Yesterday, I went to a poetry workshop. That’s a much bigger deal than it may sound, as poetry isn’t really my thing. I just don’t get it most of the time! However, it felt right to be there, and I was curious.

So there I was, no clear idea why I was there, but willing to engage with it. We had been asked to bring a poem. It wasn’t a hard choice for me, it’s not like I know thousands of poems. Many years ago, a man I barely knew gave me a poem which has been present for me recently. So I brought that.

The first surprise was how many familiar faces I met, one I hadn’t seen for more than twenty years. The second surprise was how well the process actually worked for me. In an exercise called a “poetry dive,” we first received a long series of lines from the words of many poets, allowing them to wash over us. When the words were finished, we were invited to speak (all of us at the same time) those words or lines that remained with us. Abruptly, we were told to stop our recitation, and to start writing from the last word or phrase we had spoken. We were to write whatever came to mind, encouraged to follow what we might otherwise shy away from, to move towards the darkness.

It was a fascinating exercise, seeming to allow me to bypass the layers of obstacles that would often mire me, the need to understand, the need to make sense, the desire to tidy away the messiness that I encounter in myself. It was also terrifying, bringing me to a depth that I know well, but rarely allow others to encounter me in. It was fascinating too, because as we shared (or not, as we chose) some or all of what we’d written, and heard reflected back by others fragments (words or phrases) that had stayed with them, there was a curious feeling of acknowledgement. There was no analysis, no interpretation, no clever insights. Just the raw, naked words, spoken and reflected.

When the time came to explore the poems we had brought, we were invited to work with the poem in a different way. I read my poem out loud, and told of its meaning for me. My partner asked me to say which part of the poem spoke most loudly to the meaning I had made, and I felt unable to answer, but was drawn to a part that I stumbled over, wanting to tidy up the words that didn’t satisfy me. I didn’t understand the poet’s words, and they didn’t gel for me.

Much of my work as a therapist, perhaps all of it, is concerned with meeting a client where they are. We feel around the edges of that place, and get to know it. We explore the client’s relationship with themselves, and the edges of that too. And I reflect back, directly and indirectly, where and how I meet them in those places.

Sometimes, in our desire to understand, mine, the client’s, or both, we can lose some of the richness that lies beyond understanding. Sometimes the desire to make sense, to place the experience within what is known, can stifle or silence something that is clamouring to be expressed, but hasn’t yet formed a shape or pattern that is recognisable, like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that seems to have been put into the wrong box. Sometimes we can jump to judgement of something we don’t fully see or understand, because we fear the threat we perceive in it.

As we finished the day, I found I knew why I had come to the workshop after all. It was essentially the same reason I do this therapy work:

…to see who I will meet there, and to welcome them in…