Poetry for EFL classroom: students’ self-expression and the creative process behind its creation

In learning and teaching English as a foreign language, poetry has been used in several non-literary classes but in relatively small proportions, and the foci were mainly not on the students' self-expression and individual creative process. This research aims to understand the experiences of student-teachers majoring in English in using poetry as a means of self-expression and their creative process. This study was conducted with a qualitative approach involving six student-teachers enrolled in the English Language Study Program of a Southern Yogyakarta University, Indonesia. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and analyzed through coding. The results show that poetry became a place for self-reflection, sharing personal experiences, a place for self-awareness, and freedom of expression. Meanwhile, the creative process that the students experienced consists of receiving examples, reliving memories, free writing, finding the right place and atmosphere, writing and re-writing, and receiving and responding to feedback. The study implied that poetry could benefit students with a planned and lengthy process. The study might contribute to the field of language education by providing insights into how poetry can be incorporated into the teaching and learning process.


Introduction
In the old days, the use of literature in language teaching had been through opposition.However, since the 80s, several prolific studies have resurrected the idea of incorporating literary works in language teaching, followed by its development in the 90s (Bobkina & Dominguez, 2014;Khatib et al., 2011).The idea that literature can be a tool to aid language learning stems from the notion that language and literature are closely related (Ladapo & Onyeakazi, 2017).Ladapo and Onyeakazi (2017) later added that literature could not exist without language, and language disseminates itself through literature.Past studies have found that literature has some merits in language learning.It has been found to benefit the learning of grammar and vocabulary (Khatib et al., 2011;Kırkgöz, 2014), foster cultural/intercultural and globalization awareness, support intensive and extensive reading, sociolinguistic/practical knowledge, language skills, emotional intelligence, critical thinking (Khatib et al., 2011), and discourse writing (Kırkgöz, 2014).Cook argued that literature could encourage students to think creatively and understand themselves simultaneously (Alabi, 2015).This is likely because the literature focuses more on the right side of the brain, focusing on affective features (Alabi, 2015).
One form of literature is poetry.Unfortunately, poetry was not favored because it was considered too difficult for students (Chamcharatsri, 2013;Dilidüzgün, 2015).Interestingly, a study by Liao and Roy (2017) found that the more exposure students had to poetry, the less their interest and confidence in poetry writing.However, in another context, Liao (2018) found that the negative feelings toward poetry surfaced only at the beginning of a course.The longer students dealt with their emotions through poetry, the more positive they viewed it.This indicates that the more students work with poetry, the bigger the chances that they change their perception of its difficulty (Larsson, 2022).Another study found that the dislike of poetry depends on the language used, as some students preferred the use of their first language while others preferred the use of a foreign language in the poetry (Dilidüzgün, 2015).These mixed phenomena invite a more thorough investigation of the use of poetry in foreign language classes since, in many cases, poetry has also been viewed positively.
Poetry is attractive as a language learning aid for some reasons.Its short length, unusual structure, unique linguistic features, reminiscent character, imagery, and substantial relation to feelings and personal experience have made poetry a favorite teaching tool for some teachers (Llach, 2007).In a study, some teacher trainees appreciated that poetry contributed to developing linguistic competence (Mora et al., 2020).Ladapo and Onyeakazi (2017) also found in their study that constant exposure to poetic works had resulted in teens' ability to create poetry with elevated English expressions and profound vocabulary choices sensitive to social phenomena, which shows that this work of literature can also work for younger learners.In addition, poetry can be enjoyable for students when they are free to express themselves and invest in themselves (Yavuz, 2010).Yavuz added that because poetry focuses more on fluency rather than language accuracy, it can potentially encourage genuine communication.However, as Bobkina and Dominguez (2014) argued, this linguistic improvement can effectively be gained from poetry as long as it is appropriately used in the lessons.For instance, it was put among various task-based activities (Vk & Savaedi, 2014).
On another note, poetry can also be motivating (Mora et al., 2020) and improve self-efficacy (Locke & Kato, 2012) because it deals with personal experience and the use of personal and not trivial (Mora et al., 2020), mechanical (Kırkgöz, 2014), or decontextualized (Hanauer, 2012) language.Through poetry, students can discover something about themselves (Locke & Kato, 2012) and express their voices (Hanauer, 2014;Iida, 2010;Ladapo & Onyeakazi, 2017).Additionally, poetry allows students to make sense of or make meaning of the world around them and their experiences, or as Hanauer (2012) called it, 'meaningful literacy.' Empirically, the use of poetry in foreign language classrooms has been investigated in various studies focusing on differing aspects.The studies focused on the students' perception, attitude, and emotions (Iida, 2012), perception, reading habits and motivation (Larsson, 2022), voice in free poetry writing (Hanauer, 2014), difficulty, value, emotion, and attitude in writing poetry in a second language (Liao, 2018), emotions written in first and second language (Chamcharatsri, 2013), and also focused on teacher as a writer (Locke & Kato, 2012).Another focus is on how poetry influences an autonomous class (Vk & Savaedi, 2014), EFL learning (Mora et al., 2020), and how its writing is influenced by educational background and belief (Liao & Roy, 2017).However, none of these studies had tried to understand the self-expression and creative process in its writing precisely.In the meantime, the writer's emotion has been found to be one of the main sources of its development in the initial process, combined with the authors' creativity in choosing strong words and senses.Therefore, this study aimed to fill that gap by answering two research questions: (1) How does poetry enable self-expression in the EFL classroom?(2) What creative process takes place in creating poetry in the EFL classroom?

