April 15, 2015

Dear Friend of Poetic Medicine,

This morning, as it rains outside in Asheville, North Carolina, I am preparing to travel over to the Veterans Administration Hospital to work with Vets and those who support them.

I am getting ready for a day-long practice of poetry-as-healer. Before I go, I stop...and start to find my center. Then, starting by slowing down, I want to make that "center" alive with soulfulness. I want to take something with me (within me) that is essential and distilled, potent and true, tender and gritty (very tender and gritty actually) and so suddenly, these lines from Tom Waits came to mind.

It's one of the benefits of immersing oneself in poetry as healer. Those poems, those songs, those prayers, they get to know you. They can find you. Well, I know they find me.

The lines I met up with, these are fragments from his song You Can't Hold Back Spring. I won't have to or need to speak these lines out loud at the VA--but they are going to be present with me. They will help sustain and enhance my capacity to bring those qualities I mentioned a moment ago, of what is essential and distilled, true and potent, gritty and tender. I want to bring those into my encounters.

You see, the Spring we can't hold back is the creativity within us. I see it here even in my short time at this VA.

A Vet, like a young tree slammed by winter storms, writes for the first time about a lack of trust and that Vet that needs to have a fence placed around him or herself for a time; a Vet going off on the page with a rip-roarin' expression of delight as he or she brings WORDS to life; a counselor for a Vet (with 20 years of service) writes about tending her or his garden at home-- tending there because it is Spring

I want to welcome you to the Spring edition of The Poetic Medicine Journal. We are grateful for your coming here to explore and learn about what the Institute is and does. Our mission is simple! We are here "...to awaken soulfulness in the human voice." We are collectively dedicated to nurture and strengthen the human capacity to creatively connect to Self, Other, Community, the Natural World and the Divine.

We offer tools and support to people to heal body, mind and spirit through the creative and therapeutic process of hearing, speaking and writing poetry.

 *

Give birth again
To the dream.

Maya Angelou

from On the Pulse of Morning

The work of IPM flows in the deep current of these rivers:

• We fund Poetry Partner Programs that bring poetic medicine to people often considered at the margins.
• We offer a 3-year training program that provides certification in the practice of poetry-as-healer.
• We publish a quarterly/seasonal Poetic Medicine Journal that features all of the things significant to our work.
• We support John's work throughout the US and internationally to teach, heal and promote the power of poetry to comfort and transform, inform and enrich both person and community.
• We provide development in-services for those involved in helping professions such as pastoral care, medicine and education; we also provide inspiration and sustenance to community activists and organizers.
• We are a resource center for the inspiring and useful ways poetry-as-healer makes a difference and applies to the varied facets of our lives.

This edition of the journal features reports on the work of our poetry partners across the United States: Seattle, WA; Sterling, CO; Schenectady, NY; Cleveland, OH. Please read about the varied ways that poetry and poem-making can make a difference in people's lives!

You'll find out about my schedule for the year-to-date. Please make particular note of the retreat later this year at Kirkridge where Naomi Shihab Nye is the keynote poet. You'll read of the wonderful opportunity at the Vallombrosa Retreat Center at the end of June to experience the amazing cohort of people involved for the past three years in the PM training program.   

The books section offers a wide-range of applications for poetry therapy. One book I want to note here is Cataclysm and Other Arrangements by Karen Morris. Her poems explore the hidden-from-sight epidemic of childhood slavery and sex-tourism. These poems are a fierce, tender, creative witness to a reality so awful most of us could not bear to consider it straight-on. These poems make it possible for me to learn more, and in some small way, join Karen's brave witness.  

One thing I am especially happy about is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the publication of my book Finding What You Didn't Lose: Expressing Your Truth and Creativity Through Poem-Making.

Spring has returned! Everything has returned!

Lucky earth, let out of school, now you must play

Every meeting with the open page is an opportunity to play and let Spring occur. I don't mean writing spring-like content; rather, it is the impulse within you to create and make something new, whatever that is.   

So when that inner one

Gives life back the power

To rise up and push through,

There's nothing to it.

We simply have to do it,

As snowdrops know

When snowdrops flower.

May Sarton

from After Winter's Silence

You could write about that.

Yours Sincerely,

John Fox, CPT

Please consider applying for the new cohort training!

This 2nd Cohort Training begins with an in-person colloquium June 25-28 in Menlo Park, California at Vallombrosa Retreat Center. It is late but we welcome applicants!

Students of the 1st Cohort are finding excellent and exciting opportunities for making a difference with this work

With John Fox's guidance, our cohort becomes a beloved community, where we safely practice and witness coming into our own mastery of this complex, life-giving, healing art. I cannot envision a richer formation program for the aspiring poetry facilitator."                     

