI:
10.1080/08893675.2020.1776967

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08893675.2020.1776967

Published online: 09 Jun 2020.

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JOURNAL OF POETRY THERAPY
https://doi.org/10.1080/08893675.2020.1776967

Writing poems: a waste of time or a savior of life – an

autoethnographic exploration
Daneshwar Sharma
Jaipuria Institute of Management, Jaipur, India

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The act of writing poetry in the personal space has therapeutic Received 20 November 2019
effects, however, beyond the personal space, is there a utility of Accepted 25 January 2020
poetry? When the society is proclaiming poetry to be dead, the
KEYWORDS
author goes on a soul-searching journey to find out why does he Poetry therapy;
write poems? In his profession as a professor, he has been often autoethnographic poems;
asked to write sellable prose, which will also help in his career death of poetry;
advancement. The author hovers around these two viewpoints autobiographical poems
that poetry writing is a wastage of time or a savior of life as he
knows it. Despite discouragement from his immediate
professional and personal environment, the author continues to
record his lived experiences in the form of poetry. Through
autobiographical poems and reflections upon them, the author
tries to answer this question: Why write poems when nobody is
there to publish or read them?

I write myself because not to do so would be unimaginable. Blinne (2010)

This paper is inspired by a true incident. I have been writing poems for therapeutic
purpose. It never crossed my mind to get the poems published as these were very per-
sonal affairs. Besides, writing the poems served a different, therapeutic purpose for me.
After years of writing, I collected the poems in a book format and shared it only with
one very senior fellow author who first gave his unpublished manuscript to me to read.
Even the closest family members (wife, brother) have not been given the poems to
read. However, after the positive remarks and encouragement of the fellow author, I
started thinking of publishing the poems in a book form. The musing, whether or not
to get the poems published, continued for about two years but I never sent the collected
poems to any publishing house. This was also due to lack of genuine (non-predatory) pub-
lishers of poetry. Then one day, the director of the institute, where I am a faculty member,
announced in a faculty council meeting that the institute has funds to support the publi-
cation of the works of the faculty members. The director asked the faculty members to
come forward with the proposals of books for publishing. After about five minutes of
silence, when nobody came forward with any proposal of publishing a book, I mustered
up enough courage and inquired whether my book of poems can be funded by the insti-
tute. The director, himself a poet, raised doubt about the institute’s willingness to fund a
book of poems.

CONTACT Daneshwar Sharma [email protected]

© 2020 National Association for Poetry Therapy
2 D. SHARMA

This experience sent me on a self-discovery mission with the target of finding out “why
write poems when there is no reader and no supporter of poetry?” Is poetry writing a
waste of time; should I start using my time and energy to write academic research or sell-
able fiction and non-fiction prose? The present research paper documents the journey of
finding the reason of writing poems. I discovered the reason of writing poems by writing
poems about writing poems. Before the discussion about the poems about writing poems,
the following sections discuss the place of poetry in society in general with special focus
on the purpose of writing poetry and the research method, autoethnography, used in the
research paper.

