Poetic licence to write resistance: women resisting intimate partner violence through poetry

Abstract

The poetry therapy programme discussed describes work alongside members of a rural women’s support group addressing intimate partner violence. This approach contributes to social work theory/practice by expanding understandings of how women resist violence and affirms a tenet of Response-Based Practice: ‘alongside each history of violence there runs a parallel history of prudent, determined, and often creative resistance’ (Wade, 1997: 23). This approach to creative group-based work supports ‘positive social responses’ to women resisting intimate partner violence, expanding the ways in which social workers can respond to survivors of violence (Richardson and Wade, 2009: 209). Subtle and safer responses to violence are undervalued by dominant therapeutic practices. Response-Based Practice maintains that violence is resisted on a spectrum and that less noticeable forms of resistance are well reasoned and maintain dignity. This article describes how combining poetry therapy with Response-Based Practice can disrupt notions of resistance as solely outwardly expressed and large-action-oriented.

Transformative Social Responses to Domestic, Family, and Sexualized Violence: A Qualitative Exploration of Insight Exchange, a Victim-Survivor-Centered Initiative Informed by Response-Based Practice

“…Insight Exchange provides direct and indirect support to responders to enhance their understanding and application of Response-Based Practice across diverse cultural, institutional, disciplinary, sectoral, and geographic contexts within Australia and internationally. The evidence base for Response-Based Practice is building in Australia and internationally indicating that this is a safe, accurate, and dignifying practice with victim-survivors experiencing multiple and intersecting forms of adversity such as, domestic and family violence, violence against children, sexualized violence, colonial violence, and racism ( Alexander, 2022 ; Donovan et al, 2019 ; Hydén, Wade & Gadd, 2015 ; Richardson et al, 2021 ; Fast & Richardson Kinewesquao, 2019 ). Response-Based Practice also provides tools such as the Interactional and Discursive View of Violence and Resistance, Four Operations of Language ( Coates & Wade, 2007 ) which can be applied to reveal and clarify accurate representations of violence (e.g., by clarifying perpetrator responsibility, honoring victim-survivors resistance to violence).…”