Three Personal Benefits of Writing Poetry

New York resident Siobahn Hotaling graduated from Skidmore College with a bachelor of arts in creative writing and poetry. She is a founding member of the New York Artists Collective. A songwriter with two albums within her discography, Siobahn Hotaling is also a poet with a history as a featured poetry slam performer.

Poetry is a creative and relaxing activity that usually lightens people’s mood that writes it or read it. It is also a way of gaining new knowledge and re-discovering yourself as a person. Poems can inspire and educate other people as the poems might reflect exactly what a certain person feels and can’t express aloud. The following are three benefits of writing poetry:

1. Promote Emotional Healing
Poetry provides a safe outlet for people to examine and process their feelings, fostering healing for emotional pain. Magnetic resonance imaging reveals that when people write or read poems, the parts of the brain associated with reward and emotion become stimulated.y

2. Enhance Cognitive Function
Writing poems motivates the writer to learn new words and engages them in determining how to best articulate thoughts and feelings, thereby improving cognitive function.

3. Increase Self-Awareness
Poetry can increase self-awareness by allowing poets to obtain new perspectives and better understand themselves. Poems can make you acknowledge and accept the deepest parts of yourself that you may not even know existed. You can discover new things that you like and can make you reflect and introspect.