Place of poetry in the society

Ever since Plato banished poets from the society on the basis of poetry’s “usefulness”,
poets have been struggling to be natural citizens of the society (Griswold, 2016). Molineux
(2004) stated that creativity is an inherent characteristic of mankind and humans have
instinctual desire to express themselves through various creative art forms. Suvilehto
and Latomaa (2018) call creative writing “a vehicle for self-knowledge” and “a process
of self-study … to express inner states of mind without the fear of being ‘exposed’”
(p. 225). Poets carry a distinctive, historical cross of proving the utility of their art form.
A painter would display the paintings in the personal public spaces (drawing room of
the house or office) and would often talk about it; a musician, a prose writer, a dancer
would have no qualms about talking about their artworks. Poets, on the contrary,
seldom share their poems with others and almost never talk about their poetry writing
experiences. Since there are considerable number of professional artists in other art
forms, it seems quite natural to practice these art forms as a hobby, but since the
number of professional poets is very less in the society, it seems odd to practice poetry
writing as a hobby. The society often does not accept and appreciate the professional,
quality, poets who have made poetry their vocation, the novice and amateur poets fail
to find any confidence in their art form. Historically, poets have been seen as enemy of
the society and are forced to live their lives as outcasts (Rexroth, 1959; Rexroth &
Morrow, 1987). Countless tales of poets being rejected by the society and dying at
young age (Keats, Blake, Burns, Shelley) or dying out of hunger and pennilessly at old
age (Dryden, Jonson) are hallmarks of society’s treatment of poets (Rexroth, 1959;
Rexroth & Morrow, 1987).
Sadly, in the modern times, the society went a step further and declared not only the
poets as outcasts, but also the poetry dead. The Survey of Public Participation in the Arts
(United States Department of Commerce. Bureau of Census, United States Department of
Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics, & National Endowment for the Arts, 2014) found that the
number of people who have read one book of poetry in a year in the USA has reduced to
6.7% in 2012 from 17% in 1992. The state of poetry is dismal as the survey reports that not
only poetry is less popular than jazz or dance but also it is half as popular as knitting
(United States Department of Commerce, 2012). For the poets also, the publishing
space is shrinking as prominent publishing houses categorically refuse to publish poetry
books. Further, leading newspapers “The Los Angeles Times and The Houston Post no
longer review books of poems” (Freedman, 1995, p. 315). Petri (2013) clarifies the situation
of shrinking publication space for poetry saying that, “ … if you want a lot of people to
 JOURNAL OF POETRY THERAPY 3

read it, or at least the Right Interested Persons, there are a few choked channels of Repu-
table Publications. Or you can just spray it liberally onto the Internet and hope it sticks”
(p. 11). Jonathan Yardley, the book critic for The Washington Post, puts it this way: “Con-
temporary American poetry is read by poets, by writing students, and by students of lit-
erature – and by almost no one else.” (Freedman, 2000, p. 43). With the shrinking
readership, the critics have no qualms in announcing that “Poets are like the Postal
Service – a group of people sedulously doing something that we no longer need, under
the misapprehension that they are offering us a vital service.” (Petri, 2013, p. 13). WH
Auden has declared long ago that “poetry makes nothing happen” (Auden & Mendelson,
2007, p. 89). Despite so much criticism and doubt over the art of poetry itself, people have
not stopped writing it. But why then people write poetry, if not for fame or money.

Place of poetry in personal space: poetry in self-therapy and healing

Humankind has always taken a deep interest in processing and understanding life and
writing is one of the most powerful mechanism to satiate this interest (Baker & Mazza,
2004). In the personal space, whenever one encounters a traumatic or overwhelming
episode and one fails to grasp this incident to its fullest, writing is considered to be an
effective tool to comprehend and process such episodes (Mazza, 1979, 2003, 2016,
2017, 2018). Jacobs (2016) compared the process of writing to the process of diving
deep down into the human soul and illuminating the darkest, unfathomable corners of
human psyche. Writing acts as a therapy when people “ … believe they have only poor
choices or no choice at all” (Mazza in Munslow, 2017). And amongst all forms of writing,
poetry is considered to be the most effective form to understand and explain the
human psyche and emotions, as Robert Frost has said, “Poetry is when an emotion has
found its thought and the thought has found words” (Frost & Richardson, 2007, Section
Nine). Emotions, “too large and too incomprehensible” for other forms of writing, are
voiced through the medium of poetry (Soter, 2016, p. 2). “Writing poetry helps people
feel as though they’ve gained control over difficult subjects and emotions” (Mazza in
Munslow, 2017). People fall back on poetry than any other medium of expression
because of its “ … conciseness, richness of meaning and access to both the conscious
and the unconscious mind” (Matalon, 2018, p. 184). McNichols and Witt (2018) say that
poetry improves the mental health of individuals by making them less oblivious of their
feelings and providing newer perspective to process life. Marks et al. (2018) assert that
poetry acts as a meditative tool enhancing the perception to perceive and “seeing our
ways of seeing” (p. 5). Not for fame or money, various research studies have concluded
that people write poetry to heal their perturbed minds and bring clarity in their thoughts
and grasp their emotional responses to lived experiences (Baker & Mazza, 2004; Brown,
2018; Carroll, 2005; Collins et al., 2006; Coulehan, 2010; Goldstein, 2018; Sharma, 2018;
Tegnér et al., 2009). On these cognitive and affective basis, poetry has a strong bond
with therapy (Mazza, 2018).
“Freud showed us that the mind is a poetry-making organ” (quoted in Shengold, 2004,
p. 27), however, when the organ is forced to be silent, the human mind becomes troubled
and perturbed. Maybe that’s why poetry has such calming effect on human mind. Mazza
(2003) accurately pinpoints that by writing poetry the human mind can make an opening
for the oppressed emotions and self-doubt. Inadvertently, composing poems and
4 D. SHARMA

