Writing as Therapy Interview by Talitha Martin

Writing as Therapy Interview by Talitha Martin
 
Dennis Etzel Jr. is a Professor of English at Washburn University.  He has a personal and professional investment in utilizing poetry as path towards survival and healing.  Prof. Etzel leads a variety of community poetry classes and readings as well as teaching Beginning /Advanced Composition, Beginning Fiction and Mythologies in Literature at Washburn.

I had a fortunate meeting with him to discuss “writing as therapy”.

On writing as therapy -  The first thing to know is, we are not therapists. When you are working with kids to write about traumatic events, we are not therapists, we cannot come at them expecting them to be able to put all this down on paper. One thing we can do, we should do a lot of is praise and applaud.  “Thank you for your courage and bravery in sharing”, no matter how minute the sharing is. Vulnerability is a strength and we need to stress that to our students. Poetry and personal writing is the best time to be vulnerable, be vulnerable on a page.

On poetry as survival – No one can take from you what you create, you own that. Putting it down on paper makes you a double survivor. You survived it and wrote about it, now you are a survivor to your reader as well. Your experience makes that real to someone else.

On journaling -  My own journey involved self-awareness through journaling which led to poetry. Dr. Nobo here at Washburn said to me, as an undergrad, that I should become a better writer. To do that, I should keep a journal and carry around a thesaurus. So I did. I loved the thesaurus and pass them on now, because it opens up such an appreciation for the meaning behind words. Journaling is effective because repetition becomes a habit. I journaled because I wanted to be a better writer.

On connecting to students– Every class I am in, I know that there are people there who have gone through something. So, I mention it and take a firm stance on it, letting them know up front that I care about these issues (abuse, neglect etc) and their stories.

On grammar and conventions - This is the last step, and I find rubrics very important when approaching it. They are a good visual representation of the process. I put things on the rubric in the order of importance to me and grammar is at the very bottom. I allow many revisions, until a student feels they finally “got” it. I use “minimal marking” to grade and allow them to make “cheat sheets” of common grammar errors until they don’t struggle with those errors anymore.

Ideas for Writing as Therapy

• This is low stakes writing, with a loose definition of “poetry”, this is not about rules at all. Free writing and brainstorming are huge!
• Find an example of a poem “type” – a poem about love, friendship, etc. Read together, share and discuss and then have students write one of their own
• Be willing to share personal stories about writing fears. Writing can be scary, we ALL feel that way. Give voice to it!
• Word Play – Divide a piece of paper in half. One on half list 10 nouns, one the other list one occupation and then a few verbs that go with that occupation. Have the students pick two nouns and a verb from their sheet and write a sentence, even a nonsense sentence about it. Use these sentences as a starting place for poetry.
• Write a favorite color. Think of a person to write a poem to, and write using your color word as many times as possible.
• Have students get in groups. Surveys show students understand material better in groups--hearing what others have to say, instead of the teacher. Groups! We need to have students work in groups every day, and have them change roles: leader, note-taker, etc. and report to the class.

I greatly enjoyed getting to speak with Professor Etzel and I appreciate his insight. He is both a teacher of ‘writing as therapy’ and a student who has used writing to process his own challenging life experiences. Many of the ideas presented here go hand in hand with the principles outlined in the portion “Strategies for Healing Childhood Trauma” and provide educators with real world examples to start implementing these ideas into their classrooms.