Poetry and Therapy: More Alike Than You Think Owen Lewis, MD (Stockbridge) Sarah Stemp, PhD (Alford) Description of the Event: With overlapping concerns of creating meaning from what may be meaningless, order out of what may be disordered, and a primary focus on words and language as the vehicle, poetry and therapy are often more alike than you think. Two local clinician/poets with diverse professional backgrounds (psychiatry, child psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis) will explore the overlap. Topics include the poetic processes in therapy and therapeutic processes in poetry; confessional poetry and the confession; client/clinician and poet/poem relationships, as well the differences and pitfalls–both in themselves and their writing, with their patients, and with their students. Relevance of Topic: As poets, we often say “poetry heals”, and readers and writers of poetry often turn to poetry to be healed. Poets who are also clinicians and teachers of writing are ideally suited to examine and articulate the processes of therapy, the processes of writing poetry, the processes of reading and reflecting on poetry, and where and when the aims of poetry and the aims of therapy may collide. Owen Lewis, MD – author of three collections of poetry, most recently Field Light (Distinguished Favorite, 2020 NYCBigBookAward), and two chapbooks including best man (recipient of the 2016 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize, New England Poetry Club.) Prizes include Finalist, 2017 Pablo Neruda Award, and first prize, the 2016 International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry. His poetry has appeared in Nimrod, Poetry Wales, The Mississippi Review, Southward, Stay Thirsty Poets, and Presence. A professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, he teaches Narrative Medicine in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics. Field Light, set in Glendale, Mass., weaves a poetic tapestry of Berkshire history. Sarah Stemp, PhD is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in New York City who has been studying and writing poetry for many years. She is a supervisor of psychoanalysis and on faculty at the William Alanson White Institute, and she has published poetry in several journals and was a semifinalist for the Red Wheelbarrow prize. Her first chapbook, Wellspring, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2024.