therapeutic healing go hand in hand and various research studies vouch for this bond
shared by psychotherapy and poetry (Furman, 2004a, 2004b, 2005, 2007; Mazza, 2003,
2016, 2017, 2018; Richardson, 2000). In many ways poetry and psychotherapy complement
each other as poetry acts as a medium to identify the emotions and bring clarity and con-
sciousness about the emotional response to the lived experience and psychotherapy
becomes a medium to control and modify these emotions (Holmes, 1986). Poetry, a
pruned form of writing in comparison to an essay, short story or novel, provides an oppor-
tunity to distill the lived experience and capture the essence of human existence in
capsule form which can be consumed in an instance (Furman, 2006). In the poetic
world, the otherwise constantly running human mind can take a pause and record, read
and re-live with a better understanding, the incidents which are lived but not processed
completely. In this poetic space, as the mind creates and encounters the created
poems, it turns the “passive suffering (in)to a creative act” (Raingruber, 2004, p. 13).
Berger (1984) further clarifies the role of poetry as a companion at the time suffering
when he avows that “Poetry can repair no loss but it defies the space which separates”
(p. 96). There comes a time when all so called practical modes of communication i.e.
prose writing or other art forms fail and poetry remains the only medium available to
voice, according to Whyte, “ … feelings individuals are not easily able to articulate”
(Reece, 2000, p. 14). Writing poetry, often, becomes a distilling process which allows the
individual to sift through the mundane and/or overwhelming lived experiences and
reflect upon what actually matters to be a human (Linney, 2000). Akhtar (2000) terms
poetry as a silent companion and a witness of what a human being goes through while
living in this world and by composing poems the human being records their testimony
of the lived experiences and shares with fellow human beings what is otherwise privately
mused and suffered. Composing poems around lived experiences provides a platform to
record, analyze, and share the lived experience and emotional response to the lived
experience simultaneously. Writing, reading and re-living, recording, reflecting and
sharing, poetry with all it fluidity “ … allows individuals to simultaneously mourn and
master challenges” (Raingruber, 2004, p. 13). But then, where is the proof that poetry
heals and how can it be proven?

Autobiographical poems & autoethnography

How and why one should agree to the statement that poetry, in the personal space of the
poet, actually helps the poet in processing the lived experience in a better way than other
art forms. The evidence lies in several researches based on autoethnographical poems
(Baker & Mazza, 2004; Brown, 2018; Carroll, 2005; Collins et al., 2006; Coulehan, 2010; Gold-
stein, 2018; Tegnér et al., 2009; Sharma, 2018). Furman and Dill (2012) have said that
“Therapists and clinicians have long utilized poetry and poetry therapy … ” (p. 102).
Citing Jungian definition of poetry as a means of understanding the human psyche,
Schwartz (2017) has demonstrated that Sylvia Plath’s “poetry shows self-exploration, dra-
matizing conflicts and intimate matters of the collective human experience” (p. 1). In non-
literary personal space, Bacon (2018) recently poetically recorded the experiences of
African American female high school students with “solidarity” as the central theme.
Laura Apol penned her experiences of visiting and interacting with genocide survivors
in Tutsi, Rwanda. Although later on she got it published the poems as a full length
 JOURNAL OF POETRY THERAPY 5

