Using Poetry to Talk About Mental Health
Photo from Breaking the Boy Code
By Jonathon Reed
Trigger warning: Suicide ideation
Five years ago, I had my first experience supporting a young person who was thinking about suicide. After talking for a while, he told me to change the subject. “You’re making me cry,” he said.
“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.
“I’m not a girl,” he responded, “and I’m not a baby.”
It was around that time that I started writing spoken-word poetry. I had loosely followed a poetry slam at a local cooperative coffeehouse during university, and had tried my hand at it a few times. I hadn’t thought that much about it. All of a sudden, however, I had something to say.
I’ve slowly continued writing since then, and last year I started performing for boys. Over the past school year, I’ve had five different boys who have heard me perform reach out to me to ask if they can use my poetry as a source text for school assignments. With this in mind, I looked into a research article about boys and poetry written by Christopher Greig and Janette Hughes. “Poetry can contribute to fostering a critical consciousness in boys,” they wrote, “in order to help them disrupt notions of hegemonic masculinity.”
“Educators should incorporate literature that disrupts and addresses the limitations imposed by regimes of normalization and enforced gender polarization, while at the same time provides emancipation and transformation to students by offering up versions of human relationships that are egalitarian, equitable and that foster empathy for and understandings of others. Those are the poems boys should know.”
The boy I supported with suicide ideation five years ago recently turned 16. Across Canada, however, suicide was the leading cause of death for teenage boys in 2018. It’s more important than ever that we’re supporting boys in getting real about their mental health—for Mental Health Week, perhaps. This poem is a tool to help make that happen.
I still find it scary to perform poetry. I have to be vulnerable in what I’m sharing, and I have to trust in those listening to me to take it seriously. But each time I do it, I grow to believe that this is the kind of poem boys should know—and this is the kind of bravery we as educators need to role model.
ICYMI This Week
Misogyny is often behind the acts we deem ‘senseless’ (The Globe and Mail)
An Argument in Favor of Video Games From a Quarantined Mother (Instagram)
5 Ways to Model Healthy Masculinity at Home (Think or Blue)
Written by Next Gen Men Program Manager Jonathon Reed as part of Learnings & Unlearnings, a weekly newsletter reflecting on our experiences working with boys and young men. Subscribe to get Learnings & Unlearnings delivered to your email inbox.