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Poetry can provide both therapeutic and neurobiological benefits.

Studies indicate that poetry can raise hope scores and induce peak emotional experiences.

Poetry provides an ancient, cross-cultural humanization of common experiences and challenges.

Long before I became a clinical social worker, I was a child who loved reading and writing. My undergraduate degree was in English, and though my career focus evolved over time and took the direction of psychology, my love for the written word never diminished. Time and again, I have come back to poetry, which has served as a descriptor of human experience, a balm for a wounded world, and a humanizing force that mirrors our struggles, resiliency, and triumphs.

There is good reason for this power that poetry has: dating back some 4,300 years, written poetry is the most ancient record of human literature. Many poems, such as Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, and Paradise Lost, are still widely read and admired today.

Beyond its longevity, though, there is emerging neuroscience to support the idea that poetry has a significant positive effect on the brain. According to a 2017 study, “poetry is capable of inducing peak emotional experiences, including subjectively reported chills and objectively measured goosebumps” (Wassiliwizky & others, 2017). Those chills and goosebumps that you feel when a line of verse resonates signify how meaningfulness and personal profundity can be found in a poem.

Poetry-elicited chills are similar to those triggered by music and are understood to signify heightened activity within the reward-related brain regions (Blood & Zatorre, 2001). Much like music, “poetry represents an ancient, cross-cultural, and emotionally powerful variety within the human communicative and expressive repertoire” (Bradshaw & others, 2004). All this to say that the power of poetry........

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