poetry collection (Requiem, Rwanda (Apol, 2015)), however, at the time of writing the
recording her experiences in the form of poetry she did it at a very personal space as,
in her own words, “it increased my ability to listen deeply, to understand myself and
others, to process what I was learning, and to respond to the trauma of survivors”
(Apol, 2017, p. 71). Realizing that poetic form can increase the capacity to respond to
the life-situations in an absolute way, three persons created an asynchronous poem
about earth conservation (Koelln et al., 2017). Robinson (2017) narrated his academic
and social experience as a dyslexic Black male by the means of auto-ethnographic
poems in his personal space. Furman (2004b) composed poems around his traumatic
experience of seeing his father going through cancer treatment and conducted a research
using autoethnographical research method to revisit the poems and the healing effect the
act of composing poems on him. Similarly, in Furman (2005) wrote about processing the
lived experience of losing a companion animal, Belinda, a dog, through autoethnographic
poems. Using autoethnographic poems and narrative enquiry Maurino (2016) re-examines
the self-image in light of changing masculinity and gender-definitions in his life. Revisiting
the poems written around the time he was going through masculine changes and con-
templating over them in the hindsight, Maurino (2016) asserts that “ … significant
change can be accompanied by the act of writing poetry, and that such change has a
developmental nature” (p. 207). Sharma (2018) recorded and processed his adolescent
experience of death in his family by composing poems about his lived experiences. In
his own words “I understand that translating my feelings and emotions into poetic
language has created a space for me to take a step back and look at my own situation
with a clearer perspective” (p. 11). Robinson (2004) encounters and tackles the profession
related depression and anxiety as she works as a nurse and a caregiver through poetry
writing. For her, the act of writing poetry based on her human interaction during
working as nurse with the patients and their families has been a life savior. She says that
I believe that poetry has the ability to speak of and comfort the great issues in life, such as
terminal illness, loss and bereavement that confront us all … . Through poetry feelings can
be expressed that otherwise may never surface. (Robinson, 2004, p. 34)

The review of such research studies which use autoethnographical poems resonates per-
fectly with the nature of autoethnography as a research method as discussed in the Hand-
book of Autoethnography (Jones et al., 2013). Carolyn Ellis writes that “Autoethnography
requires that we observe ourselves observing, that we interrogate what we think and
believe, and that we challenge our own assumptions … ” (Jones et al., 2013, p. 10). Auto-
ethnography is a well-accepted qualitative research tool which uses autobiographical
writing to revisit and reflect upon the researcher-writer’s first-hand human experiences.
As a qualitative research tool, autoethnography refuses to accept the supremacy of hege-
monic positivist research. To use autoethnography research tool, one has to accept the
multifaceted nature of truth which can be read through more than one ways. Contrary
to the quantifiable discovery methods of defining universal reality, autoethnography
like other qualitative research tools seeks to find a reality which is locally constructed
(Ricci, 2003). As is the case with qualitative research methods and tools, autoethnography
claims “no pretense of objectivity, of omniscience, – nor does it claim the apprehension of
reality or truth” (Ricci, 2003, p. 593). Whereas quantitative research methods and positivism
hanker after knowing the world, autoethnography goes a step further and explores the
6 D. SHARMA

