The Healing Power of Poetry
Anyone can write a poem to express which feelings arise.
Posted May 24, 2026 | Reviewed by Tyler Woods
Poetry therapy is often used nowadays in mental health settings for healing and growth. Patients read and write poetry to find new ways of being mindful or relaxed. Poetry can point to the work they can do on themselves. Poetry can open them to new ways of coping. A poem can lead safely into realms of the unconscious that might be frightening ordinarily. Poems open the imagination to see alternatives to the status quo or to chronic suffering. In fact, every poem takes us into a parallel universe.
The realization that poetry has healing power is ancient in the human psyche. Shamans intoned poems as prayers that could bring help to the tribe or to individuals. In Egypt, as early as the fourth millennium B.C., poetry was inscribed on papyrus, dissolved in a solution, and ingested by patients so that their illness might subside. We recall in the Hebrew Bible that David soothed the depression of King Saul with his singing of poems in the form of psalms. A Roman physician, Soranus, in the first century A.D., was known to prescribe drama—composed of poetry—for healing. He recommended attending tragedies for his manic patients and comedies for his depressed patients.
For many centuries, the connection between poetry and medicine remained in people’s consciousness. Pennsylvania Hospital, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1751, used bibliotherapy, reading, and writing as useful treatments for mental patients. Dr. Benjamin Rush, “Father of American Psychiatry ,” believed in the effectiveness of music and literature. In all these instances, the evocative power of poetry and the access poetry grants to emotions and catharsis were appreciated as paths to healing. We can see how poetry opens us to parts of ourselves that may not be found otherwise.
Poetry can also be a pathway of spiritual growth, as well as emotional growth and healing. Contacting our spirituality through poetry does not mean that we must write only religious poems or haikus. Any poem can lead to awakening when approached with mindful attention . This is because its subject is the present moment, yet from it arise primordial and immortal images.
When poetry is approached as a spiritual practice, it mirrors the phases of a heroic journey, a central and universal theme in the myths of all cultures. The three phases of the heroic journey are: leaving home, passing through struggles, and returning home with gifts. When we sit down mindfully to write a poem, we begin at home in our here and now world, with a resounding yes to what is. Then we launch out into the complex, conflicted, and yet empowering reaches of our imagination, with all its fears and desires.
There are many psychological and spiritual benefits from writing poetry, including releasing ourselves from ego inhibition (holding ourselves back) and aggression (criticizing or discounting our potential skills). We inhibit and act aggressively toward ourselves when we are forcing ourselves to be impressive, to insist our poems be perfect, or to be recognized by others as valuable. When poetry is our personal or spiritual practice, we give up attachment to all that and yet are open to what may result from our writing. We see our human abilities as they are and say yes to them. That yes is all we need to begin and all we gain in the end.
We do not need Shakespeare’s skill, only his enthusiasm, to write poetry. Great fervor makes us poets already, since poetry thrives on feeling. Professional skill in the craft of writing happens with time. Having passion or fervor means having an engaged, sensuous, and pyrotechnic curiosity about whatever we are focusing on or whatever is beckoning to us. We can achieve all of that right now. Eventually, we may even realize that whatever we appreciate in a poet we like, we can do too, maybe not as elegantly but certainly as passionately.
When we employ poetry as a tool of healing and transformation, we come to see that we are not only poets while we are writing; we are poets all the time. Our challenge is to remind ourselves to see with our poetic eye, the eye of yes to presence rather than to any defined or confining reality. Then, when we write a poem, what comes out is real, a proclamation of our authentic voice. It sounds original, full of our own unique and lively energy, a joy to discover and release. Creativity is thus our finding in ourselves—and in the world—what the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins called “the dearest freshness deep-down things.”
Poetry makes a great contribution to our psychological work, as we write about issues from our present or past. The poetic mode evokes a knowledge and insightfulness that was unconscious before we began writing. We notice how our story or predicament takes on a new significance, reveals a surprising insight, or shows an unexpected depth. Writing a poem as we face any personal issue can move us into new realizations and solutions, too, another surprising benefit.
Freud wrote: “Not I, but the poets discovered the unconscious.” He went further in this statement: “The mind is a poetry-making organ.” Poetry is a field, like a field of gravity, without strict or restricting boundaries . We are suspended in space, upheld only by artistry. We are not in the safe container of syllogisms or syntax that can be trusted to explain the world to us. Sometimes poetry, even our own, defies full explanation. Indeed, good poems are bottomless. They never yield their meaning fully, perhaps not even to the poet. They are inexhaustible like Shakespeare, like the art in Rome, or like the love in our hearts.
David Richo: Adapted from: Being True to Life: Poetic Paths to Personal Growth (Shambhala)
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David Richo, Ph.D., is a retired psychotherapist, now an author and workshop leader.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.