Poetry for Personal Development

This paper aims to focus on the importance of poetry in personal development, understanding the self and its capacity for self-expression, usually through the creation of new poetry. What is the value of poetry for learning and development and what are its uses in education today? What role can the poem play not only in formal education, but also in personal development and well-being beyond the classroom? How might we develop our teaching practices to access such benefits? These are all important questions to address if poetry is to continue to form a central part of the teaching of English literature in our schools and universities. However, the value of poetry in learning and development is often taken for granted: assumptions about the necessity of formative encounters with ?great? literature overlap with anecdotal evidence about the transformative power of stories. Consider the following statements about the value of poetry and its use. Poetry matters because it is a central example of the use human beings make of words to explore and understand. Like other forms of writing we value, it lends shape and meaning to our experiences and helps us to move confidently in the world we know and then to step beyond it. Finally, poems are authentic material that due to their appealing structure, rhythm and sound suggest a quick and enjoyable way of learning new vocabulary, revising grammar, improving pronunciation and promoting creativity. Poetry also gives teachers the opportunity to teach emotional intelligence, that is, to discriminate and label different emotions. All that being said, poetry should be given the same chance as other forms of literature.