ways and means to be in the world with utmost consciousness and heightened emotional
quotient (Jones et al., 2013). It is not about the recorded data which is stressed upon in an
autoethnographic research design but about how the data was recorded (composition of
poems in the case of autoethnographical poetry writing) and why the data was recorded
and what was the state of mind of the researcher-writer while the data was being recorded
(Jones et al., 2013). With such focus on the localized aspect of the reality, Goodall (2000)
rightly said about autoethnography that it fathers-forth from “a writer’s personal experi-
ence within a culture … ” (p. 9). Set in the personal space of the researcher, autoethnogra-
phical research studies provides a platform to the researcher to form their identity and
simultaneously reflect upon the method of forming the self-identity and this cyclic
process of forming an identity and reflecting upon the method of forming the self-identity,
ultimately leads the researcher to a highly contextualized and locally constructed identity.
This identity then, in the form of autobiographical writing, emerges in the written work as
“a story that is hopeful, where authors ultimately write themselves as survivors of the story
they are living” (Jones, Adams, & Ellis, p. 10).
In such a highly contextualized way of seeking truth, as is in the autoethnography,
David Whyte stated that poetry becomes a perfect medium of seeking meaning as “ …
poetry is phenomenology, a way of making sense of the lived experience of human
beings, a conversation with one’s environment … ” (Reece, 2000, p. 14). Poetic language
with all its complexity and force provides a platform to give voice to highly sensitive
and acute emotional lived experiences (Raingruber, 2004, p. 14). Not only the creation
(the poems) but also the act of creation itself (composing the poems) holds a special
place in the autoethnographical research studies as the act of composing the poems
around lived experiences is “joyful, sad, revealing, exciting and occasionally painful”
(Custer, 2014, p. 1). Although, autoethnographical prose writings are also used in research
studies, poetry as a genre provides absolute totality and piercing truthfulness to the lived
experiences and emotional responses studied under autoethnography. Poetry, crisp and
poignant in comparison to prose, first, hooks the reader in an instant, and then, remains
in the memory for a longer period than prose (Rowe, 2000). With its ability to create
vivid yet heart-rending images, poetry delineates the experience in an evocative and
more suggestive way that prose. With its power of touching the reader in an instantaneous
manner, poetry hooks the poet as well as the reader to halt the maddening rush of life and
pay close attention to the described experiences (Connelly, 1999). Poetry has a power to
hold the fast-moving life in its clutches so as the poet and the reader live the moment to its
fullest and learn from it what is generally ignored in the hustle and bustle of life described
in prose form (Connelly, 1999).

Method and context

The autobiographical poems used as primary data in the present paper came to me when-
ever I had doubts about the worth of writing poetry. The difficulty which a poet faces in
declaring that they write poems and the hesitation which a poet faces in sharing their
poems with even the people closest to them (siblings, parents, and spouse) are universal.
Poetry is often considered as act of idle hours and a diversion from worldly, practical
matters of life. Gerard Manly Hopkins burned his poems considering them to be a diver-
sion from his singular aim of life and stopped writing poetry deeming it to be a hurdle and
 JOURNAL OF POETRY THERAPY 7

opposing his profession as a religious man for about seven years (Hopkins & Phillips, 2009).
Milton stopped writing poems altogether for about 20 years when he was engaged in the
supposedly worldly, practical issues of the society. He concentrated on prose writing, con-
sidering it to be more serious and useful than poetry (Long, 1919). Working as a professor
of business communication in a management institute, I have had the opportunity to meet
many publishers and fellow prose authors. Almost all of them have advised me to write
text-books or fiction. In appraisal meetings, year after year, a goal has been set for me
to write something purposeful and of utility. I also know that the prose writing (text-
book or fiction) would help me in the career progression, then why do I write poems,
which as per the academia and the society, are of no use. At a time when even a successful,
acclaimed poet like John Ashbery says that “poetry is a hopelessly minor art” (Gifford, 1986,
p. 7), I pondered over this question many times. As John Ashbery, even after winning Pulit-
zer Prize (1976) for his poetry collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (2007), said that he
feels embarrassed when poetry writing is announced as his profession. I kept asking
myself, what is my relationship, equation with poetry?
In my professional and social life, I am yet to find a space for my poetry, however,
however hard I resolve to write something useful (prose), I cannot not write poetry. Initially
I started writing poetry to cope with death in family, first of my father and then of my
brother. I composed poems around death and demise as writing helped me process
the pain (Mazza, 2003, 2006). Now when I reflect at the poems written around the trau-
matic experience of death in my family, I realize that my thought process followed “trans-
formation-through-writing” model of Lengelle and Meijers (2009). Through therapeutic
poetry writing I embarked on a journey which led me from questions like “why me?” to
“is it only me?” In terms of Lengelle and Meijers (2009), I was able to compose the
second story of understanding the traumatic experience by writing my first story of
suffering. After meandering through various vignettes of death by composing several
poems about it (reflected upon in Sharma (2018)), I accepted that ubiquitous, omnipre-
sence nature of death in the following poem.
Death, timing is everything!
If you come at the comeable moment,
When your name is announced,
When the audience is cheering,
If you come when you are expected,
You are loved.
Come when I have no desires left,
On one Sunday afternoon,
In the rainy season,
After a lazy weekend,
Of long days and longer, lonely nights,
When it is raining,
And I am looking out of a glass window,
Green leaves soaking in elixir,
Dancing,
On the tunes of the rain drums,
Come then,
The perfect time,
To perfect my life,
8 D. SHARMA