Poetry for self-expression
Mostly, writing lessons tend to avoid using individualized voice (Hanauer, 2014), although the language is supposed to show someone's identity (Ladapo & Onyeakazi, 2017).Language learning should be both a cognitive process and an emotional and personified experience (Hanauer, 2012).Hanauer (2012) added that language learning should focus on the student's personal experiences and surroundings, such as their history and feelings for the time they use the language emotionally.A new perception of the language will be made, and the language will be theirs.This is where language is used for self-expression.Akiyoshi (2017) found that poetry was associated with developing students' self-awareness and voice.In this context, poetry becomes a tool for self-discovery and contemplation (Furman et al., 2008).In a study, Hanauer (2014) found that poetry also propagates social recognition through the students' voices.Voice involves the audience (Iida, 2010).This means that when students wrote their poetry, they also built their understanding of the readers or created a connection between writers and readers (Iida, 2010).In other words, self-expression in poetry is not only about the poetry writer but also about other people.In producing poetry, the writers will think of the best way to express their thoughts and feelings and how other people might perceive their writing (Iida, 2012).However, expressing self is not always done smoothly.Studies have found that students are sometimes stuck in expressing themselves because of their lack of vocabulary mastery (Iida, 2012), cultural taboo, or personality (Liao, 2018).

The creative process in poetry
Talking about creativity in poetry can cover the variety of ideas and sources, the originality of ideas and communication, and their combination (Kırkgöz, 2014).
Language development is fostered when students are challenged and given high expectations and the chance to be creative and try new things (Ladapo & Onyeakazi, 2017).
The creative process of creating poetry can be achieved in different ways.Hanauer (2012) shared three stages of producing poetry in his class.The first stage is motivating students to do self-exploration.In this stage, the teacher acts as the agent to show the students that the aim is self-discovery and that it is fun and safe for them.The second stage is to take students to explore their life history.At this stage, students were asked to close their eyes and relive the moments in their lives.The next is to share those experiences with other students, which resulted in various authentic materials for the poetry writing.Furman et al. (2008) used incomplete sentences as the prompt for the students so they would feel less anxious than if they wrote from scratch.After the first activity, students were asked to self-reflect on what they saw in their surroundings.This might be a challenge when students have difficulty remembering their memories (Iida, 2012).
During their creative process of writing poetry, students were found to think of the expressions they could use and, at the same time, thought of how readers from different cultural and language backgrounds would interpret differently (Iida, 2012).Giving students as many examples as possible can also benefit the development of their poetry (Razgatlıoğlu & Ulusoy, 2022).Another activity that might help the creative process is to read aloud and discuss or share what will be written, as it could be the place for taking notes and revisions (Locke & Kato, 2012;Yavuz, 2010).In addition, Yavuz (2010) implied that teachers' and students' experiences in writing poetry, students' needs, students' emotional readiness, and a series of communicative task-based activities play essential parts in creating poetry.Finally, constant feedback is one of the significant parts of creating poetry (Locke & Kato, 2012).
All things considered, a carefully planned lesson plan will help students make the most benefit of poetry in their learning.In their study, Razgatlıoğlu and Ulusoy (2022) used Activity-Based Poetry Studies for the whole parts of a lesson plan.In every lesson stage, poetry reading was done, followed by poetry or creative writing technique learning, poetry writing, and poetry evaluation.

