Poh Lin Lee
Poh is a Chinese Malaysian Australian social worker who comes to the practice based on her experience and knowledge as a narrative therapy practitioner, co-researcher of trauma/injustice, writer, teacher, film protagonist and creative consultant.
Poh has been engaged in therapeutic co-research with people and communities responding to themes of experience such as family and state violence, displacement (from rights, land, home, body, identity, relationships), liminality and reclaiming practices of staying with experience and preference. Creative and therapeutic fields intersected for Poh whilst working with people seeking asylum within a film project with director Gabrielle Brady, Island of the Hungry Ghosts (2018).
Poh works alongside people engaged in creative practices, processes and projects weaving and designing narrative informed consultations and workshops to make visible possibilities in ethics, authorship, collaborative practice, audience/witness engagement and socio-political action.
Poh is a teacher for the International teaching faculty of Dulwich Centre, an honorary clinical fellow of the School of Social Work, University of Melbourne and a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Latin American Journal of Clinical Social Work. Poh is a sessional workshop facilitator for KHM Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Germany and VCA Film and Television, Australia. Poh recently mentored for the Cologne Young Filmmakers Program and Attagirl for female and non-binary filmmakers.
Poh is a Chinese Malaysian Australian social worker who comes to the practice based on her experience and knowledge as a narrative therapy practitioner, co-researcher of trauma/injustice, writer, teacher, film protagonist and creative consultant.
Poh has been engaged in therapeutic co-research with people and communities responding to themes of experience such as family and state violence, displacement (from rights, land, home, body, identity, relationships), liminality and reclaiming practices of staying with experience and preference. Creative and therapeutic fields intersected for Poh whilst working with people seeking asylum within a film project with director Gabrielle Brady, Island of the Hungry Ghosts (2018).
Poh works alongside people engaged in creative practices, processes and projects weaving and designing narrative informed consultations and workshops to make visible possibilities in ethics, authorship, collaborative practice, audience/witness engagement and socio-political action.
Poh is a teacher for the International teaching faculty of Dulwich Centre, an honorary clinical fellow of the School of Social Work, University of Melbourne and a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Latin American Journal of Clinical Social Work. Poh is a sessional workshop facilitator for KHM Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Germany and VCA Film and Television, Australia. Poh recently mentored for the Cologne Young Filmmakers Program and Attagirl for female and non-binary filmmakers.
Current Projects
Storying Experience Cards
A set of cards and audio exercises to engage imagination, embodied experience and storytelling. For people engaged in creative or therapeutic endeavours that wish to step closer to articulating and sharing lived experience through story. To read more or access the audio exercises click here.
Exchanging Moments Series
In edit.
During 2020 and in response to the strange ever-changing landscape of COVID-19 Poh began to invite practitioners (filmmakers, artists, story tellers, therapists and other creative practices) to meet briefly and intimately at the crossing of practice through short videos based on narrative therapy outsider witnessing practices. The invitation was to notice, what we connect to, where it transports us in our memories, stories, thoughts, experience and meanings in relation to our own practice. In responding we take up an active role as witness, we receive someone’s story and exploration and we also contribute back. Back and forth, across and around we go, weaving threads of community, conversation and connection.
Photography and Narrative Therapy
A collaboration with Grace Gelder bringing our two fields together in unique workshops. Regardless of your field of practice these workshops invite a playful and curious inquiry through the lens of timely themes.
Our Multi-storied Body
Poh has been co-researching and developing a particular way of inviting our bodies in as meaningful participants of therapeutic and creative conversations. Poh’s practice is positioned in resistance to the ideas that totalise the body as a single entity and recruit us into particular relationships with each part of our body (like mining ourselves for resource, productivity and output) which have particular effects on the type of relationship or power we experience in relation to the different parts of our body. Shaped by co-produced knowledges with communities/families/couples and groups, Poh has brought this practice based research question into conversation - what becomes possible for people when their body is consulted as a community of members, each with it's own particular experience? This invites us to thoughtfully consider democratic participation and what it means for our practice if consensus or consent is not experienced equally throughout the members of our bodies.
Poh is currently offering these practice ideas in group, individual and workshop consultation contexts and writing up this work for publication.