Death.
(Sharma, 2018)

With the help of therapeutic poetry writing I came out of this traumatic experience as a
survivor. My survival through poetry writing echoes Mazza’s (2001) words that therapeutic
poetry writers survive a traumatic experience by expressing their “loss as a story, but not a
last story” (p. 29). This encounter with therapeutic poetry writing made me a somewhat
reluctant poet. My relationship with poetry is like those reluctant poets who started
writing as one-time thing, but then continued with it, finding it, if not only, but at least
the best means to express themselves. I, like several fellow poets like, Apol (2017) and
Teman (2019), realized what Kreuter (2009) avows about the ennobling power of poetry
in processing traumatic experience. Kreuter (2009) says that poetry helps people transform
negative connotations of an experience into meaningful revelations. Apol accepts that
although she is a published poet now (Apol, 2017), she started composing poems after
interacting with trauma survivors in order to process the interactions in a holistic
manner. Similarly, Teman (2019), though unaware of the power of poetic writing before
practicing it, now finds it the most suitable means “to express the often inexpressible
nature of some of the horrific stories I hear from my queer participants.” (Tehman &
Lahman, 2012). Even after proclaiming that the craft of poetry lets him express much
more in a single poem than in 10 pages of narrative text, Teman (2019) says that “I am
not a poet” (p. 64).
However therapeutically beneficial poetry can be in personal space, there is a reluc-
tance to identify oneself as poet in the public space, as poetry, to the unexperienced,
worldly populace is a useless, emotional craft. I had felt a sense of otherness in the conver-
sations and relationships I had with other normal people because of my sensibility and
sensitivity which I possess as a poet. Another layer of alienation is added here as poetic
sensibility has a conflicted equation with the traditional masculinity (Furman & Dill,
2012). Furman and Dill (2012) further add that poetry is usually considered as a feministic
art and is sometimes viewed as anti-masculine. Mazza (2003) stated that therapeutic
poetry creates a space to express softer emotions like vulnerability and doubt, however,
the social construct of masculinity demands me to be tough, have a men-don’t-cry atti-
tude and suppress these softer emotions. Like Gardner’s (1993) runaway youths, I found
myself, while composing and sharing poems with others, too exposed and open from a
masculine perspective. The societal masculine norms ask me to have emotional control
and self-reliance (Mahalik et al., 2003), whereas, while processing a lived-experience
through therapeutic poetry writing, I need to express my emotions and feelings as
freely as possible. For expressing my emotions, as Mahalik et al. (2003) stated, I can be
“punished or shamed when they do not conform to the traditional masculine norms”
(p. 192). The social norms wanted me to be a man and “act out their emptiness, pain
and angst” (Furman, 2010, p. 39), whereas my poetic sensibility goads me to process
and dissect my feelings through poetry. The following poem expressed this contradiction
in my life, whereas, even after realizing the true worth of therapeutic poetry writing, I feel
“less of a man” for doing so.
Sad
I am sad,
Disheartened,
 JOURNAL OF POETRY THERAPY 9

Because I had to become

A poet, a writer,
A labourer of pen,
Ploughing the paper-fields,
Sowing pain and anguish,
Red tears to water unreal flowers
Because in the real world,
Nobody cares,
And people call me
Less of a man for caring,
Crying,
This breaks my heart.
They laugh at this too,
For mentioning the heart.

