Lexington, KY – Poetry has long been a way for people to make sense of the world through emotion, memory and shared human experience. For University of Kentucky College of Social Work (CoSW) Ph.D. student Abraham Tetteh Teye, it is also a way to process the beauty, heaviness, heartbreak and hope that social workers encounter every day.
A native of Ghana, Teye’s academic and professional journey has been shaped by a commitment to child welfare, social justice, human rights and the experiences of vulnerable populations. Before beginning his doctoral studies at CoSW, he completed the Erasmus Mundus Advanced Development in Social Work program, studying across multiple European universities.
Those international experiences deepened his understanding of migration, poverty, inequality and other global social issues – perspectives that continue to inform both his scholarship and creative writing.
“For me, poetry is both reflective and restorative. It allows me to process complex emotions, social realities, and human experiences in ways that academic writing does not allow.” Teye shared. “I see poetry as a form of storytelling, one that creates space for vulnerability, memory, resistance, and hope.”
Teye’s poem, Presaging, earned second place in the 2026 National Poetry Contest for Social Workers and was published by The New Social Worker as part of its National Poetry Month feature highlighting the contest’s top three poems.
The poem bears witness to the emotional weight of a client session in a way many social workers, counselors and helping professionals will immediately recognize.
Teye opens with “I ask the alphabetical construction of her human dignity.”
In a single line, he transforms routine documentation into something deeply human, asking readers to consider what it means to reduce a life, a wound, or a story into an assessment that can fit neatly onto paper.
From there, Presaging unfolds in the tender quiet between counselor and client. Through fragments of memory, silence, and lived experience, Teye sketches the portrait of a young person confronting a life-altering reality.
Without revealing the particulars of her story, he invites readers to sit in the weight of it — the devastation of betrayal, the heaviness of shame and the silence that often follows.
Yet the poem refuses to leave its subject trapped there. Teye writes, “I refuse the stones of stigma and the sharp edge of judgment,” rejecting the impulse to define people by their worst moments or deepest wounds.
Instead, he offers something gentler and perhaps more powerful. “I offer a different construction: a chair, a breath, a witness.”
Teye closes his poem with a powerful reflection: “I am the keeper of her silence, until she finds her voice.” It is a line that leaves us with the reminder that even during uncertainty, stigma and suffering, a person’s story is not yet finished.
To be recognized nationally in the 2026 National Poetry Contest for Social Workers is a remarkable accomplishment. Yet perhaps even more meaningful is the reminder Teye offers the profession itself: that social workers are not only practitioners and researchers, but storytellers, creators, witnesses and protectors of human dignity.
As he continues his work as a researcher, educator and advocate, Teye hopes to use both scholarship and creative expression to contribute to conversations about social justice and the human experience — one story, and one poem, at a time.