Poetry in the context of the current study
Based on the discussions of the findings and theoretical conclusions above, it can be theorized that poetry always involves some type of self-expression because of its personally and individually rooted nature.The personal aspects might be in the form of the writer's voice (Akiyoshi, 2017;Hanauer, 2014), identity (Ladapo & Onyeakazi, 2017), or emotional and personified experiences (Hanauer, 2012).However, even though students possess the basic ingredients of writing poetry, namely what they already have within themselves, writing is not without struggle since students might be stuck with the language aspects (Iida, 2012) or cultural aspects (Liao, 2018).This entails the need to be creative in the process of poetry making.In terms of classroom activities, teachers can choose many steps (see Hanauer, 2012;Liao, 2018;Razgatlıoğlu & Ulusoy, 2022).However, this is a personally driven writing work, so the personal creative process likely exists.
There has not been uniformity in how literature can be incorporated into language classes (Bobkina & Dominguez, 2014).In the study context, poetry was one of the primary materials in one subject related to literary appreciation.In the subject, students were to create three poems: two short ones and one free poem.The teacher decided on the topic of the former two, and the latter one was based on the students' personal experiences and topic choice.The first poem was an acrostic poem, "a poem in which the first letter of each line forms a word, usually the topic of the poem when reading vertically" (Murdibjono, 2011, p. 7).The second poem was a cinquain, consisting of five lines written with varied rules in nouns, adjectives, verbs, and the like (Murdibjono, 2011).The last poem was a free poem inspired by the practice conducted by Hanauer (2012) and Liao (2018).For this poem, the teacher first gave several examples of poems written in different styles, and her poem was created based on her personal story.The teacher also shared the background story or the unforgettable moment she used to create her poem in front of the class.Students were then asked to close their eyes and relive the most important and emotional moment in their lives in a class meeting.They were then asked to write down what they had just recollected before the memory faded.The written memory could be written in any language of their choice first, and when the students were satisfied with what they wrote, they could turn it into English and create a poem from it.The poem and the written moment would then be shared individually with the teacher.This was to give the students a sense of safety since most students did not feel confident to share their works and/or stories with their friends, partly because of their significantly personal and emotional nature.The teacher then gave her feedback by positioning herself as a reader.Thus, the feedback focused more on sharing how she perceived the students' expressions and if they matched what the students aimed to convey.

Design
A qualitative approach was chosen with a descriptive design to conduct the study.A qualitative descriptive was chosen to comprehensively understand the participants' experiences (Lambert & Lambert, 2012) in their poetry writing process.The descriptive design enabled the researchers to gain an elaborate depiction of the participants' individual experiences since each participant might have differing minute details that could help the researchers understand the phenomena more thoroughly.This design is considered the least theoretical among all qualitative designs but has also been considered feasible (Lambert & Lambert, 2012).

Context and participants
This study was conducted at the English Language Study Program of a Southern Yogyakarta University, Indonesia.A course focusing on English literary works became the specific venue to find the participants.In the subject, students were assigned to write three types of poems.The first and second poems were short poems that focused more on the students' use of parts of speech.The third poem was free, in which students were given the freedom to find their style and topic in the writing process.Prior to writing all three poems, students have learned some figurative language, rhyme, and the format of the three different types of poems.This study focused more on the activities concerning the last poem.The participants were six students who had attended and passed this subject and produced the three poems.To pass the subject means that the students had attended at least 75% of the entire class meetings during one semester and had completed all tasks, including two types of creative writing: poetry and drama play.The criteria were used to ensure the participants had enough to share their experiences.The students were also the ones considered as articulate so that indepth interviews could be carried out.For ethical considerations, the participants' names were presented in pseudonyms in this report, and the raw data were only accessed by particular parties involved in completing this research study.They signed the consent form to participate in this study before data collection.Table 1 shows the demographics of the research participants.

