European Journal for Biblio/Poetry Therapy

Editor’s Introduction

... we do not feel at home/ in our interpretations of the world
(Rainer Maria Rilke: Duino Elegies, 1st elegie, trans. Martyn Crucefix)

Life is a constant search for belonging and meaning. Biblio/poetry therapy offers safe places for supportive, helping relationships and communities, encounters and self-reflections where people have the opportunity to tackle their own subject matters. In recent years, during the most hopeless times of the pandemic and war – as Rilke says in his 1st Duino Elegie – people felt insecure and didn’t know where to turn for help in searching for belonging and meaning. Because of these collective crises, people have become more focused on big existential issues that make people aware of their own existence and encourage them to clarify their relationship to fundamental questions and values leading to personal change and a more authentic life.

In recent times, crises and challenges facing our world and our daily lives have made various forms of therapeutic and mental health support methods more popular, including art therapies. Specifically, biblio/poetry therapy is more in demand than ever.

In Europe, the first association for biblio/poetry therapy was founded in 1981 in Finland. Since then, an organisational, training and service framework for biblio/poetry therapy has been and is being developed in many other countries. Some Hungarian, Finnish, British, Italian, Lithuanian, Croatian and Slovakian colleagues have been in contact for years. They have joint projects, training courses, and some of them meet at various professional events online and offline. But never before have they come together on a larger scale to meet face-to-face and learn more about the work of colleagues from other countries, to exchange experiences and to join forces in the hope of developing future joint projects, research and training standards.

In 2023, we decided to organise our first European conference in Budapest in early October 2024, titled 'Encounters, Paths and Challenges in Troubled Times', with the main objective of bringing together participants and exchanging ideas to start building a strong European network focusing on biblio/poetry therapy. The end result exceeded our expectations, with 136 participants from 27 countries, not only from Europe, sharing their theoretical ideas and practical methods of using biblio/poetry therapy. We are launching this journal with the intention of publishing the rich theoretical and practical results and methods gained from the joint effort of our new network, so that the field can develop and we can learn from each other's professional work and experiences.

It has been my great pleasure and honor to serve as the host for the first conference held in Budapest, and I am also grateful for the opportunity to serve as the first editor-in-chief of the European Journal for Biblio/Poetry Therapy.

The European Journal for Biblio/Poetry Therapy, sponsored and edited by our cooperating associations and practitioners engaged in biblio/poetry therapy, will be an online, open access, international and interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal. The journal welcomes original contributions that present new knowledge about the role of language arts and biblio/poetry therapy in education, healthcare, and community building settings. Papers are welcomed from researchers and practitioners working with language arts and metaphors in the fields of biblio/poetry therapy such as classical bibliotherapy, therapeutic writing modalities, and narrative approaches. Papers from researchers and practitioners who combine biblio/poetry therapy with other expressive arts techniques and modalities are also welcomed.  We intend to publish theoretical, empirical and experimental research that aims to make a contribution to our understanding of the theory and practice of poetry therapy and bibliotherapy.

In the first issue of the first volume, we publish edited and reviewed versions of the theoretical presentations and practical workshops of the Budapest conference. The keynote speech by Juhani Ihanus (Finland) will be followed by theoretical papers by Mariana Casale (United Kingdom), Thor Magnus Tangerås (Norway), Igor Žunkovič (Slovenia), and then by insights into practical applications as approached by Emica Calogjera Rogić (Croatia), Anne Taylor (United Kingdom), Petra Partanen (Finland), and Renata Martinec (Croatia). In addition to the excellent work of the authors, special thanks go to the volunteer anonymous reviewers who put a lot of time and effort into making this issue a professional quality publication. The cover image of the first issue is an art work created by Anita Lencsés (Hungary) who was a member of my 100-hour person-centred biblio/poetry therapy group in 2021. She expresses through the spirit of kintsugi what the method of biblio/poetry therapy and a supportive community gives to people. This drawing is an important symbolic representation for all of us. Although the approach can be diverse, the fact that the method of biblio/poetry therapy offers order, structure, and emotional support always remains common.

Wishing you a rewarding, inspirational and flourishing reading experience,

Judit Béres

Editor-in-chief of the European Journal for Biblio/Poetry Therapy
President of the Hungarian Association for Biblio/Poetry Therapy
Associate Professor of the University of Pécs, Hungary