Richardson (1994, 2000) has explained writing as a method of “telling” as well as

“knowing”. The above poem stems from the notion that poetry is a minuscule minority
in the world of letters, however, once I penned down my alienation and complaint to
the world and as I reread and reflect upon it, things become clearer. As I tell myself of
the treatment meted out to poets and sensitive personnel, I start to know it more. I
enquire, discover, analyze (Richardson, 1994, 2000) more about this personality and
place of poetry in the schema. In Richardson’s (1994, 2000) painterly approach to
writing, I did not know I felt like this about the society’s treatment to poets and poetry
before composing the poem. Poetry, here becomes a tool to vent out my frustration
with society as far as sensitivity and caring are concerned; and in the words of Blinne
(2010), “I feel lost, disconnected, and disembodied” (p. 184), if I do not vent out my feelings
through writing. This writing also brings clarity in thought process which further leads to
positivity in the perspective. As the previous poem looks outwards and discusses my reac-
tion to the society’s treatment of poetry and poets, the next poems looks inwards and
dwells upon a poet’s inner world and personal space.
Here Lives a Poet
In this home,
Within these walls,
Where a chair is an airplane,
The sauce is taken for blood,
Where laughter
Doesn’t need a reason
To visit,
Tears can roll down as freely
As empty clouds
Rush to the sea
As children run to their mothers
After school,
Where sunrays are paths to heaven
Where nothing is stoned to nothingness,
Where mind is not a wall
With shelves for everything
To be put in order.

In such a home,
Poets dwell.
10 D. SHARMA

While looking for the reason as to why I write poems, there is one poem which
reminded me of the impact, poetry writing has on me. Re-reading this poem (Sundays,
shared below) made me understand how poetry has helped me in processing my feelings
and emotions. Leavy (2015) rightly says that poets are human scientists who process their
own experiences using linguistic and poetic tools. I lived in a working men’s hostel for
about seven years after the demise of my father and my younger brother. Work kept
me busy but Sundays were the most difficult days to cope with, depression swallowing
me, engulfing me. However, as Maurino (2016) puts it, composing a poem about the
cause of my depression had a liberating and transformative effect upon me. Now when
I go through this poem, I realize how poetry can operate as a curative device. I can see
that poetry has provided humor, comfort and expression to me to cope with my grief
and loneliness (Robinson, 2004). What I realized, as I processed my thoughts about
Sundays, that Sunday is just like another day, and it is what I make out of it.
Sundays
(i)
Sunday is alone,
Like the mythical dwarf prince,
Among the seven princes,
All other busy and active.

(ii)
A day started in anticipation,
Will end in anticipation.
I woke up as a new born baby,
And went to bed like
A dying old man.

(iii)
In the memory of my Sundays

I painted my Monday on Saturdays.

And killed every expectation.

