The Power of Poetry
How creative writing boosts learning
‘I have often been haunted by the notion that poets might understand human comprehension more fully than psychologists.’ John T. Guthrie.
It’s been an unusual eighteen months for me.
Last year I enrolled on a creative writing course with the Open University. I suppose it’s all part of my lifelong learning journey (yes, I know many of you might hate the phrase ‘learning journey’, but it seems to suit my circumstances). The course created for me the opportunity to engage more formally with a lifelong passion. I’ve written stories since I was a child, and, if I could live my life over again, I hope I would have the confidence to place all my effort into becoming a writer.
I think I was too influenced by people around me who thought fiction writing wasn’t really a particular mature profession to pursue. My father was a journalist and I thought about journalism for a while. After some work experience on a couple of local newspapers, I quickly reached the conclusion I didn’t have the aptitude for it.
The course went extremely well. I’d never shown my stories to anyone before and I was pleased they were received so positively. I had the opportunity to try poetry, but I don’t think that’s where my strengths lie.
I have, however, also immersed myself in the local poetry scene. I’ve attended poetry open mics, performed a few of my own poems, attended spoken word events and got to know a wide variety of people.
All in all, I found the experience incredibly satisfying, and this made me think about the benefits of engaging in creative writing, especially as I reach middle-age.
As it turns out, I’m not the first person to think about this. Poetry, for example, had been found to benefit people in many ways.
The therapeutic benefits of poetry, for example, are similar to those of music. For example, Adam Zeman and his team at the University of Exeter in the UK
used Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of participants while reading different types of poetry and prose. They discovered that regions of the brain involved in poetry comprehension are the same ones involved in processing music.
Poetry also has the ability to connect with our emotions and stir up feelings we may not have been previously aware of. Sad poetry appears (unsurprisingly, perhaps) seems to have a greater impact that other forms. Our ability to experience and regulate emotional states is vital to our general wellbeing.
Researchers at Durham University in the UK found that listening to sad music can actually lift our mood and, because poetry activates the same regions of the brain as music, we can assume that the same is true. Experiencing emotional states, both positive and negative, can increase our ability to cope with these emotional changes. Poetry, therefore, can create a non-threatening space that allows us to become familiar with potentially difficult feelings.
From a learning perspective, poetry can also increase literary awareness. In a 2015 paper, Noreen O’Sullivan and colleagues from the University of Liverpool, found that poetic writing can enhance several cognitive functions. They include, increased flexibility of models of meaning, introspective awareness of change, and the ability to reason about events. Poetry, therefore, can help us to think more critically. O’Sullivan and her team also discovered that poetic writing was related to activation in an area of the brain related to people’s tolerance of uncertainty. All these factors may lead to improvements in mental wellbeing.
I’ve written about the benefits of reading poetry in more depth here.
What about creative writing?
Again, the research literature indicates several benefits. One small ethnographic study, for example, looked at the experiences of a group of over 55 year olds on a creative writing course. Participants cited several benefits, mostly related to wellbeing, including feeling younger. This, of course, might have been due more to the social aspects of the course.
One study from 2013, for example, concluded that verbal creativity during creative writing is associated with verbal and semantic memory as well as semantic integration.
A 2020 paper also links creative writing to enhanced language acquisition in younger learners.
Creative writing is a cognitively intense activity. To formulate and write a piece of fiction requires the writer to draw on semantic and episodic memories and combine them in imaginative way. This is particularly useful for older adults because it provides a means to actively and dynamically engage cognitive resources. For younger writers, it grants the opportunity to use language in unique and ways and to appreciate the structure of story. I’ve written before about how stories can aid learning.Writing them can as well.