You were probably taught that poetry has a meaning, and your job is to find it. That's exactly why so many of us decided it wasn't for us.

In this episode, Jacky is joined by Dr. Stephanie Aspin - poet, therapist, academic, and author of Poetry and Therapy: Why Words Help - for a conversation that might just change how you think about language, feeling, and what it means to be witnessed.

Stephanie describes a poem not as a text to be decoded but as a little machine - a kinetic object where meaning shifts and moves. And in that movement, something therapeutic happens: language speaks back. It holds what we can't say directly. It gives us agency over a story we thought was fixed.

In this episode:

• Why poetry has a bad rap
• The poem as container: how an image can hold fear, grief, rage at arm's length
• What it means when language "speaks back" - and why writing can reveal what we didn't know we knew
• How to take your very first tentative steps with therapeutic poetry (even if you're completely resistant)
• Why all poetry is therapeutic - whether it was written to be or not

| Quote from the episode: "The me in my poems is the articulate me that's okay - and says I'm okay. And the world, if it thinks I'm not okay, it's wrong."

About Dr. Stephanie Aspin:
Websites:
https://stephanieaspin.com/
https://a-typicats.com/

Link to her book: https://www.pccs-books.co.uk/products/poetry-and-therapy-why-words-help

Poem Links:
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/the-masque-of-anarchy/
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/101581/poems-of-protest-resistance-and-empowerment
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/education/glossary/found-poem
https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Revolution-in-Poetic-Language-by-Julia-Kristeva-author-Margaret-Waller-translator/9780231214599?srsltid=AfmBOopuTEDNlgFqEEJYiqZHR4r7ZQN-FLs-RjDCnnQvMNvl2349pMrd