not yet knowing where your body endsand mine begins, I need your playto make amendsto re-pair our self-fractured dividends again, I listen to your curative narrative I insert myself between your gestured silenceto relive shared stresses, endless violence within and without, we’re urgently buffeted between unspoken sensationsor floundering in each other’s treacherous privations eventually we […]
The drummers drum and the writers scroll, We avert our gaze, yet risk our soul… Humanity owns the rising toll… Our leaders lament, as poets search for the words that fit… A silent crime, but no one murmurs, for truth is split… Yet buried in the far corners of hidden shame, It is the fragile […]
Show me a story without lossand one which deals with pride without the cautiousnessof shame. Rich with poverty she could not recall her life before high school. On Sundays the church bellsregistered the pain of the sinners,those blameless children, fondled by cherish leaders,they could not evade the punishment they proposed. In therapy,unfolding the secret of the past,her origami […]
As many of you will know by now, ISSTD’s very own poetry group – ‘Poet’s Corner’ provided a fantastic presentation as part of the Asia-Pacific Regional Conference in November 2021. This year, each month in ISSTD News, we have been publishing those poems for your enjoyment. This is the last of that installment, but we […]
“He’s not cooperative,” his teacher warned me when I called to find out more about the boy who’d been referred to me for speech-language therapy. “He’ll find a hundred excuses to not do the work.” “Sounds creative,” I interjected. “He is,” the teacher conceded, “but it is exhausting.” For him, too, I was sure. “You’d […]
March 20 is World Poetry Day and this month we bring you a very topical poem by Warwick Middleton, which illustrates the way poetry can be used to explore both past and contemporary traumas. Joseph the priest, Adolf the painter and Vladimir, the spy, Humanity weeps and seeks to question – the how and the why…They […]
This article has been previously published in California Association of Marriage and Family Therapy magazine, The Therapist, and is reprinted here with permission of the authors, Perie Longo, MFT, and Phyllis Klein, LCSW From the beginning of time, poetry has been a means for people to express their deepest emotions and create healing in ritual and ceremony. […]
This month we continue with publishing the poetry that was performed by ISSTD’s Poet’s Corner at the Asia-Pacific Virtual Conference in November 2021. This is the second group of poetry and contains poems by Jan Ewing, Phyliss Klein, Valerie Sinason and Colin Ross. I hope you enjoy reading this collection from such esteemed members and […]
ISSTD’s very own poetry group – ‘Poet’s Corner’ has provided a fantastic presentation as part of the Asia-Pacific Regional Conference in November 2021. By way of background, Poet’s Corner formed rather organically in 2020-2021 – and in fact they first presented at our last annual conference. Since then, this group has grown and continued to […]
This month I asked our resident Poets to contribute something for ISSTD News. I received such generous and diverse responses that it was hard to pick just three. Warwick Middleton’s poignant poem explores the discovery that an old friend has been a victim of domestic violence. Ericha Hitchcock Scott explores themes of strength in ‘BackBone […]
