Spoken Futurities

The disciplines of poetry, prophecy, and psychology have the potential to meet at creative intersections, bringing forth futures that would otherwise have been un-imagined. We’ll discuss the psychological aspects of self-making, where imagination is seen as an active praxis, moving from strengths-based approaches beyond symptom reduction. Akin to psychological practice, in poetry, we learn to inhabit a safe space where we interrogate the wild and unknown layers of our consciousness. Identity, then, is a salient theme threading through the fields of psychology and poetry as individuals enter and engage in a healing journey, striving to wrest from the cruel conditioning of society a personal origin story, authentic voice and expression that offers their genuine self back to them. Poetry and psychology allow us to give voice to a fragmented self-concept and bravely integrate the exiled pieces of ourselves. James Baldwin, who transgressed the delineations of poet, writer, and prophet, wrote, “He (the artist) is also enjoined to conquer the great wilderness of himself. The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, and blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.”