Data collection and analysis
The entire data collection and analysis process is presented in Figure 1.

Data collection
To gain comprehensive data, in-depth interviews with each participant were conducted, which lasted for 30 to 45 minutes.Interviews were done using Indonesia's first or national language to ease and ensure smooth communication between researchers and participants.The questions prepared in the interview were indirect, chosen because the indirect format gives more freedom and would likely gain a more open and honest answer from the participants (Cohen et al., 2011).

Figure 1 Data collection and analysis
Prior to the interview, an interview guideline was developed to conduct the semi-structured interviews, which allowed the researchers to be on-topic but at the same time gain more information and elaboration from the participants.In building the guideline, the two variables (self-expression and creative process) were first used as the base.By using the sources from the past literature, indicators of both variables were then decided.From these indicators, several questions were then built.The questions were in the form of open-ended questions to give more freedom for participants to elaborate on their answers.The researchers first did a pilot interview with one participant to see if the guideline aided the comprehensive data collection and did some revisions to have better interview guidelines for all participants.

Data analysis
The interview results were first transformed into a written transcript to analyze the data.The transcripts approved by participants were then coded several times (open coding, axial coding, and analytical coding) until categories were found to be presented, discussed, and compared to past literature.After the data became more readable by coding, the data compaction process was carried out.Descriptive codes or compact facts are a technique of paraphrasing participant answers sequentially (Saldaña, 2009).The next process was to interpret the facts, which were condensed into simple words or phrases that were collected and categorized based on their similarity.Then, the researchers collected the same facts or data from each participant.Saldaña (2009) stated that the purpose of collecting the same data or facts is to create a code or theme from each data.This step was helpful in describing the research findings later.After that, the researchers categorized the same facts or data where the same codes were agglomerated in one category.Finally, the researchers reported the findings.

Trustworthiness
To ensure the trustworthiness, the study employed two methods: memberchecking and external audit.The member checking was done by showing the interview transcripts to the participants, where they approved the accuracy.In addition, two experts had also done an external audit to add more substantial validity.In the external audit, the experts read, analyzed, confirmed the findings, and gave feedback for the improvement of the report.The external audit involves a person outside the research to review diverse aspects of the research (Creswell, 2012).In this study, there were two external auditors involved.

Findings
The findings are presented here in two major categories.The first relates to how poetry enabled self-reflection, and the second revolves around the creative process the participants experienced.

How poetry enables self-reflection
The data showed that as a self-expression tool, it serves as a place to reflect on feelings, share personal experiences, be self-aware, and find freedom of expression.

Poetry as the place to reflect on feelings
The participants shared that writing poetry gave a place for their feelings.Jade and Lazuli stated that they wrote poetry when they felt emotional, sad, tired, and disappointed.Similarly, Amber said she wrote poetry when she felt down.Meanwhile, Fluor said she wrote poetry when she felt curious and grateful.One way or another, feelings are facilitated.One participant, Agate, said, "I got carried away by my emotions, and I ended up crying because I wrote everything I felt into my poetry."Another participant stated that feelings are the facilitating factor for writing poetry.Jade, for instance, said, "I wrote my poetry when I was really emotional when I was really sad or tired." Expressing their feelings seems to give particular merits to these participants.They mentioned that they felt motivated and relieved, found a new awareness of their feelings, and had a tool to say what they could not say on a different platform or express feelings that are hard to show to others.Therefore, it is expected that the feeling of sadness becomes one of the many that is dominantly expressed using poetry since this particular feeling is the one humans might have the tendency to hide.

Poetry as the place to share personal experiences
Sharing personal experiences is not always easy.Poetry makes it easier to do it.Marble, Lazuli, and Amber said that what they shared in their poetry was based on real-life experiences that were emotional to them.Even though the experiences were personal, they were not always about themselves but also about the people important to them.Lazuli, for example, created a poem about her struggle in the past to achieve something, but Agate talked more about the people she wanted to thank.In line with Agate, Fluor also focused her poem on someone else.He stated, "We were asked to write something that is really close to us, and the poetry that I wrote was about my curiosity about this one person, my grandfather."

