Stress and verse: do poets leverage emotional strain to boost creativity?

“Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought” as Percy Bysshe Shelley famously wrote reflects a common cultural discourse and romanticised notion that art comes from pain. Yet it remains largely unknown to what extent, and whether poets actively leverage stress to write “better”. This study explores how young poets experience situational stressors and how these shape creative practice. Following Perceived Stress Scale screening, semi-structured interviews with 10 poets were analysed using Colaizzi's descriptive phenomenological analysis. Five themes emerged: stress as a short-term block but delayed creative fuel; an emotional intensity threshold; writing as emotional regulation; deliberate mood management with ethical limits; and authenticity rooted in lived feeling. Findings suggest appraisal-dependent and intensity-dependent effects, whereby acute threat appraisals impede immediate writing, while reappraisal and regulation convert strain into creative material; these dynamics align with the challenge–skill balance for flow and emphasise perceived control.