Theopoetics and Testimony: Reimagining Theology Through Communal Creative Writing

This paper explores ongoing research that examines the intersections of trauma, theology, and creative writing within the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver (DTES). Grounded in trauma theory, ethnographic, and practical theological methods, this paper recognizes the ways in which collective and individual trauma impacts theological imagination and faith practices and explores the role that spirituality can play in survival and meaning-making post trauma. At the same time, it takes seriously the potential of creative writing—not merely as a method, but as a practice of resistance and healing. This research aims to understand how theological meaning emerges in and through trauma, and how creative writing functions as a site of theological reflection. Its aim is to bring more voices into theological conversations about trauma, and in doing so, open a wider scope of how theology is constructed, the settings that shape it, and whose voices are recognized and amplified.