The Mathematics of Human Experience

‘Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas’, wrote Albert Einstein in his poetically-written obituary for Emmy Noether in The New York Times (1935). In bringing together two quite distinct disciplines, Einstein’s analogy emphasises the great value that arts and cultures bring to human experience alongside his specialisms in mathematics and physics. Indeed, another way of expressing Einstein’s view here is that poetry is the mathematics of human experience. In this way, an appreciation of poetry is as vital for human success as understanding physics. Why bother understanding relativity, time, space, and light, if we cannot understand ourselves? Einstein answers this question emphatically, stating that ‘the most beautiful and satisfying experiences open to humankind are not derived from the outside, but are bound up with the development of the individual’s own feeling, thinking and acting’. This is a useful starting point for the purpose of this post, which is to emphasise how reading a poem or two a day can have a positive impact on your mental health, mood, and overall wellbeing. To put it simply, you can read poetry for wellbeing.

Why Poetry?

The Journal of Poetry Therapy has published a bounty of recent scholarship demonstrating the uses of poetry in improving wellbeing for hospital patients (Lee, 2006), cancer patients (Tegnér et al, 2009), dementia care (Zauszniewski and Morris, 2011), and nursing home residents (Healey et al, 2017). Indeed, several NHS Trusts have explored the social prescribing of poetry, and the reading and writing of poems, as a restorative health activity. In these ways, poetry not only has a palliative effect; it can be a lifeline. This lifeline is made clear in Adam Mars’s article in The Sociological Review (2021) describing how the reading and writing of poetry created meaningful and valuable opportunities for healing and self-expression with so-called ‘left behind’ middle-aged men in post-industrial northern towns. Continually embattled by precarity, the men describe feelings of having to continually fight to exist: ‘being from a Northern town, you had to fight […] fight to get jobs, fight to survive […] the system is just set up for people like us to fail […] so it’s fight or flight.’ What is striking in the social prescribing of poetry is its potential positive effect in ameliorating these feelings of ‘fight or flight’ in the face of profound difficulties, such as seeing a loved one go through palliative care, facing bereavement, or dealing with intense economic precariousness, perhaps even all at the same time. Across these contexts, poetry offers that prospect Einstein identified so poignantly: a way of expressing, reflecting on and understanding one’s own feelings, thinking and acting. Poetry’s positive impact here is radical, considering the biggest killer of men under 50 in the UK is suicide, precisely because of the continuing and deeply damaging cultural logic that encourages men to bottle feelings and speak to no one when facing difficulties, unable to express themselves until the bottle violently breaks.

This is not to say that poetry constitutes a perfect remedy or that it will necessarily work for everyone, but that poetry may offer a meaningful tool to support wellbeing. In other words, poetry provides a free, accessible way of supporting wellbeing, in its therapeutic potential for readers and listeners, with the potential to foster social connection, stress reduction and self-expression. Crucially, the form and structure of poetry has been specifically linked to positive emotional processing (Obermeier et al, 2013). In this way, a poem can offer a useful moment of pause, whether as part of your morning routine, to de-stress and relax your mind on a break from work, or to reflect in the evening. Reading a poem can help you take time out from all the things going on around you. In the fast-paced world of constant digital media and smartphones that are never switched off, making time for a poem a day may therefore offer a distinct way to make time for yourself. This meditative quality of poetry is captured aptly in Chinese poet Li Bai’s ‘Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain’:

The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

Poetry here achieves what meditation seeks to accomplish – a moment of stillness and calm.

Poetry as Academic Development

Beyond its benefits for wellbeing, poetry can also help sharpen the mind in ways that can enrich academic development, helping researchers become better readers and writers. Regularly reading poetry helps introduce readers and listeners to a range of different perspectives, worldviews, and life experiences. In this way, poetry opens up the possibility of seeing the world through someone else’s lens and to therefore think about a subject in other ways. A poem may also connect you with someone else who has written about a subject in a similar way to how you may feel or think. Regularly reading poetry also opens readers and listeners to an ever-expanding range of language, voices, vocabulary and juxtapositions. This can be a great asset to students, researchers, and academics wishing to expand their command of language and writing because, as the adage goes, ‘every good writer must first be a great reader’.

Start Now

So, as the days get darker for longer, cold and flu viruses spread, and seasonal affective disorder rears its head, please consider reading a poem or two a day to keep the winter blues away. Reading a poem or two a day can be easily added to your existing daily rhythms as an atomic habit, such as after having breakfast; once you arrive at your desk but before starting work, or maybe in a break between tasks. Whether you read your poems to set you up for the week on a Monday morning or you open a couple of poems after work on a Friday afternoon, I hope this post has opened up some good reasons to make the time to do so.

There are plenty of free poetry sites available, with options to either receive a daily poem emailed directly to you or libraries of poetry to search through yourself. Here are a few suggestions to help get you started:

Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/poem-of-the-day
Academy of American Poets: https://poets.org/poem-a-day
Poetry Daily: https://poems.com

And here are some suggestions of poems to enjoy right away…

Audre Lorde, ‘A Litany for Survival’.
Raymond Carver, ‘Happiness’.
Tess Gallagher, ‘Choices’.
Maya Angelou, ‘Still I Rise’.
Babette Deutsch, ‘Hibernal’.
Li Bai, ‘Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain’.

Laura Gilpin, ‘The Two-Headed Calf’

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.

References

Albert Einstein (1935). The Late Emmy Noether: Professor Einstein Writes in Appreciation of a Fellow-Mathematician, The New York Times (4 May). Available online: https://www.nytimes.com/1935/05/04/archives/the-late-emmy-noether-professor-einstein-writes-in-appreciation-of.html [Accessed 20.10.2025].

Ingrid Tegnér, I, Fox, J, & Philipp, R (2009). Evaluating the use of poetry to improve well-being and emotional resilience in cancer patients, Journal of Poetry Therapy, 3:22, 121-131: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08893670903198383

Lee, M (2006). Poems in the Waiting Room: Aspects of poetry therapy, Journal of Poetry Therapy, 19:2, 91-98 https://doi.org/10.1080/08893670600756749

Mars, A (2021). Poetry Versus Austerity: Is social prescribing any use for the men ‘set up to fail’ in post-industrial towns? [Online]. The Sociological Review Magazine. https://doi.org/10.51428/tsr.pefg9717

Marques Carvalho, JC, et al. (2021) Poetry as a way to express emotions in mental health, Journal of Poetry Therapy, 34:3, 139-149 https://doi.org/10.1080/08893675.2021.1921474

Obermeier, C., Menninghaus, W., von Koppenfels, M., Raettig, T., Schmidt-Kassow, M., & Kotz, S. A. (2013). Aesthetic and emotional effects of meter and rhyme in poetry. Frontiers in Psychology, 4:10
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00010/full

Kidd, L, Zauszniewski, J, & Morris, D (2011). Benefits of a Poetry Writing Intervention for Family Caregivers of Elders with Dementia, Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 32:9, 598-604 https://doi.org/10.3109/01612840.2011.576801

Healey, J, Hopkins, C, McClimens, A, & Peplow, D (2017). The potential therapeutic benefits of reading poetry to nursing home residents: the road less travelled?, Journal of Poetry Therapy, 3:30, 153-165
https://doi.org/10.1080/08893675.2017.1328827

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