Much More Than Pretty Words: Poetry About the COVID-19 Vaccine Brings Healing and Community

In response to the uncertainty of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, the Global Vaccine Poem (GVP) was conceived in 2021 as a way for people to experience social connection and express themselves through poetry. The GVP project is an online portal where anyone can contribute a stanza or entire poem to express how they were/are feeling or experiencing COVID-19 vaccine. As of 2024, over 2000 poems from all over the world and every U.S. state have been collected. The GVP has grown to be an archive, communicating people's lived experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. The project also inspired a book of a subset of the contributed poems in 2022. In this essay, the GVP project is described through the EFECT model for poetry therapy to demonstrate how communication via artistic expression can be leveraged to provide therapeutic benefit and mark the significance of this global event.