March 2025
We just finished an intentional planning workshop with a behavioral health team. Sixteen beautiful souls, sitting in chairs arranged around a circle-shaped table, and waiting for directions on what this life experience could be like. There is a pressure that comes with hosting creative workshops or planning activities that forces one to step out of the comfort zone. The mental pressure is about not knowing who people are, what they need, and how they will show up as a collective group. There is also pressure with trying new activities, like collaborative art. Will this even work…?
We (our team at AKA: Allyson, Bethany, and Kelley) are just three humble workers, doing what we’ve been asked to do—help this behavioral health team intentionally plan for the future, reflect on the past, and collect some healing along the way.
As we started planning this workshop, the question kept coming back to me: “How do we create opportunities for healers to heal?”
I know intuitively that healing is for healers. If it wasn’t, then all healers would be broken without knowing what it’s like to heal from something in some way. Healing of course is a continual process that begins each day. If healers are not healed, they risk it all, and potentially can do more harm than good.
Our goal for this intentional planning workshop activity was to create opportunities for participants to reflect on their own lives and selves as part of the behavioral health team. Ultimately it was designed to connect participants with finding meaning and purpose. We selected collaborative poetry as an activity to support this goal. Previous work by Untold Content and Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Indigenous Research Methodologies served as a guide. Here, it is important to remember that nothing we do is ever really original or just created based on our own knowledge and wisdom. We borrow from the past and we use the past to create opportunities in the future. If you don’t believe us, just read the book, Steal Like an Artist.
Our Intentional Planning Workshop
Supplies You May Need: Notebooks, pens, an open mind (no writing expertise required), quiet space, nature (spaces that inspire and calm)
Time Required: 30 minutes to 1.5 hours, it depends on the writing process
Prep: Identify a poetry theme and share example, set up tables with groups of 4 to 7 people
Directions to Follow
Ask “Who is a poet?”
In our workshop, nobody raised their hands.
Introduce the collaborative poetry experience and theme. This should match the intentions or purpose of the gathering.
Read an example poem that represents the theme of the workshop.
We read, this one from Untold Content.
Ask people to write their own free verse poem based on the theme. Encourage participants to take their journals and get outside. Walk. Be still. Listen. Write. This can take five minutes to one hour or more.
While our people were becoming poets, I started thinking why poetry is healing. The experience of thinking and remembering something that is difficult or beautiful is a healing process in itself. Writing is therapy because it gets our wild and burdensome thoughts out of the head and onto a paper, where thoughts can be shared, ruminated over, deleted, or celebrated.
Once all of the poets are back, ask everyone to read their poems to their group, one person and poem at a time. Tell them that this is not required and encourage them to only share what they are comfortable with. Remember, the poetry process can be highly emotional and vulnerable. Allow time and space for what needs to happen.
After all poems have been read, ask them to write their favorite lines from each poem they heard. This process can take some time.
One group wrote sections of their poems on sticky notes, then reorganized sections to flow and create one cohesive poem. They even taped the back of the sticky notes with packaging tape to ensure longevity. Another group typed their poems on a laptop and saved/texted to other group members. Others wrote the collaborative poem with their field notebooks and pens (many of the notebooks were decorated with oil pastels leftover from a previous exercise).
The final step in this process is asking one poet from the group to read the collaborative poem out loud.
Here is an example of one collaborative poem written by three different people. Here each poet wrote their own “What I Carry” poem and read it to their group. The group then reflected and created a new poem, below.
What I Carry
The strengths and weaknesses passed down to me
That I am a product of my own making
This life is beautiful, and I am grateful
I will keep carrying until I am called home.
This exercise taught us that poetry can heal one healer at a time.
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (Lillington: Edwards Brothers Inc., 2012), 147
Untold Content, Collaborative Poetry. Available from: https://untoldcontent.com/group-poem/
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