~ Cathey Capers, M.Ed.   

We hope to hear from you soon. Click here to learn more.

Finding What You Didn't Lose

A Poetry Reading with Linda Tuthill

Cleveland Heights Library - Main Branch

7:00 - 9:00 pm

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Cleveland Heights, OH

John is joined by Linda Tuthill as they weave reflections on the power of poetry to heal and transform into their readings.   

For full flyer, please click here. 

.......  

Writing Our Relationship with Trees

Saturday, April 11, 2015
Bay Village, OH

Participants will explore and strengthen their relationship with trees--slowing down to listen to what these sacred beings can teach. Poetry and poem-making will be used to express this relationship and how it fits within the larger context of living as stewards of this planet and as part of the fabric of the cosmos.

For full flyer, please click here. 

....... 

Finding What You Didn't Lose

A Poetry Reading with John Fox & Celebration:

20th anniversary of Finding What You Didn't Lose

Malaprops Bookstore & Cafe

7:00 - 8:30 pm 

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Asheville, NC

John is invited to speak about his work and to commemorate a very special anniversary. 

For full flyer, please click here.  

....... 

Writing Our Relationship with Trees
What This Can Teach Us About Ourselves
& Living Within The Sacred 
A Day Retreat with John Fox, CPT

Speese Conference Center
Children's Medical Center Plano
9:30 am - 4:30 pm
Saturday, April 18, 2015
Plano, TX 

....... 

Children, Spirituality, Arts & Medicine:
A Symposium

with Dr. David Watts, Dr. Laury Rappaport

and John Fox, CPT

Children's Medical Center

1st floor Moore Auditorium

1935 Medical District Drive

Dallas, TX

Monday, April 20, 2015

8:00 am - 5:00 pm

John's Presentation: If You Praise a Word,
It Turns Into a Poem--To Nurture the Creativity
in Children and Young Adults in the Hospital Setting

For full flyer, please click here.  

....... 

Writing Our Relationship with Trees
What This Can Teach Us About Ourselves
& Living Within The Sacred
A Weekend Retreat with John Fox, CPT
Friday, May 29 - Sunday, May 31, 2015
San Diego, CA

For full flyer, please click here. 

....... 

MENLO PARK, CA  

Poetic Medicine & Personhood

A Way to Explore the Sacred

Experience, Conversation and Poetry Reading

Offered by The Institute for Poetic Medicine

In Collaboration with Vallombrosa Retreat Center,

Monday, June 29, 2015

Menlo Park, CA   

Greeting, Tea, Coffee and Registration at 8:30

Day Program:  9:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Fee for day-long program:  $70

The day is designed to offer people ways of using the practice of poem-making and the inclusion of poetry in their lives to make more vivid the experience of being and becoming a whole person.    

Vallombrosa is in close proximity to San Jose and San Francisco airports. It offers beautiful grounds and hospitality that supports a deep atmosphere for reflection and meaningful communication.  

We encourage you to consider making this a special day for spiritual retreat and you can enhance that by coming a day before or staying the day following.  

For more information please contact Cyra Dumitru: cyradumitru@earthlink.net 

or call (210) 396-6796 (central time) 

Dimensions of the Conference:

An Overview of Poetic Medicine

Five Workshops (sign up for two)

Poetry Reading and Response by Participants

Poetic Medicine as Practice: Conversation Circles

Workshop Themes:

Poetic Medicine: A Way to Enhance and Deepen Helping Work 

Finding Your Voice

To Learn By Heart

Undressing to Find Your Truest Self

Movement and Poetry

Befriending the Body

For full brochure, please click here. 

.......  

BANGOR, PA  

Bread for the Journey:  
A Celebration of Poetry and the
Human Spirit

Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center

Bangor, PA

Wednesday, September 30 - Saturday, October 3, 2015

This gathering will celebrate both poetry and the human spirit. Bread for the Journey seeks to provide an experience with poetry that opens participants to being more compassionate, more generous and more present to themselves and others.

For full flyer, please click here.

A Visit with Bruce Kelly, MD, at

the Charles George Veterans Hospital

in Asheville, North Carolina

Jonathan Shay, M.D.

from Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the
Undoing of Character

Since early July of last year I have been in frequent correspondence with and had phone calls to and from Dr. Bruce Kelly, primary care physician at the Charles George VA Hospital in Asheville.

George Charles VA Center

Since my name is known in the
world of writing-to-heal, Dr. Kelly contacted me about his vision--a commitment to bring this modality of writing-to-heal not only to his VA Hospital in Asheville but to all VA Hospitals in the United States.

Dr. Kelly has already moved hearts and minds in this regard. I am deeply impressed by him as someone who makes courageous choices and takes on formidable challenges. With the full support of the board of The Institute for Poetic Medicine, I am going to Asheville for four days to learn more from him, from the Vets he serves, from his colleagues and from the world he lives in.

