When I’m not working I love getting to wild places in my campervan. Here I am wearing a traditional Shetland “Gansie”.
Poetry has always been an important part of my life and family culture: phrases ring round my head like soul ear-worms, often finding themselves being muttered or intoned. Clients will probably get familiar with my quoting odd bits of poets such as Mary Oliver, Edward Thomas or Sufi poetry such as Hafiz or Rumi. I hope that these connections add a depth to the work. Sometimes a bit of Winnie the Pooh may even find its way into my therapy space, as well as Rilke or the odd bit of Shakespeare. I guess this art form is a deep part of who I am and how I like to work therapeutically: poetry has an ability to cut straight down to the quick and stop us in our tracks.
“Therapy Sandwich” was originally a project I did under my pseudonym “HanJan” in 2013, where I set myself a challenge of writing and recording a poem a day though May. Even if I was exhausted and depleted, I had to write something and this discipline really helped me to locate a sense of my own voice. In those days I recorded a lot and put my “offerings” on Soundcloud.
As the Sometimes, Trauma project has come into being, these old poems (and many new ones) began to jiggle like a hot coin in my pocket, asking to be spent. Some of them were written directly linked to the world of therapy, or bore reference to the valiant work of clients that I was working with. Some of the poems are set to music and all are placed on my Youtube channel, which can be found here: Sometimes,Trauma…
My hope is that through sharing some of these personal poems about the bravery of the therapeutic journey, clients and therapists alike may find some direction, solace or companionship in their process.
Please see the links below to the separate poems. If you want to follow them as they are recorded/uploaded, please subscribe to either the website or the Youtube channel.
Please follow the links below for the signature poem “Sometimes”, and more poems in the “Therapy Sandwich” Anthology.
Sometimes, Trauma... 