Come to the Peaceful Wood: Poetry as a Transformative Tool for Healing

I am passionate about the transformative power of reading poetry. It is the act of reading poetry, especially reading it together and reading it aloud, that makes it such a great tool for improving wellbeing. In the words of one of the members of the online shared reading group that I have led since the Covid lockdown:

“Being encouraged to read poetry aloud has been very therapeutic. Apart from understanding the meaning of the poem, the rhythm of the words seems to transfer you to another level of consciousness. A joyful experience!”

At the end of this article, I talk more about this very special way of reading: community shared reading. But we can all get started (or get back) to reading poetry, even by ourselves, especially at moments when we really need a helping hand. Poetry offers us a language with which to navigate life’s challenges. Poems can be a vital tool or resource but they are more than that: they can become part of us, make us more resilient and stronger, more empathetic and creative. But I recognise it is not always easy to simply sit down and read a poem so here I offer a few tips to get you started.

Tips for how to read poetry

Tuning in

I have an admission to make. Quite often I find myself reading a book or a poem and when I get to the end of the paragraph or a verse, I realise that I wasn’t reading with my full attention or focus. Instead I’d been worrying about a problem, wondering what shopping I needed to pick up, worse still feeling the urge to reach for my phone and start scrolling. So how can we get into the right frame of mind to give the words on the page our full and undivided attention?

My key piece of advice would be to aim for slow, intentional reading. I try not to skim or jump words but read each word slowly and deliberately. If I’m reading on my own, I will try to mouth the words, even read them aloud, to feel their weight and meaning, their rhythm and flow.

In this sense poetry is easier than prose because it is distilled and intensified language and often has its own rhythm, sometimes rhyme, line breaks and verse breaks, to help pace and guide you. And if you’ve chosen a short poem, it might be easier to focus! When the poem comes personally recommended or is by a poet that you already love or know or is in a book that has been well reviewed, you can start with a confidence and sense of trust that it will contain good things.

Finding what resonates

Key here is to try and immerse yourself in the language…you don’t need to instantly understand it all, and letting go of that urge for mastery is really important. A better strategy is to lock into a phrase or a line from the poem that catches your attention. Perhaps it’s a line that makes your heart beat a little faster, that resonates with you in some way. It might be a beautiful phrase that soars or it might strike you as feeling true or real. You don’t have to ‘get it’ but maybe you will ‘feel it’.

When you stumble upon lines or phrases like that it’s like finding gold dust. You’ll want to underline it, copy it out, remember it, or return to it and reread it (now and later).

Staying with it

It’s a cliché but the more you put in, the more you get out. A great poem probably took a long time to write and has depths and breadths that are worth exploring. Stay with it for as long as you can. The more time you give it, the more you can get the riches out of it. Give that poem space to be, to live, to breathe.

In fact, if you can recognise your own role in making that poem come alive, you will have succeeded! For the poem needs you, the reader, to breathe it off the page, to listen to it, to internalise it, to respect it, love it, wrestle with it. If you do these things, that poem is no longer a string of words on a page, but it belongs to you. And you can return to it, and re-read it, and realise that you have created a relationship with it and that you have made a friend for life.

Reading together

My top tip would be to read poetry with others: with people you love; or you could consider joining a community shared reading group. I have led shared reading groups for many years and also enjoy being a member of one. We always read poetry out loud, taking turns to read (those who wish to), taking it slowly, re-reading key lines and discussing what phrases resonate and what that poem might mean to us. You can find shared reading groups through The Reader charity or perhaps you might consider setting one up yourself. It’s a very rewarding movement to be part of (with its impact on wellbeing backed up by a good body of research).

And, here, dear reader, is a poem to start you off. Good luck and happy reading (print it out: it will be easier to read and find the resonances)!

Deep in the Quiet Wood

James Weldon Johnson

Are you bowed down in heart?

Do you but hear the clashing discords and the din of life?

Then come away, come to the peaceful wood,

Here bathe your soul in silence. Listen! Now,

From out the palpitating solitude

Do you not catch, yet faint, elusive strains?

They are above, around, within you, everywhere.

Silently listen! Clear, and still more clear, they come.

They bubble up in rippling notes, and swell in singing tones.