Poetry helps to be self-aware
The subsequent finding shows how students benefitted from writing their poetry after they were done.Lazuli, for example, shared, "I realized that I was fighting back then, and now I am feeling proud of myself."Marble shared this sentiment.Jade, Amber, and Fluor mentioned that they understood themselves better, felt like being themselves more, and felt improved because they shared their raw feelings.

Poetry supports the freedom of expression
Jade, Marble, Agate, and Fluor shared that by writing their English poetry, they could explore their feelings better and feel more freedom in expressing them.Fluor said, "In writing poetry, I could express myself and what I felt to be heard by others."It can be concluded generally that poetry writing can facilitate students' voices in a way.Similarly, Agate shared, "I felt I could express myself more and freely." In addition to these findings on how self-reflection is facilitated through poetry writing, all participants also stated they would write poetry again in the future if something important surfaced.It would be their way of coping with their feelings so they would not feel overwhelmed.As Lazuli said, "I want my poetry to be a memory, a record."

The creative process of creating poetry
Each person has his/her way of honing creativity.The following findings show how participant perceived their creative process, including the ones they shared with their peers in the classroom and their separate processes.The process mentioned was generally experienced in order.

Receiving explanations and examples
Before the poetry writing, the teacher introduced the students to several literary devices commonly used in poetry in figurative language.She also showed the students some examples of poems in different styles, including her composed poem and why she made several lexical choices.The participants stated that they benefitted from this step because they had the idea of the concept of poetry and gained more understanding of what to write.Lazuli said, "With the explanation and example from the teacher, I felt like my poetry was improved from the given prior knowledge."

Reliving memories
The next thing the students did was relive the past memories.They did this by closing their eyes and trying to remember their past experiences that were most memorable.This activity lasted for about fifteen minutes.Participants stated that by doing this activity, they found inspiration for what to write.Jade stated, "The activity made my memory more vivid and clear to remember."The activity was so emotional for them that Agate admitted she got carried away and cried.This shows that this activity helped the creative process, especially in preparing students' emotions.This activity was also the place where students chose their topic.Participants stated they chose to talk about their struggles, the important people in their lives, or something they were familiar with.The teacher gave them the freedom to choose the topic based on what came to their memory at that moment.Through this reflective activity, the students chose the theme or topic of their poetry.The participants said they were free to choose any personal topic based on the emotional memory they chose to relive at that moment.

Free writing
After the reflection, students were to write down what they just had in their memory immediately.The memory was written in the form of prose.Participants confirmed that this helped preserve their memory, and the notes helped them when they had to start composing their poetry.Lazuli, for example, argued, "If we hadn't written it down, we would've forgotten.It helped me write my poetry after re-reading my writing."To add a sense of freedom, in this activity, the teacher also gave freedom to students to choose any language they were comfortable using at the moment.They were then required to translate it into English at home.

Finding the right place and atmosphere
The following creative process was done outside the classroom.Participants have mentioned the places that could assist their creativity to be the ones that are comfortable, not crowded, free of distraction, their own room, or any place that can trigger emotions.Participants had their suitable atmosphere, sometimes contradictory, like Fluor, who said that she needed "a comfortable place, but it did not necessarily have to be quiet," in contrast to Lazuli, who needed to be "alone, in a quiet place" such as her room.Lazuli's sentiment was shared by Amber and Agate, who claimed that they could not find any idea in a crowded place.

Writing and re-writing
The next thing that participants needed to do was to compose their poems.This was done by re-reading their free-written prose.Participants had different approaches and ways to start writing their poems.They used songs, pictures, films, or published poems as an aid.Four participants said that songs were also used to trigger or recall memory.For example, Amber mentioned, "I listened to slow music before writing poetry."In addition, one participant admitted that she used some words from the song because the topic is similar.

Receive and respond to feedback
This finding relates to how the students perceived the teacher's feedback after submitting their draft and its influence.All participants stated that the feedback is mainly related to grammar and choice of words.They added that the teacher's feedback positively influenced them since they were not forced to take all of it if they did not feel like changing their choices.As Lazuli said, "Our teacher gave us suggestions, and she appreciated my work."After the feedback, the students edited their poems using a grammar-check application, although this did not always bring a satisfying result.However, all participants said they listened and considered the teacher's feedback.

