Emotional and Intellectual Benefits of Writing Poetry
To me, writing is a deeply therapeutic practice. It imparts a broad range of benefits with regards to self-improvement, emotional coping mechanisms, psychological healing, developing interpersonal relationships, and even furthering our careers — both within and outside of the writing industry.
Therapeutic:
Poetry to me is a safe way to vent, examine, and understand my feelings without the pressure of judgement.
Overcoming grief:
Sad hearts have been the source of some of the world’s most inspirational poetry. Personally speaking, whenever I have experienced a profound loss, I found the act of putting my feelings into words or paying tribute to those who I lost, extremely cathartic.
Cathartic/automatic writing is the act of casually letting one's stream of reflections spill onto paper. Writing when confounded or after an emotionally challenging event could help release feelings and thoughts which the writer may not otherwise want to admit or face.
Greater self-awareness:
Self-awareness refers to the state of being aware of different aspects of the self including characteristics, behaviours and emotions. Writing poetry gives us a positive route to analyze and attain insight into ourselves.
Also, in the end, we have a tangible output of the “inner reflection” work for later reference.
Creative thinking With its emphasis on innovative aspects like say symbolism, metaphor, and imagery, poetry writing fosters and promotes creative thinking among those who practice it. No one's perfect at the start, but eventually, it helps us develop with practice. The key here is consistency.
Connections:
In today's day and age of social media, when poems are shared over online/ offline media, they not only help inspire, stir, and entertain other people (for example Instagram poetry sensations like R M Drake, Rupi Kaur etc), it could also help forge deeper interpersonal connections amongst fellow poets and/or poets and their readers.
Developing perspective Proper perspective helps comprehend circumstances from other's standpoints, by considering other people's beliefs, backgrounds and viewpoints.
Writing poetry often prompts us to look at the world from a variety of perspectives, which in turn helps inculcate a greater understanding and empathy. It reduces bias, inappropriate judgement and conflict among people of diverse kinds.
Cognitive function:
Steps involved in poetry writing, starting from digging for the exact word, followed by working out how to articulate an idea, up to fine-tuning the rhythm and meter of a poem, all add up to strengthen our cognitive processes.
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