Is poetry art or therapy?

I'd say both. Anything that makes you feel something could be called art, and I'm of the opinion that experiencing emotions without personal investment is therapeutic through images, music, or writing. From a writers perspective though putting my thoughts on paper is therapy, but it's not art. The chance readers who find my thoughts and emotions and relate to them in their own unique way is what makes it art to me, two hearts feeling the same pain without any inside knowledge of the other. It's a beautiful thing if you ask me.

I can speak for myself here. Poetry is both art and very therapeutic. I started writing when I was around ten years old and once I was first showing signs of a mental disorder in the latter years of high school, my skill really took off. Once I was officially diagnosed in my early 20's, then it became a form of therapy and it has been very effective in relieving stress, depression and anxiety brought by my disorder. Poetry for me is also an art because word play in any form is creating something, like painting a picture where you playing with shapes and colors. In poetry your playing with words and arranging them in metaphors or syntax for example.

When there are artistic and aesthetic intentions aims and objectives out coming from a vital relationship with great works of art and where such intentions and objectives are in some degree realised and manifest in the work presented then it is obviously art. Where there are no artistic or aesthetic aims intentions or objectives and substitute for these in the work presented is a need to express emotions and feelings in the form of a report or a description of personal suffering angst self-pity self importance self-regard constituting material that can have no possible interest to anybody for any reason apart from the mother of the poet in question then this is therapy in my view the vast majority that is to say more than 99% of all works presented are therapy

Is poetry art or therapy? It's neither, both, or each on its' own. It depends on the time and circumstance. The best way to describe this is my piece called 'Deceptive Fraud'. It started out as a knee-jerk emotional response to a recurring social phenomenon I was witness to. That piece was born of a rage that still shocks me til today. As the piece was refined and tempered, it grew into not only a therapeutic experience, but a learning tool as well. It taught me not just about my own reaction to the phenomenon, but others' reactions as well. And sometimes there are thoughts that just need to get out - they don't give a reason, they demand you write them out or else they pester and beg and give you no peace til you do.