Poetry for Personal Power is a program coordinated by the Heartland Consumer Network, Missouri’s Statewide Mental Health Consumer Network. We are an advocacy organization of people with mental illness who are working to change the mental health system to a recovery oriented community of hope. We are working in partnership with Wellness Wordworks, the American Jazz Museum, Custom Color, and Park University. Funding was provided by the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The main idea of this program is that people can use wellness tools such as exercise, spirituality, mindfulness, volunteering, gardening, or of course, poetry, to get through tough times in their lives. We are gathering stories and poems about what people do in positive ways that helps them build friendships and feel better. See http://poetryforpersonalpower.com for a full program description, with video links and stories about how people get through tough times in their lives.
- This program is a stigma reduction campaign designed to share the information that people can use wellness tools such as poetry, exercise, spirituality, mindfulness, and community involvement to build friendships and get through their worst times. This is based on SAMHSA’s “What a Difference a Friend Makes” campaign and is targeted toward people that are 18 – 25 years old.
- We will be hosting 10 “Poetry for Personal Power” information exchange session at First Fridays in the Crossroads District of Kansas City, one of the busiest art walks in the country. We will have a rolling bicycle based health fair display booth. We will be soliciting mental health stories and freestyle poems made up on the spot on the streets of Kansas City. We will also be selling art work from mental health consumers and giving people recovery based mental health information.
- We will also host 10 university based “Poetry for Personal Power” open mic contests at universities throughout Missouri. These are performances, workshops, and poetry contests all combined into one evening or weekend event. We have funding for feature poets as well as cash prizes for the best poems about overcoming adversity in our lives.
Here is a video explaining why the program was designed. This video shows Poetry for Personal Power Program Manger Corinna West during a feature at Jazz Poetry Jams at the Blue Room at 18th and Vine in Kansas City, MO.
