Poetry and Practice

“Poetry contains almost all you need to know about life. This trinity of sound, sense and sensibility, to me gives voice to experience like no other literary art form…without poetry I would have found life less comprehensible, less bearable and infinitely less enjoyable.”

Josephine Hart

These moving sentiments were written by author and Mullingar childhood friend Josephine Hart (Lady Saatchi). I am taking the liberty of adopting them to introduce this Poetry and Practice section to our website. Poetry celebrates the full range of human emotions, the human experience of joy and sorrow and provides consolation and inspiration in times of uncertainty.  Poetry helps us make sense of our own emotional responses to children and their families, sustain empathy, deepen our engagement in our work, explore concepts and discover solutions. To fully experience any poem, we must stop whatever we’re doing and give it our full and gracious attention, start to finish, just as the poet did when writing it.  So, we hope that the poems we feature below - poems you choose - can give all of us a much-needed space to reflect on our lives and challenge us to take things to a deeper level. Learn more.