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Mary Sun, MD
About
My Approach
Areas of Focus
Couples & Families
Services & Fees
FAQWrite to me
My approach

Poetry therapy

A poem can give shape to a feeling before you are ready to explain it, and that shape often makes it possible to come closer. Form and image can make what is hard to say a little more approachable.

I am a Certified Poetry Therapist (CPT) through the International Federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy — a modern credential for an ancient practice. The Greeks made Apollo the god of both poetry and medicine, and the physician Soranus prescribed comedy and tragedy to patients according to their moods. In the twentieth century, Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy took up a related idea: that meaning, and the words we find for it, can help us heal. I bring that tradition into my work.

Hands resting open on a book at a wooden table
In practice

Usually we read a poem or passage together and talk about what it opens. The text becomes a third presence in the room, and sometimes its words reach a part of you that you had not quite understood before. From there, I may offer a prompt or two to write in response, in session or on your own time, and see where your words go.

When the timing feels right, I may give what I think of as a poetry prescription — a piece to read and sit with. We can also bring in any prose, poetry, or piece of art that has stayed with you.

Where it fits

This is especially helpful for people who are articulate by profession or by nature — writers, artists, physicians, lawyers, academics. Many have found that saying something well is not the same as feeling it differently. Some have been in therapy before, able to describe the problem beautifully without anything changing.

You do not need to be a writer or a poet, or even think of yourself as someone who particularly likes poetry. You only have to be willing to listen for yourself in something new.