Discussion
In a nutshell, the findings have shown that poetry facilitates self-expression by giving the students a particular way of not being afraid to express their feelings and understand themselves and their voices.The fact that the topic was conditioned to be very personal helped the students to reach this reflective potential.In this case, the teacher must create a classroom that supports freedom of expression, as the participants pictured.Teachers' encouragement will be central to ensuring students' feeling of safety to share what is probably the deepest secret of their life that they did not typically want to share with others.The findings corroborate Akiyoshi's (2017) finding in his study, where poetry was associated with self-awareness and voice.This voice also includes the teacher's since self-expression is also about the poetry's audience (Iida, 2010), which in the case of the current study, is the teacher.In line with this, Piscayanti (2022) found that learners were stimulated to speak their voice and choice in her study using a mindfulness approach in poetry writing.The study also concluded that the learners, through this mindful poetry writing, showed ownership of their own learning as they perceived it, which eventually resulted in mindful, strong, creative, and productive individuals.This is likely an insight that poetry can be the learning tool that gives the learners the sense that they can control their own learning at their own pace.It needs to be noted; however, that poetry enables the self-expression and voice of students when individuality is encouraged and given a place to grow and the sense of emotional safety is clear.
Concerning the second research question about the creative process, the findings showed that the process was also significantly influenced by the teacher's decision on the classroom activities.The teacher directly guided the free writing of the prose, the feedback, and the editing steps.The teacher significantly influenced the decision, while final decisions were given solely to the student writers.In the current study, the teacher gave students the opportunity and guidance to express themselves fully, facilitating language improvement (Ladapo & Onyeakazi, 2017).The role of the teacher here to encourage students' full potential is in line with what Hanauer (2012) suggested and in line with what Furman et al. (2008), Iida (2012), and Locke and Kato (2012) did in their study.The teacher in the current study also created a sense of freedom and safety in the students, which then indirectly directed students' actions outside the classroom, where their creativity was honed.In the current study, this freedom was found to facilitate writing.However, this is not always the case.Ahmadi (2019) found in his study that students found creative writing difficult because of its freedom in its form.The students found academic writing to be easier because the format was decided and rigid compared to creative writing.
It can be summed up that students' understanding of instruction and knowledge of the poem format is crucial to ensure before asking them to produce the poems.In addition, it should be noted by educators planning to use poetry in their EFL classrooms that planning and goals sometimes do not manifest exactly as they were initially prepared.Scholars have been trying to utilize poetry to hone language improvements.However, creativity facilitated through the activities of producing poetry might triumph above language aspects.As depicted in the study, poetry writing had served students problems to solve and aesthetics to create, which in the end, gave more opportunity for creativity rather than mere language-related achievement.This can be concluded from the fact that students used various aids when solving linguistic problems.This is what has also emerged in the study by Guttesen and Kristjánsson (2022).The study aimed at cultivating virtue and critical thinking through poetry, but in the end, the study showed more.Students had shown their creativity along with their understanding of virtue and critical thinking.

Conclusion
The current study aimed to explore how poetry accommodates the students' selfexpression and to investigate the creative process of producing the poems.To sum up, the current study has found that poetry has allowed self-expression by giving the freedom to show emotions and voice.The creative process showed the importance of a teacher's decision and a way for guidance in giving that opportunity for freedom and voice.This implied that a teacher's role in the utilization of poems for language learning should mean that it should be fluid and accommodative to creativity while maintaining clarity and easy-to-follow steps.Future research should see how much freedom is a good portion of reaching students' full language development potential.It is important to acknowledge that this study was limited in its participant number and the data collection technique.The context of the study was also particular, and thus, any study result should not be generalized and treated as a trend.Future studies on the use of poetry in education are suggested to tackle issues such as the role of teachers in the classroom and the forms or amount of freedom given to facilitate and encourage more self-expression without sacrificing the need to gauge the educational result.Based on the findings, it is recommended that even though creative writing, such as poetry, is about free self-expression, teachers should understand that their roles in the process are still paramount since students will still need personal resources to produce the intended creation.Teachers must also make themselves knowledgeable on the types of poems and activities that suit their students' age and language level since poetry writing might demand certain linguistic prior capitals from the students.
The latter poem aimed to show students' writing talents and what Khatib et al. (2011) called personal development or enrichment through sharing individual experiences.

Table 1
The demographic information of the participants