The Cayr Edit: Voices in Verse
Each month, we’ll be sharing stories, reflections, and creative perspectives from the people at the heart of our work, whether they’re artists, facilitators, participants, or partners.
We’re starting with a powerful reflection by writer and facilitator Luana Pontes, who led our Voices in Verse poetry workshops during International Women’s Month. In this post, Luana shares her journey facilitating the series, what she learned from the group, and how poetry became a vessel for exploring women’s health, creativity, and community.
“ Each person was so welcoming of others’ stories… it was hard to let go of that space.”
Grab a coffee, take a pause, and enjoy this month’s read.
Hannah
Voices In Verse: Blog Reflection
Leading the Voices in Verse, collaborative poetry series this International Women’s Month was a remarkably rewarding experience. I wasn’t sure where this project was going to end up or how we were going to journey through the process together, but I am beyond proud of all the work our group achieved. There is plenty of admiration for the group’s joyful, warm and collaborative spirit, and even more for the poem we made together. Reading through our final poem, I’m struck by how naturally we eased into each other’s language, folding and assisting one another’s narratives to fit our exploration of Women’s Health.
Week 1 began with planning how we’d create a group poem. I offered two options: call and response, or a poetic collage. The poetic collage form felt more natural, especially as we realised how many conversations were happening simultaneously within the context of Women & Girls’ Rights, Equality and Empowerment in Health. It was able to collect much of the richness of our group sessions, in the short time we had online, rather than being limited by the call-and-response format, which would have required more sessions and further hands-on guidance of the participants.
In Week 2, Hannah led a powerful session on Women’s Health, which drove our poem’s theme. We explored the concept of creative health from both social and medical perspectives and from more abstract, holistic standpoints that touched on personal experiences, self-care practices, and the journeys into womanhood (looking at the physical and emotional conditions in which women evolve). This left us reflecting on how we could compose our art to speak to our wellbeing as unique individuals and as a collective.
Outside of sessions, Hannah and I encouraged the group to contribute to a shared working document, which would then be used as the building blocks of our group poem, which we came to form in Week 3. While prompts were offered to support potential writer’s block, we found the conversations in our sessions were the real catalysts for our reflective writing. Not only did they inspire plenty of poems, pieces of prose and free writing, they allowed us to align our thinking, giving us more insight into what each person was building on or exploring, which in turn congealed that online safe space we returned to each week and made working together easier.
Though the project had strict boundaries around preserving each participant’s original language (ensuring nothing was altered without permission), it also offered a sense of freedom for some participants who weren’t used to using ludic writing practices in their work by challenging the extent of their creative skills. Many had never written a poetic collage before, but shared feelings inspired them to continue experimenting or to share the form with others in their close circles.
After the sessions ended, I found myself imagining how it would have felt to share that physical space together, rather than having shared it digitally. I was moved by witnessing many women from a range of backgrounds and ages across the UK come together to hold a space for poetry and women’s health. Each person was so welcoming of others’ stories and discourses. As a facilitator, it was hard to let go of that space and move on to the next task because I was so captivated by the conversations bouncing between us.
Even now, after the official end, participants are expanding the project’s life in other ways: one shared a voice recording of the poem after being admired for her reading voice, and another has offered to create paintings and cover art inspired by our poem for Cayr’s Creative Health magazine.
What’s touched me deeply has been witnessing everybody’s transformation in four weeks. From hesitant writers unsure about poetry, to confident collaborators making bold decisions about line placement, expression, and layout, many left with feelings like part of a new writing community.
This was my first time as a commissioned facilitator, and the experience taught me a lot about myself and about my writing practice. I’m proud to have held a space that felt welcoming, comforting, and full of expression. I valued not only leading but also participating in the writing and discussions. I didn’t want to be seen as the sole expert, and preferred learning alongside everyone else to help manage the collaborative environment. However, I’ve understood that I need to balance better when to contribute and when to step back in facilitating, when to move tasks forward and manage our time more effectively to produce faster results for the group.
If I were to improve the structure of the project, I’d add another week or two for further editing. Though we succeeded in building our poem and restructuring everyone’s independent lines to fit our collective narrative, the group really wanted time to play with layout, colour, and typography to implement visual storytelling more deeply. Our final session jumped straight into final verse edits, but the poem still feels unfinished in that artistic sense and required more space to breathe visually. And in that, I hope this isn’t a farewell, but a see you soon to our participants.
Luana Pontes