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Welcome to Revisionary Arts

Revisionary Arts is a nonprofit that offers poetry workshops for medically and socially vulnerable communities, caregivers and healthcare providers, and the community at large. Based on the principles of narrative medicine, we design and deliver population-specific workshops that employ poetry as a portal to discussion, reflection, introspection, and the subjective re-framing of narratives.

Thus, the mission of Revisionary Arts is to foster and maintain wellness by meaningfully embedding poetic medicine into healthcare and social support systems—in other words, creating spaces in which participants feel safe and supported while exploring their vulnerabilities, illnesses, and traumas through poetic reading, discussion, and writing.

Through our participant and patient-centered applications of narrative medicine, Revisionary Arts is re-visioning care through poetry.

Why Poetry?

Like any form of writing, poetry is a means of articulating our experiences, reclaiming our agency, and communicating our truths. It is both a container for our suffering as well as a portal to a deeper understanding of it.

We privilege the poetic medium because of its lyrical appeal and its ancient roots, its association with the marginalized and its malleability in the face of personal and social change.

Community Gratitude

“Poetic therapy led me to a reflective space of encounter and mutual release between body and soul/heart/spirit where I was able to get out of my own way and connect with the necessary emotions and words.”

~Roxanne Doty, workshop participant, writer, and lover of cats. 

“I look forward to this event every month. It is very empowering, and I feel safe and validated. So grateful this opportunity came into my life and I hope it continues for a long time.”

~Workshop Participant

“I was intimidated to join, but the workshop was very welcoming, and I didn’t have to put myself out of my comfort zone if I didn’t want to.”

~Workshop Participant

Revisionary Arts is made possible (in part) by the Academy of American Poets, with funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.