On poetry and trauma

“I’ve seen that life’s worst experiences can exist as strangers in us, separate, like people we don’t know and don’t want to know. Yet these worst experiences remain our passionate life companions.  I’ve seen that our emotions after life’s worst experiences can be sealed in a variety of containers, some buried, or in a black hole, some that explode unexpectedly, some that exist only in the public realm, some that exist only in private, some that exist in one part of ourselves and not in others. But I’ve also seen that through poetry, people can open these containers, and move their contents, these painful emotions, into new frames that are more open and repurposed for a meaningful life.”

Richard Gold “Poetry Saved My Life”,

The concept of opening containers, letting loose things so tightly held down, puts into words perfectly the release I feel when writing out my own experiences…