The term 'Poetry therapy'is compound words of 'poetry' and ‘therapeia’, to help, to assist medically and to cure a disease.

The word, 'poem’ and ‘poetry' are derived from greek, 'poieses', from 'poiein', 'to make' which has two meanings of 'to behave' or 'making'. In ancient greece, they identified building houses and poems, poets were supposedly the one who chant spells to bring the rain and who rendered thanksgiving to god for harvest which has a close connection to the etymology.

The german word for poetry, ' Dichtung' means 'the one who imitates things' and the italian word 'Dictare' has a meaning of 'to create'. The chinese letter ‘詩’ is a compound word of ‘言’ and ‘寺’ which signifies 'the temple of language' and ‘寺’ means 'to work manually'. To sum up, 'poetry' is an act of creating new things and leads to the creation of materializing language or words.

When it comes to the form of ‘poem’, it means concrete work of a poem, ‘poetry’ mentions the contents, that is, poetical idea, poetical minds and poetical spirit and when is designated in the abstract sense of poems, a state of poetical mind before being made into a definite form. 'Poetry' is more an extensive concept than 'Poem', contains the whole activity of human spirit. That shows the involvement of philosophers, musicians and artists as well as the poets. That explains the poems and poetical writings are all in the context.

Additionally, the term 'Poetry Therapy' has already been widely used from 1950's to these days. Grifer, a poet and a lawyer, who volunteered at a hospital as a pharmacist, first used the term ‘ Poetry Therapy’. Leedy suggested Grifer changing Poem Therapy to Poetry Therapy. They then started to cooperate and exercised influence on each other to establish APT (Association of Poetry Therapy) in 1970, and in1980, constituted NAPT (National Association of Poetry Therapy) then later combined to the state of New York in 1981.