In this practical, mind-your-business world, poetry writing is one such activity which
demands an eagerness to participate in a process which at times might not have pre-
defined ends (Mazza, 2003). However, taking this risk always lead to better self-awareness
and clarity in thoughts. According to social norms, as Levant (1995) says, men are often
dissuaded from expressing tender emotions and never express anything which makes
them look vulnerable. Being raised as a man, I could not share with my friends or family
that I felt depressed and lonely on Sundays. Men, in hegemonic masculine sense, accord-
ing to Furman and Dill (2012), are allowed to acknowledge and express only two feelings:
anger and lust. Acknowledging the presence of “softer feelings such as sadness, doubt,
tenderness, and fear” (Furman & Dill, 2012, p. 103) are contrary to masculine norms. Kilmar-
tin (2010) states that conflicting notions of “how men should think, feel, and act, and how
in fact they do those things” (p. 22) can lead to mental illness. Maurino (2016) echoes my
feelings about the act of writing poems when he says that “I am convinced that I could not
have made the psycho-emotional and relational changes that I have without the process
of writing the poems” (p. 220). I too feel that I have been cured and transformed by the act
 JOURNAL OF POETRY THERAPY 11

of writing poetry. In my personal space, poetry writing has helped me cope with the
change and changed me in some way for betterment. Looking back at the lived experi-
ences through these poems make me realize that these poems have composed me, I
did not compose them. I write poems because I truly believes in Linney (2000) that
poetry makes us reflect on and remember what matters the most. Poetry therapy has
allowed to me process and share, with myself most importantly, my own lived experiences.
However, I was unaware of this power of poetry writing and reflection, in my own personal
space, before I composed poems around my lived experiences. Raingruber (2004) asserts
my position when she says that “poets frequently discover what they were writing about
only after having completed a poem” (p. 13). Reflecting upon these autoethnographic
pomes, I have realized, to paraphrase Mazza in Munslow (2017), in my personal context,
I should not ask why should I write poems, but should ask, in what ways and to what
extent poetry writing can change or affect my life and living.

Conclusion
Autoethnographic research, like other qualitative research methods, is concerned about
exploring and reporting human behavior and psyche in a given context. Autoethnogra-
phers through various forms of writing, diary-writing, poetry writing etc. try to capture
the feelings and emotions of humans put through various situations. Amongst all autoeth-
nographic writings, poetry writing holds a special place as it processes and reports the
human psyche, the emotions and feelings in the subtlest way. People have their own per-
sonal reasons to write poetry around their lived experiences and experienced emotions.
Autoethnography seems to be the best suited research method to understand the
reason behind people’s writing poems in their personal space as Ricci (2003) says that
autoethnography is “the practice of attempting to discover the culture of self, or of
others through self” (p. 593). An attempt has been made through reflecting upon autobio-
graphical poems written over the theme of the act of poetry writing to understand how a
person manages the relationship between their personal self and the social self through
writing poetry. Scholars have highlighted the importance of poetry writing in the personal
space as a therapy as through processing, telling and discovering the emotions “ … poetry
increases one’s capacity to tolerate pain, understand oneself, and other people” (Raingru-
ber, 2004, p. 13). Lengelle and Meijers (2009) described this as model of transforming-self-
through-writing wherein “a painful ’first story’ can be rewritten to become a more life-
giving ’second story’” (p. 57). At personal level people understand it and continue to docu-
ment their lived experiences through autobiographical poetry writing (Apol, 2017; Bacon,
2018; Barbieri & Musetti, 2018; Chan, 2003; Furman, 2004a, 2004b, 2005; Goldstein, 2018;
Koelln et al., 2017; Robinson, 2017; Sharma, 2018; Wright & Chung, 2001). However, at
societal level, poetry writing is sometimes seen as a waste of time or useless renderings.
Many a time, literary critics, publishers, academicians, and philosophers have tried to
write off poetry as an art form and as a form of expression. Poets have been banished
from the society, and poetry has been declared dead several times. Nevertheless,
people continue to write poems in their personal spaces. For me and probably for
people who treat poetry as a therapy, as Hall (2003) says, poetry is a tool to connect
their self with others. Beyond therapy, as Mazza (2016) reminds us, the urge to record
and process lived experience is a human thing and “we all should be mindful of what
12 D. SHARMA

we are passing on to other” (p. 192) as whatever we share (the poetic record of the lived
experiences) “serves as a lesson and inspiration for future generations” (Mazza, 2018,
p. 207).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID
Daneshwar Sharma http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3224-2763

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