Poetry is divisive. It provokes love in some, and loathing in others. However, Poetry is all around us.
It is in the patterns that children make with language as they learn to speak. It is mirrored in the rhymes given to them in the books that they learn to read.
Poetry lies within the religious texts of the privileged few, and the oral traditions which favour the many.
Poetry is the sound of a word. The taste of a word. The feel of a word. It opens doors.
Poetry lies in song. In a lyric. It is in the spoken word filled with a beat.
It hits you in the solar plexus like a kick from Wonder Woman.
It short-circuits reason, it circumnavigates control. It can deny the linear. It can defy the chronological.
It can take a moment to speak or hours to hear.
So, why use poetry as part of a facilitation?
For all the above and …
Because it takes us back to a playful time, when we could repeat the same word all day and never tire of it. Therefore, we return to curiosity, to exploration, to possibility.
Because it gives us permission to work directly with our emotions, and engage with the emotions of others, acknowledging their place within our work and at the centre of our lives.
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Maya Angelou
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