8: Embracing Positive Aging in a Small Poetry-Writing Community: Writing and Sense of Belonging

Globally, the issue of aging populations and how to care successfully for their well-being has become a significant concern. Engendering positive and successful aging has drawn recent attention in the literature. One promising approach to positive aging is the development of meaningful and creative communities of older people built around purposeful activities. In this chapter, we explore one such community: a small poetry-writing commune in Melbourne, Australia, that is part of the University of the Third Age (U3A). Using ideas from sociologist Alfred Schütz and his notion of social phenomenology, we explore the life of the group over four years and offer insights into its success and the positive outcomes that are revealed in the research data. One such insight is that a purposeful and effective group of older adults might be best achieved when individual autonomy and agency are held in creative tension with group cohesion and collective values.