Repost: Using Poetry to Connect to the Work of HRD this Winter

3 January 2023

As Board Members of the Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD), we take turns writing posts for the monthly newsletter, the AHRD Digest. This past month it was my turn, and I decided to write about poetry’s connection to HRD. I thought I would repost it on my personal website because it overlaps with what I write here.

Since it was published, a few people have reached out to me and two people have shared Marge Piercy’s poem “To be of use” which may be of interest. One of the people who shared that with me is my former professor Neal Chalofsky, author of Meaningful Workplaces: Reframing How and Where We Work, who uses it when he teaches his course on meaningful work.

Here’s the post:

Many of us spend our days in organizations, classrooms, and offices working on adaptive organizational challenges, designing learning experiences, and reflecting on multifaceted research questions. Our work as HRD scholars and practitioners is a life we’ve chosen out of our desire to lead the field and contribute to collective human flourishing. 

I’ve been reading a lot of poetry over the last twelve months, which has helped me connect to the work we do in HRD. I also recently enjoyed the HRD Masterclass Podcast on HRD and Spirituality in Season 3. In our field, we work with real people in real organizations who have real struggles and real questions. Our colleagues, clients, and students face real pain and real joy. To support people in organizations, we shouldn’t limit ourselves to superficiality and hyper-intellectualism. Part of our work must be to engage, authentically and humbly, with the spectra of human experience. Reading poetry is a great place to start. It’s also a way to rejuvenate after overwork and exhaustion.

For those of us in academia, the calendar is punctuated with flustered semester endings, which lead into stretches of recovery and reflection. Rest is vital for us to continue to do the work we find meaningful. This focus on rest can be found in most of the world’s religious traditions and in recent secular writing like Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang. Read along as Wendell Berry writes about rest and work in the poem “Sabbaths”:

Whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day.
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we’re asleep

When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.

Much meaning can be made from this poem. Think about your work in HRD scholarship and practice. What words, lines, or phrases stick with you? What emotions does it evoke? Read it again if you’d like. Jot down a few ideas if you find it useful. 

Poetry has much to offer HRD as a field, even though most of us likely wouldn’t find the two explicitly connected. Some of the poets I’ve been reading recently are Mary Oliver, Audre Lorde, David Whyte, and Rainer Maria Rilke. I’ve also been reading the poetry collection Leading from within: Poetry that sustains the courage to lead compiled by Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner. The Poetry Foundation also has many poems searchable by poet, topic, and title.

My hope for all of us this winter is to take time in solitude and rest to reflect on all that is meaningful to us in our lives and in our work. And if you’re stuck, try reading (or writing) a few poems. Onward.