Papers from the First BPA Poetic Mind Seminar: 7th June 2025
“Ye Are Many, They Are Few: A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Power of Political Poetry”
Poetry has always been a weapon of resistance, a medium for protest, and a beacon of hope. From Homer’s Iliad to W.H. Auden, from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s rallying cries to JJ Bola’s contemporary urgent verses on migration and displacement, political poetry, has shaped and reshaped the human experience of power, injustice, and collective action.
These papers and poetry readings from JJ Bola examine the transformative power of political poetry through the lens of psychoanalysis, exploring how it resonates in the unconscious and mobilises movements for change.
JJ Bola (Poet) – J J Bola
Other Papers Presented on 7th June
Mary Adams (Psychoanalyst) – Poetry Re-imagining | Mary Adams
David Morgan (Psychoanalyst) – The Poetic Mind Seminar Inaugural | David Morgan
Chair: Catherine McKisack (Psychoanalyst) – Freud and Poetry | Catherine McKisack
Coming Soon
The Second Poetic Mind Seminar
‘This is not for Tears: Thinking’‐ Poetry and Psychoanalysis in Orbit’
Saturday 19th July 2025
11-1pm
Online, via Zoom only
This is the second in a series of dialogues on the capacity for poetry and psychoanalysis to articulate the internal world.
Abstract
This paper has been five years in the making, since I have run a series of seminars about poetry and psychoanalysis at the Tavistock Clinic, for non-clinical students. The title comes from a poem by John Berryman, (1914-72) Dream Song 29 (1964 p.77), and it sums up how in this seminar we have tried both to feel what we feel in an authentic way when reading a poem, and think about the links it may have with the central core of the students’ study, which is psychoanalysis.
Are the two disciplines in any way complementary? Can unconscious phantasy be tapped into via the medium of poetry? In this paper I hope to show that while there are profound differences between poetry and psychoanalysis there are also similarities, as the work with students has highlighted; I will also include three brief clinical vignettes.
Future topics
Metaphor and Meaning: Examining how metaphors function in both poetry and therapeutic dialogue to reveal unconscious content.
The Poetics of Therapy: Investigating the role of narrative and in psychoanalytic practice.
Language and Healing: Exploring how the expressive qualities of language in poetry can inform therapeutic techniques aimed at emotional processing and integration.
By delving into these areas, we could illuminate the rich, symbiotic relationship between poetic expression and psychoanalytic exploration, offering deeper insights into the human condition through the lens of language
