Poh is a Chinese Malaysian Australian woman who comes to the practice through multiple experiences and relationships as a narrative therapy practitioner, social worker, co-researcher of trauma/displacement, writer, teacher, film protagonist and creative consultant.
Since 2004 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 is currently on the teaching faculty of Dulwich Centre; the teaching faculty & Board of Re-authoring Teaching; 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 facilitator for KHM Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Germany; Dokomotive Collective Cologne, Germany; VCA Film and Television, Australia; Attagirl for female and non-binary filmmakers; DocX Archive Lab Duke University, North Carolina and The Flaherty, New York, USA.
Narrative therapy is a collection of anti-oppressive, social justice practices. Narrative therapy seeks to invite through collaborative inquiry an understanding of people’s lives which offers multi-storied accounts and often shines light on the alternative, neglected stories that have been overshadowed by one particular
dominant story. Through drawing attention to the ways in which we are shaped by our experiences, relationships and wider socio-political discourse we can step into creative possibilities for life and identity. In honouring personal, family and cultural practices and legacies we can find local ways of staying connected to ideas, values, intentions and commitments that sustain us through difficult times. Coloured by images, metaphors, significant figures and embodied experience narrative therapy attends to the multifaceted telling of stories that moves us closer to our preferred way of being in the world.