This isn’t your grandma’s poetry, bound by meter and rhyme schemes. This is poetry with muscles that can lift people. This is Poetry Heals.
The Manitou Springs-based nonprofit has been around since 2015. It’s mostly known here for welcoming everyone to its summertime Poetry and Pottery sessions, hosted in Soda Springs Park since 2016.
Those will continue, but founder Molly Wingate has stepped down as executive director. She’ll still be around as its board of directors president under new ED Sara Gallagher.
She’s been a poet since discovering e.e. cummings in junior high.
“Suddenly I had permission to write in a way in a way that made sense to me; before that, I was frustrated because I felt constrained by conventional poetic structure,” said Gallagher, who worked for the Pikes Peak Library District for three and a half years, two and a half years as supervisor of the Manitou Springs and Ute Pass branches.
She’s been involved with Poetry Heals since 2019, first as a volunteer, then a writing mentor, a contract grant writer and board member.
For Wingate, Mother Goose nursery rhymes were the eye-opener to poetry’s possibilities.
WE JUST ASK PEOPLE to write from the heart.
“They felt fun and made me happy. I had to memorize poems in third grade, and I have bits of them still in my memory. In junior high and high school, I used writing poetry as my own therapy and I felt better. And I just kept writing,” she recalled.
They’re on a mission to impart those feeling and experiences to others.
Gallagher mentioned “hundreds of studies” that have cited the mental and physical benefits of writing practices such as poetry.
“At Poetry Heals, we try to give people an easy, non-judgmental entry point for exploring their feelings and their truths, without being forced to share what they wrote. But we do also know that when people share their poetry with others, it can help us all to feel less alone in the challenges and struggles we face. Poetry does heal,” Gallagher said.
The nonprofit presents poetry-writing workshops throughout El Paso County, but most are collaborations with other organizations for private sessions that help participants process their stress and trauma.
A recent series of workshops took place at Manitou’s Flying Pig Farm for School District 14 students, and Manitou Springs Elementary School fourth-graders went through the Poetry Heals experience.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Poetry Heals offered workshops to Westside CARES volunteers and MSES teachers.
“We just ask people to write from the heart. When people realize that no one is going to look over their shoulder or judge their writing in any way, you can see them open up to the experience,” Gallagher said.
“Poetry can be anything you want or need it to be. Writing poetry is free, and always there for you when you need it.”
Wingate talked about a donor who thinks Poetry Heals is a good idea, but is not a writer. So he attended a workshop and started his creative process.
“When he finished writing, he almost hopped up and down in his seat he was so excited. ‘I wrote a poem! Hey, I wrote a poem!’ He beamed,” she said.
Gallagher has witnessed people realizing that their “inner landscape” has new worlds they can discover through poetry.
“We get to watch people grow more at ease with themselves and more excited about their possibilities. We build relationships with people and create the occasion for people to have community,” Wingate said.
“Folks grow more peaceful, and they write more and more honestly and more hopefully about their lives.”
Nothing will change with Poetry Heals programs, and the dedicated board of directors will ensure that it will continue to grow. Additional people are always welcome to serve on the very active and involved board.
Right now, they’re OK for writing mentors, but Poetry Heals is receiving so many requests for expanded and new programs, it’s hard to keep up with the demand.
“We could fill every waking hour of every week with workshops, and we hope to someday be able to do so. Our constraint is finding sufficient funding to do everything that we are asked to do,” Gallagher said.
Thanks to individual donors, corporate sponsors and foundation grants, the volunteers and part-time paid mentors can offer these life-changing experiences, but they always need more.
Gallagher just wants to honor Wingate’s vision and help Poetry Heals expand its reach.
“This work is close to my heart and I’m grateful that Molly developed her ideas into a nonprofit that makes such an impact,” Gallagher said.
As for Wingate, she plans to read and write more, play the piano, take classes at the Manitou Art Center and continue her work in the Quaker community. She and her husband, Brian Murphy, a semi-retired lawyer, hope to visit their two sons and their partners more often, see baseball games at every Major League Stadium and visit every national park.
She’s earned every minute of her retirement.
Contact Poetry Heals at www.poetryheals.org, sara@poetryheals.org or 719- 685-4114.