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Over the years, we found that many of the clients in our geriatric continuing treatment program were very resistive to using the conventional verbal therapies to make self-disclosures. However, these same clients were telling us in indirect ways that they needed to talk about their feelings in more than a superficial manner. As the nurse clinician in the program, my area of training and expertise lay within the verbal therapy modality; however, as administrator of the program, I saw the need for more expressive therapy groups. Unfortunately, because of budget constraints, we were unable to hire additional staff to run such groups.
At that time, I came across Koch's book on teaching poetry writing in a nursing home (Koch, 1977). His premise was that anyone could write poetry and that one never loses the ability to be creative. His methods seemed straightforward and relatively simple to follow. Although a review of the literature did not reveal any articles on poetry writing in a chronically mentally ill geriatric population, we decided to introduce, on an experimental basis, a poetry writing group as a form of expressive therapy to aid selfdisclosure.
Initially, the clients resisted the idea. They viewed poetry in a very limited way and felt that they did not have the ability to write it. Following the format outlined by Koch, our first task was to broaden their view of poetry to include free verse. We read poems written in free verse by wellknown poets as well as poems written by the elderly in Koch's book.
Once the clients understood that poems did not have to rhyme, we went on to compose group poems. In this way, the effort was shared by all and eased the stress of performance anxiety. The format we used was to introduce a feeling such as "love" or "hate" and ask each member of the group to describe it in one or two words. A staff member recorded the responses for all to see. Everyone's responses were valued and used. When the poem was completed, we read it back to the group and asked for reactions. Because everyone had participated in composing the poem, there was a high level of involvement in the discussion that followed.
Another technique for writing...