Poetry helps: Poetry as a means of creative reflection and learning in social work

In this chapter, we consider how the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic were met with recourse to the arts, focusing on our own engagement with poetry as a case example. Covid-19 has brought unanticipated illness and death to huge numbers of people across the world. It has also disrupted support networks, prevented physical contact between loved ones and undermined any sense of safety in the world. The restrictions designed to limit the spread of the virus also limited exposure to the arts at a time when people needed them more than ever. While cinemas have re-opened in the UK at the time of writing, theatres remain closed and many major arts and music festivals have been cancelled. Poetry, an accessible, dependable and easily shared form of art, blossomed in this socially distanced context. Poems told people stories we could bear to hear and comforted those of us suffering grief, loss, anxiety or illness.