Thursday 11 August 2011

PRIESTS OF POETRY





Poetry as therapy is reluctantly a new development in the expressive arts, however it is as old as the first chant sung around the tribal fires of the primitive people. Then it was used by some selected elders to bring healing to the sick ones. The word ‘Therapy’ came from the Greek ‘therapia’, meaning to cure through involvement in one of the expressive arts: dance, song, poetry or drama.
Poetry as a therapy uses the traditional techniques of poetry-rhythm, sound, metaphor etc but the focus is the person writing or performing the poem. When it is used for healing, expression and growth tool in the hands of the individual.
Of course every genre, civilization, forms have employed the use of the imagery, metaphor, rhythm and other literary devices to teach their stories, fable, drama, passing their information. Poetry in it condensed form, lyrical quality, and flitting thematic preoccupation is a typical evocative form of literature that can command surprising positive responses from people involved irrespective of ages, state and culture.
Poetry is very efficient in self purgation in this modern time when been conducted as a therapy in an interactive process. It releases catharsis, enhances self awakening, gives new thoughts and hope to one.
Poetry therapy goes different ways with the so called highly intellectual and selective course of the English literature class. The essence of it process begins in reaching a poem to the facilitated discussion of the readers-response to a poem. The poem in question may be the reader’s piece e or someone else’s own. This is not using a ruler and an advance dictionary to analyze the metre and ideology of the elite poet who authors the book. It is seeking to discover the reader’s own intuitive understanding, connection with the story and application of the meaning.
In present day poetry for healing, we become doctors to our sickness and troubles, the poems of our own stories, and priests of our well-beings.
 ©Uche Uwadinachi 



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