Collateral Journal
Poh is currently collaborating on an article to feature in a new series looking at conversations about conversations. Publication set for early 2022.
The Socio-cultral impacts of state border closures in Australia (working title)
A collaboration with Tarryn Narain (medical anthropologist, writer and senior lecturer at La Trobe University) exploring people's experiences through sandplay co-research.
To see more projects that Poh is currently consulting on click here.
A set of cards and audio exercises to engage imagination, embodied experience and storytelling. For people engaged in creative or therapeutic endeavours that wish to step closer to articulating and sharing lived experience through story. To read more or access the audio exercises click here.
Exchanging Moments Series
In edit.
During 2020 and in response to the strange ever-changing landscape of COVID-19 Poh began to invite practitioners (filmmakers, artists, story tellers, therapists and other creative practices) to meet briefly and intimately at the crossing of practice through short videos based on narrative therapy outsider witnessing practices. The invitation was to notice, what we connect to, where it transports us in our memories, stories, thoughts, experience and meanings in relation to our own practice. In responding we take up an active role as witness, we receive someone’s story and exploration and we also contribute back. Back and forth, across and around we go, weaving threads of community, conversation and connection.
Photography and Narrative Therapy
A collaboration with Grace Gelder bringing our two fields together in unique workshops. Regardless of your field of practice these workshops invite a playful and curious inquiry through the lens of timely themes.
Our Multi-storied Body
Poh has been co-researching and developing a particular way of inviting our bodies in as meaningful participants of therapeutic and creative conversations. Poh’s practice is positioned in resistance to the ideas that totalise the body as a single entity and recruit us into particular relationships with each part of our body (like mining ourselves for resource, productivity and output) which have particular effects on the type of relationship or power we experience in relation to the different parts of our body. Shaped by co-produced knowledges with communities/families/couples and groups, Poh has brought this practice based research question into conversation - what becomes possible for people when their body is consulted as a community of members, each with it's own particular experience? This invites us to thoughtfully consider democratic participation and what it means for our practice if consensus or consent is not experienced equally throughout the members of our bodies.
Poh is currently offering these practice ideas in group, individual and workshop consultation contexts and writing up this work for publication.
Collateral Journal
Poh is currently collaborating on an article to feature in a new series looking at conversations about conversations. Publication set for early 2022.
The Socio-cultral impacts of state border closures in Australia (working title)
A collaboration with Tarryn Narain (medical anthropologist, writer and senior lecturer at La Trobe University) exploring people's experiences through sandplay co-research.
To see more projects that Poh is currently consulting on click here.
Publications
Lee, P.L. (2018). Narrative Practice and Sandplay: Practice-based stories of collaboration with people seeking asylum held in mandatory detention. Journal of Systemic Therapies June 2018, Vol. 37, No. 2: 1–16.
available here: https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/jsyt.2018.37.2.1
La Revista Latinoamericana de Trabajo Social Clínico
La Práctica Narrativa y la Caja de Arena: Prácticas Basadas en Historias de Colaboración con Personas que buscan asilo y que están en detención obligatoria por MNTCW, BSW. Poh Lin Lee
Lee, P. L. (2017). Narrative conversations alongside Interpreters: A locally grown outsider-witness practice. International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, (4), 18–27.
Danish translation by Dansk Forening for Systemisk og Narrativ Terapi og Konsultation available here section 1 & section 2
Lee, P. L. (2013). Making now precious: Working with survivors of torture and asylum seekers. International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, (1), 1–9.
available here: https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/jsyt.2018.37.2.1
La Revista Latinoamericana de Trabajo Social Clínico
La Práctica Narrativa y la Caja de Arena: Prácticas Basadas en Historias de Colaboración con Personas que buscan asilo y que están en detención obligatoria por MNTCW, BSW. Poh Lin Lee
Lee, P. L. (2017). Narrative conversations alongside Interpreters: A locally grown outsider-witness practice. International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, (4), 18–27.
Danish translation by Dansk Forening for Systemisk og Narrativ Terapi og Konsultation available here section 1 & section 2
Lee, P. L. (2013). Making now precious: Working with survivors of torture and asylum seekers. International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, (1), 1–9.