Poetry Heals is about of using poetry writing to process and start healing trauma, but we can produce a product, too. Our first poetry collection includes poems by all sorts of people who sat down and wrote during our free, summer-long art event, Poetry and Pottery. Residents, street people and tourists. Spurned lovers, joyful grandmas, silly sisters. Everyone is welcome, that’s our motto.

My idea of poetrybook (2)

is sitting out in the woods

listening to the stream running

a bobwhite a bobbin

a swallow a swallowing

and a state trooper on the bullhorn

and down the hill

we’re going.

by Kelly

I love reading these poems and hearing again the voices of people taking the time to reflect on their lives or our writing prompts — sometimes both. What surprised me is how other people react to the book when they pick it up.

“I really can’t put it down; look at me!” said a psychologist I was talking to about bringing Poetry Heals to veterans in legal trouble.

“Here’s a picture of my teenage son reading your book,” texted a Mom who bought the book at our third birthday party.

“Well this is cool,” said an independent bookstore owner from San Francisco.

People become absorbed in the poems. These are not fine art poems. Most of them are free verse, and all of them are real. “No roses are red, violets are blue” as I always say at the start of a workshop. I’m known for “giving the eye” when people are skirting the issues in their poems. These poems can get gritty, and they seem always to bring relief to the writers. A little magic lives on these pages.

So, I you’d like your own copy, please click here to our swag page. You will become absorbed in the poems and support Poetry Heals. What a deal!