Reading Poetry with Young Adults by Rachel Eskesen

I could say that poetry saves me, and daily.*

I remember the first time I read a poem that moved me. The poem was Margaret Atwood’s “They Eat Out” and I was 17 years old. Decades later, I still can’t explain fully what it is that resonated with my teenage self in Atwood’s compilation of images and words strung together; and yet, this poem captured my imagination in a way that felt like being set free. Poetry invited me to participate, activated my creative thought, asked me to dream of possibilities, and made me feel like I was part of something bigger than myself. I’ve been in love with reading poetry ever since.

In my role as country coordinator for Young Adults in Global Mission Central Europe, I have the privilege of sharing this love of poetry with the young adults with whom I serve. Each year, my spouse and I welcome around 10 young people to serve alongside communities in Hungary and Serbia. We guide them throughout the year and try our best to provide a tool kit of sorts for their year of mission. We invite them into vulnerability, encourage them to ask for help, celebrate successes along the way and name and claim the ways that we see God working within them and within their communities.

These young people courageously follow God’s call to serve in new communities, learning new languages, and restructuring the dominant USA culture’s idea of being measured by your productivity. Instead, we encourage the young adults with whom we serve to see the world through relationship, connection, and community. One of the keys to walking this path is through reading poetry together. Poetry demands participation: poetry is an invitation to community. The meaning of the poem doesn’t reside only in the author’s intention, nor only in the reader’s response, and certainly not in those slippery things that we call words—but meaning is made in the relationship between what is in the text (the words), what is behind the text (the original context) and what is in front of the text (the reader and our thoughts.) Every time I would read a poem aloud to our group of young adults, the reaction of the young adults, the sounds of the nature or city around us, the words themselves would come together for meaning-making. We discovered a piece of truth together.

One aspect of reading poetry with young adults I’ve loved is how it creates space to listen. Poetry creates space for us to listen to each other, to God, and to the needs of the greater world. Through reading poetry together, we can even find more about ourselves—which poems hit us, which images are painted incandescent in our minds, what brings us to tears. Poetry not only connects us to the larger story of God’s love for God’s creation, but also creates a voice for grief and joy and pain and love to sing in chorus, verse by verse. Poetry has the possibility to pull us outside of ourselves and hold up a mirror to ourselves all at the same time. Much like a piece of visual art, or a piece of music, a piece of poetry transports us and connects us.

I suppose, in the end, my hope with reading poetry with young adults is that we all have an experience of being seen and feeling connected. Reading poetry with young adults also means inspiring them to write poetry themselves. Different than a journal or diary which can be focused on facts, records and concrete memories (though it doesn’t need be), creating poetry is a chance to capture a feeling that reverberates beyond words. During our closing time together, after a year of service, we invite the young adults to put together a collection of images, sounds, smells, feelings from their year. This poem creates a picture of their experience, shadowed and highlighted by the head nods, sighs, and smiles of the group as they read their poem out loud. We accompany each other in this journey toward a richer understanding of ourselves, each other and the world.

We have so many words to describe the concept of accompaniment in Global Mission. However, I often find that the best meaning making is found in the space beyond words. Accompaniment is a lived experience in community. Reading poetry together invites us to practice this meaning making of what is observable and what is intangible. In reading poetry together throughout the year, those poems become attached to our experiences. Returning to a poem from a time and place invites us to reflect on who we were when we read it, a snapshot into the moments we live that pile together to create our life.

Margaret Atwood’s poem has never hit me the same in the years since as it did that Fall day in Junior High School English class. However, I can still feel the reverberations of truth that hit me then—something like a melody of a song that you find yourself humming though the words have escaped. There are many poets that I’ve loved over the years, each for a season of life. And if I’m lucky enough to have the chance to stay on this earth long enough for a few years more around the sun-I’ll look back at the poems read together with these young adults and feel a connection to them, the people with whom we serve, the place we shared for a brief time. Poetry has the possibility of fostering a lasting connection with people and places. There is truth in poetry-it is the kind of truth shakes us, lifts us up, and meets us at the well under the midday sun. In short, this truth reminds us to pay attention, to be present, to feel we are connected, to know we are not alone.

*Inspired by a line from Mary Oliver’s Poem “When I am Among Trees” – the original line: “I would almost say that they save me, and daily.”

The Rev. Rachel Eskesen is an ordained minister of Word and Sacrament in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). In August 2015, she began serving as the Coordinator for the Young Adults in Global Mission Central Europe program, a ministry of ELCA Global Mission. Before attending seminary at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, Pr. Rachel earned a B.A. in English Literature from California Lutheran University and a M.A. in English literature from the University of Leeds. Pr. Rachel serves in Central Europe with her spouse and best friend, the Rev. Zachary Courter.