Coming Together and Promoting Empowerment: Building Community Through Challenge and Change
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
Naomi Shihab Nye, "Kindness" from The Words Under the Words. Copyright © 1994 by The Eighth Mountain Press; 1st edition. Reprinted by permission of Naomi Shihab Nye.
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Welcome
The National Association for Poetry Therapy, Inc. (NAPT) is a nonprofit, international, and interdisciplinary organization promoting growth and healing through written language, symbol, and story. Members represent a wide range of professional experience, schools of therapy, educational affiliations, artistic disciplines, and other fields of training in both mental and physical health. In addition to its professional membership, NAPT welcomes all people who are interested in the power of the healing word. We hope you will be able to learn from the many workshops, lectures, and informal networking opportunities available. We trust you will be inspired to absorb, reflect, and write. Please visit us on Facebook, Instagram or www.poetrytherapy.org to contact the NAPT Board and for more information about NAPT.
I wish to thank the entire Board for being able to work together to ensure that NAPT grows and thrives as we move into the future. I am deeply honored to have this opportunity to work with such a dynamic and talented group of individuals. I want to thank all the pre- and post-workshop, regular workshop, and special events presenters for help shaping this year’s conference program. I also wish to thank the Proposal Review Committee, which consisted of Sherry Reiter, Karen vanMeenen and Jenna Robinson, who worked together to select the wonderful workshops offered at this year’s conference and our Public Relations & Social Media Chair Cynthia Holloway-Kelvin for her help and support. I particularly want to thank Barbara Kriesberg and Nick Mazza for their support, dedication and leadership, but most of all for their unwavering patience, kindness and friendship.
Catherine Tanguis, MA, NBCT, CAPF
Conference Chair
About registration.
- Be sure to log in before you register to receive your member conference discounts.
- You can join NAPT prior to registering for the conference to receive your discounts.
- Problems with your password? Request a link to change yours or log in with Google or Facebook.
- You will be asked to select your workshop choices for the main conference.
- If you registered for the Full Conference, you will have access to ALL events from 4:00 on Thursday through the closing on Saturday evening.
- WORKSHOP LIMITS: Some of our workshops have participant limits. If a session has reached its limit, it will be designated as FULL on the registration page. Do not proceed to register for it.
- You will receive a confirmation email once your registration is complete. Please save that email and your registration details and print out a copy to bring with you to the conference. You will need to know what workshops you registered for.
- The week prior to the conference, you may be contacted by your workshop presenter with instructions or ancillary materials, so be on the lookout.
- REFERRAL DISCOUNT: If you refer a new member or attendee, you will receive a $25 rebate off your registration fees once that person is registered. You can use the referral section during your registration process or contact our bookkeeper Mary Johns at naptbkkr@poetrytherapy.org.
- REFUNDS: No refunds after March 15, 2023.
- For general questions about the conference or registration, please contact naptconferencechair@gmail.com.
- Please have the Conference at a Glance handy for reference. You can download it here. (Our Session Description Page contains more information on the workshops as well as our presenter bios. Click here to view)
- Click here to become a member in order to receive conference discount prices.
- Click here to view our Conference Registration Prices.
- Click here to begin Registration. REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED.
About our conference.
- Our conference features workshops in four tracks: clinical/health care, educational setting, social justice, and spirituality. The track will be included in the workshop description.
- SCHOLARSHIPS: NAPT is offering five $200 scholarships. We encourage first time attendees to apply, particularly those experiencing financial difficulties and for whom the registration fees would be a hardship. Click here to learn more.
- PEER HOURS: Those working towards certification in Poetry Therapy are required to log peer hours. Only workshops with currently credentialed presenters can provide peer hours. Where applicable, the workshop description will include the amount of peer hours that can be credited towards certification with the International Federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy. To learn more about certification, a Credentialing Information Workshop will be offered on Friday. You can learn more about certification here.
- BOOK SALE: Please check out the wide array of books for sale in our virtual bookstore including those of our Keynote Poet Naomi Shihab Nye and other valuable contributors in the field of Poetry Therapy. These are useful resources to add to your library. You will also have the opportunity to support an independent Denver Bookstore: Tattered Cover! Click here to go to the Book Sale Page. Please remember to bring any book(s) to the conference that you wished to have signed.
- CONFERENCE LOCATION & HOTEL GROUP RATE: Our Conference will be held at Embassy Suites by Hilton Denver Central Park and we have a room block reserved for March 28, 2023 through April 2, 2023. Click here to book your room.
- For those needing an NAPT Certificate of Attendance for Continuing Education for any main event and/or keynote, you will receive it at the conclusion of your workshop from your workshop facilitator. For mental health licensure renewal, educators and others needing Continuing Education for their professional development, you will receive from your workshop facilitator Certificates of Attendance for specific clinical or education focused workshops. These certificates, along with the conference program describing the workshops and events, should be submitted for CEU approval.
- We believe it is important to create a safe space for sharing within our workshops; therefore, recordings of the workshops will not be made available.
- For each workshop, you will be asked to fill out a workshop evaluation form. You will be sent a link to complete an online feedback form for each workshop you attended. You will also be asked to fill out an overall conference evaluation form at the conclusion of the conference. Please complete the online feedback forms by April 20, 2023. We value your feedback and will use it to improve our future conferences.
