Volume 5 Issue 1 Autumn 2022 Keywords: creativity in therapy, poetry, reflexivity, therapists’ inner talk, reflexive re- positioning, decolonising practice, ethical positioning, lenticular futures Citation Link Abstract This paper is a personal account of the use of poetry as a means to elaborate and explore the inner talk of the practitioner in order to open space for the generation of new meanings, challenging single stories to create the possibility of multiple other tellings and creating reflexive space. Poetry is described as a way to challenge traditional knowledge and honour alternative knowledges, harnessing creativity to enrichen thin tellings, deconstruct strong emotion and critically explore the positioning of the practitioner. A means to open space for creating new ways to move forward in therapy, in systemic training and in the development of decolonial practice. In this process a number of challenges are raised as questions for further exploration; how to create ethical positionings from which to write first person accounts about clients, therapeutic relationships and striking emotional encounters and how to address issues of consent and the potential appropriation of others’ stories. As systemic therapy moves into a new era these questions come to the fore in terms of creating new knowledges, moving towards epistemic witnessing, decolonising practice and training and creating “lenticular futures” (Pillow, 2019). ********** "We like to think we live in daylight, but half the world is always dark; and fantasy, like poetry, speaks the language of the night." Ursula Le Guin, 1979, p.11 For as long as I remember I have collected stray snippets of poetry and quotes, like plucking a hair from the shoulder of a loved one, a strand at a time, encapsulating something important about that moment, that visceral experience. One of my earlier memories of this fragment gathering was at the beginning of a lesson in the early years of my secondary school; we girls filed into the stuffy classroom and settled at each individual wooden desk, worn with ink stains and holes where compasses had drilled in interminable moments of boredom. Suddenly there was a frisson among Wisps of smoke that linger: poetry as reflexive writing and living theory Karen Partridge