Celebrating the Benefits of Poetry

By Sarah Zaragoza-Smith, Library Assistant

Every April, the Academy of American Poets celebrates National Poetry Month, encouraging all of us to uplift the art form. After a deeper look into the benefits of reading, writing, and listening to poetry, I’m inclined to follow their lead. Here is a non-exhaustive list outlining the benefits of sprinkling a little more poetry into our lives.

1. Poetry boosts our emotional wellbeing.

A group of medical researchers at Brown worked with 44 pre-teens and teenagers who were admitted to an in-patient pediatric ward. They interviewed them on their emotional state both before and after doing poetry reading and writing exercises. The young people reported reductions in several negative emotions, including stress and fear, after engaging with poetry as compared to before. They also reported feeling happier and distracted from their pain. If reading and writing poetry can make a difference to hospitalized adolescents, imagine what a difference it can make for someone whose baseline is much higher!

2. Poetry helps us grow into ourselves and understand the world. 

A survey of over 4,000 children in the UK found that children who read and write poetry do so in order to develop a stronger sense of self, a greater understanding of the world around them, and to express their creativity. Poetry can help us all introspect and process the complexities of the world around us.

3. Poetry helps us feel less alone.

Loneliness is on the rise. Even worse, it comes with a whole host of other problems for humanity, up to and including higher death rates across age groups for people who feel profoundly lonely. Poetry is a proven therapeutic tool used to enhance an individual’s feelings of connection to community, increase self-esteem, and instill a sense of belonging in those who engage with it. 

4. Poetry supports young readers in developing reading fluency. 

Researchers found that rhyming poetry helps young readers understand phonemes with greater accuracy. The patterns present in poetry help young people feel more confident when they read out loud and more readily facilitates group read-alouds. The word play common in poetry for young people can also be a fun and silly way to introduce children to new vocabulary words (and a fair few nonsense words if you involve Dr. Seuss in the mix).

5. Poetry can be more accessible.

For our reluctant readers and those who say they don’t have time for reading, we always point out when a book’s pages have a lot of “white space,” by which we mean the parts of the page without text. White space tends to make a reader feel less intimidated as they approach a text, and allows the reader to fly through the book at a much faster pace than they could when reading a novel. Poetry books are some of our favorite books to recommend for this purpose. They also allow readers to chunk out the text into more manageable sections if they don’t yet have the time or focus to read a chapter of a traditional novel. 

6. Poetry adds beauty to your day! 

Often, our students in the High School Book Club will read a classic novel and report back to us that they were blown away by the writing style. One student described Oscar Wilde as a “luxurious writer” and another said that reading The Count of Monte Cristo was like “reading a painting.” Classic novelists often wove lyricism into their works, whereas modern novels, especially YA and genre fiction, frequently favor clarity in their syntax. Unfortunately, students also report little time for reading, and thus feel daunted by the notion of tackling a classic tome, especially during the school year. Poetry offers a brilliant solution to this problem! Poetry readers can immerse themselves in a text much shorter than a novel where the words themselves, and not just the story they tell, are the primary art form. 

Looking at this list, you might feel inspired to take action and get more poetry in your day, stat! If that’s you, then here are a few simple ways you can accomplish that goal:

1. Sign up for poem-a-day. Poets.org will send a new poem to your inbox every day. Easy to subscribe to, totally free, and a wonderful way to discover new poets you might have never encountered otherwise. 
2. Attend a community poetry event. From open mic nights to poetry readings to poetry writing workshops, the Sacramento area has plenty of opportunities for you to experience poetry with community. 
3. Check out a poetry book or novel in verse from the library. We have plenty available for your perusal!