Collecting stories and poems about overcoming adversity

Poetry for Personal Power is a program coordinated by the Heartland Consumer Network, Missouri’s Statewide Advocacy Network for people who have encountered the mental health system.  We are collecting stories from young people and poems about overcoming adversity. This program is a collaboration among Wellness Wordworks, the American Jazz Museum, Park University, Metropolitan Community Colleges, and UMKC. 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.

Poetry for Personal Power gathering poems about overcoming adversity at Park University

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 overcoming adversity and what people do in positive ways that helps them build friendships and feel better. See the video links and our event pages for what we have heard from people on the streets and in universities in Missouri.

We are hosting 15 open mic events with cash prizes at two and four year colleges and universities across Missouri to see which school has the best poems about overcoming adversity. This is the second year of our program, and our main messages come from our student evaluations from last year. Of 121 Total evaluations collected,

• 55 students said the most useful part was hearing the stories of other students, and how they’d overcome adversity
• 19 said they were very surprised at the talent on their campus
• 40 said they wanted to write more or get more involved in poetry
• 18 said they were surprised that their fellow students had so many struggles
• 29 said they were interested in helping their friends through troubles
• 16 said they’d like a bigger audience next time

Here are two of best videos from last year with stories and poems about overcoming adversity:

Andrew Holland from Penn Valley Community College and his poems about overcoming adversity:

Eric Pagder at First Friday in the KC Crossroads talking about how disc golf can build friendships, be a great source of exercise, help get you outside, and be a moving party.

This website is an explanation of the power of lots of different kind of wellness tools. Poems about overcoming adversity can be a powerful way to share that all young people go through tough times and emotional distress is a normal and temporary part of the human experience.  We are promoting young adult engagement in the mental health civil rights movement in order to build more sustainable ways of helping people who are having struggles.  We want to provide a venue for connecting with friends and our own strengths to transform our worst times into powerful, world shaping human potential.

Here is a video explaining the inspiration for this program of sharing poems about overcoming adversity. 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.