Toward a poetics of therapy: A response to Michal Simchon's 'words from the brink of the chasm'

This is a complementary piece in response to Michal Simchon's observations about the integration of bibliotherapy and narrative therapy in 'Words From the Brink of the Chasm' (2013). I make some suggestions about what might be called the poetics of therapy. In particular, how poetry can enliven therapeutic conversation; how poems and a poet's passion for precise word choice, help guard against stale imagery or description and can aid in locating vivid descriptions for lived experience that might otherwise be practically beyond words. Based on Simchon's discussion of free-writing in groups and Bachelards' Poetics of Reverie (1969), I offer a re-imagining of White and Epston's (1990) landscape of action and consciousness.