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This presentation will report the process and outcomes of an ongoing curriculum improvement effort to enhance senior nursing students' understanding of the lived experience of mental illness during their senior level course in community mental health nursing. The conceptual framework for the course is Watson's Science of Human Caring using carative factors, with particular emphasis on caring communication and the supportive concepts of predispositional qualities, behavioral qualities, and relational qualities. Each nursing student selects an individual client experiencing serious and persistent mental illness with whom they meet over a series of sessions during which they interact therapeutically and implement the nursing process. Nursing students generate an individual visit plan supported by a mental status exam, teaching/learning materials, charting and a process recording of analysis of their communication. The experience with the individual client culminates in a case study presentation during which the students are asked to portray the lived experience of mental illness for their selected client using creative/aesthetic expression. Nursing students analyze their interaction with the client and the narrative materials generated during their relationship to identify emergent themes of the lived experience of mental illness for their client and the emergent themes of caring from their own perspective. Aesthetic expression captures the lived experience of mental illness of the clients and the lived experience of caring of the nursing student. This presentation will explore nursing students' use of poetry as a way of making meaning of the client's lived experience.