Nigerian poet and journalist Fortune Omosola says poetry is a lifeline that people can use to find their way in a digital yet inundated world.
In his newly released book, Poetry Is Therapeutic, Omosola argues that verse is more than artful language. To him, it is medicine for the bruised interior life. It is a way to name what aches before it calcifies into silence. And, perhaps most urgently, it is a practice available to anyone willing to sit still long enough to listen.
“Words are not merely vessels for meaning,” Omosola writes in the opening chapter. “They are salves, scalpels, maps, and lanterns.” That thesis at once poetic and practical anchors a book that blends literary reflection, African oral tradition, psychology and hands-on writing exercises into what reads like a field guide for emotional survival.
Unlike conventional poetry collections that foreground the author’s own voice, Poetry Is Therapeutic functions as a workshop in print. It is part manifesto, part manual, part meditation.
Across five expansive chapters, Omosola, a digital broadcast journalist as well, leads readers through themes of naming, embodiment, grief, mindfulness and memory. Each section combines cultural commentary with step-by-step prompts designed to help readers craft their own “healing poems.”
The approach is deliberate. Omosola is not writing for literary elites; he is writing for people who have never considered themselves poets.
The dedication makes that clear. The book is addressed to “those who survived quietly” and “the child who needed words before courage arrived.” It is an invitation to those who have felt overwhelmed by emotion but under-equipped with language.
One of the book’s most striking arguments is that the body tells stories long before the mouth does. In a chapter titled “The Body Holds the Story,” Omosola contends that tension, breath, scars and heartbeat form a kind of pre-verbal archive.
He draws from both African and European traditions to support the claim. Yoruba talking drums, he notes, mimic the tonal rhythms of language, turning vibration into communication. European poetic meter, from iambic rhythms to structured verse, echoes the cadence of breath and walking.
In both traditions, poetry is embodied.
“The body keeps the score,” Omosola writes, adapting a familiar therapeutic phrase, “but poetry rewrites it.”
Readers are then guided through practical exercises: mapping tension onto a drawn outline of the body, writing from the perspective of a scar, describing breath as landscape. The aim is not aesthetic perfection but emotional articulation.
By lowering the barrier to entry, Omosola reframes poetry as an accessible practice rather than an academic discipline.
The emotional center of the book lies in its exploration of grief. In “Wounds and Windows Grief in Lyric Form,” Omosola examines how poetry can hold loss without rushing resolution.
He references Western elegiac traditions alongside African communal mourning rituals, contrasting solitary churchyard meditations with call-and-response laments where grief is shared aloud. The comparison underscores a central idea: there is no single correct way to mourn.
Instead of offering tidy stages, Omosola encourages open endings. A grief poem, he suggests, does not have to solve sorrow. It only has to witness it.
Readers are prompted to identify a “moment of rupture,” describe the physical sensation of loss, and translate it into image, a cracked mirror, a trembling bird, an empty chair still warm. The final instruction is telling: leave space. Let the question linger.
In a culture that often demands quick recovery, that refusal of closure feels quietly defiant.
Outside grief, the book turns to attention itself as a therapeutic act. Drawing inspiration from contemplative poets like Mary Oliver and mystical figures such as Rumi, Omosola frames mindfulness not as trend but as tradition.
African pastoral scenes: a herder reading wind and cattle, a grandmother grinding pepper in rhythm, are placed alongside European landscape poetry. In each, the lesson is the same: healing begins with noticing.
Readers are instructed to sit for two minutes, observe a single detail: a leaf, a tile, a ray of light and write from that anchor.
The simplicity is intentional. Omosola insists that poetry does not require elaborate metaphor. It requires attention.
In its closing pages, Omosola returns to the body. The heartbeat becomes drum, the breath becomes line break, the page becomes shelter. There is no triumphant crescendo, only an invitation to continue.
Place your hand on your chest. Listen. Write.
Buy the book HERE