Bruce Kelly, MD

I'll bring poetic medicine to Vets while there but mostly I want to go as a student. The quote by Jonathan Shay speaks to me in this regard. Some think of me as a good listener but I know the practice of listening is a constant practice and ongoing art, and I want to improve myself for this future work with Vets.

On the eve of this visit, Bruce writes:

"Our long time Chief of Medicine, Eva Morgenstern, is thrilled with our arts initiatives and your visit. She watched "Healing Words" this past weekend and loved the work you do. She's agreed to squire you around the hospital to do your thing Tuesday the 14th. It will be a great opportunity to get the word and words out into the hospital proper."

I tend to think of myself as having a peripheral role here but I am willing to do what I can to advance the mission. However, Bruce says I have made a real difference for him:

"Don't ever forget you are a pivotal piece of the success happening on our work front. You were the first to agree to the proposed meeting six months ago. I haven't forgotten."

Dr. Kelly and I have other connections in the world of forgotten and marginalized people and the difficulties of the human condition.

After something I mentioned about my late sister Holly, who lived with Down syndrome (or what she called Up Syndrome) I learned about his connection as a physician with the work of Henri Nouwen and Jean Vanier, men who did/do so much for people with physical disabilities, mental and emotional challenges and intellectual differences. Like Bruce, I am influenced by Nouwen and Vanier, these fine servants of persons who could teach us all how to be better and more whole human beings.

While I call myself a student, I am also aware of my capacity to move possibilities forward. Bruce and I are keen to stir a response in the national VA but simultaneously we are aware want to engage state and local VA in bringing change and support for the creative and therapeutic arts.

Over the past six years, through keynotes to area conferences of The Association for Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), I have had the chance to share with chaplains at VA Hospitals from many states. I welcome their further interest in poetry-as-healer and I want to learn how it can help them, how it can help those they serve.

Children, Spirituality, Art & Medicine

Witek Nowosiad, a 1st cohort Poetic Medicine student and long-time chaplain at the Children's Hospital is inviting me back to the hospital to present at a day-long symposium titled "Children, Spirituality, Art & Medicine."

Witek Nowosiad

Great kudos to Witek for winning the ears and interest of fellow hospital folk at Children's! This event is open to the public and it will particularly appeal to anyone involved with helping and promoting the health and well-being of children through the arts.

What will my presentation include? I will talk about the great importance of listening deeply to children and young people, at all times, and that means when a child is in the hospital. I want to promote a quality of listening to children that has the power to supersede technological and pharmaceutical dominance, that puts appropriately in the background institutional requirements--so that the stories and needs and unique creative self-expression of that child or young person can step into the foreground. At least for a time, when they are in the intense hospital environment, I want the arts and poetry to be part of that healing environment.

Years ago I did a brief program on a medical floor at University Hospital in Newark, NJ. Among those people was a young man who likely was at the edge of being a pediatric patient. Shortly after my departure from that experience, the head of nursing, who was present at the session, brought me a poem he had written after I had left:

Our Human Heart

Why don't people talk?

Sharing their feelings, their thoughts

Why don't people listen?

Hearing the heart's human treasures

To feel, love, hurt, and heal

Why don't we listen to our own self?

This is what we need.

It is life!

Just one person

To tell why we feel

What is beating from within

Asking

To be heard.

Daryl at University Hospital

Newark, NJ*

I am not saying every adult (whether that adult is parent, medical professional or family friend) who encounters a child in a hospital needs to make serious improvement in this regard. Many already listen beautifully, most are doing their very best.

This we know to be true: we are all coping with and are under intense pressures that exist beyond our control (often including bio-medical based training, technology and brutal time constraints) that require us to help one another do better to humanize the experience of a person staying in hospital.

We want to do better so that a child, in their fragility and their resilient capacities, is not lost. I don't mean lost to death I mean lost to those very things the "modern" hospital uses and implements to help that child. We want, ultimately, to find ourselves working together in a process that aims towards curing--but whose intention-at-heart always includes healing.

The poetry of children and young people within the hospital setting reminds us to give room and caring consideration to a child's presence, to their creative voice so that child can be an empowered partner and treasured person with those who are charged with their care.

I believe this Symposium organized by Witek will provide an opportunity for not only a reassessment, but a fertile ground upon which to grow a new way of seeing, a new perspective for treating the whole person.

To look at anything

If you would know that one thing

You would realize

That everything contains sides,

And everything has a place

Relative to another place,

Its place depends on perspective,

From the place where you are looking

Although it can be anyway you want it

It is different from the other sides

Bryce

Shands Hospital 2004

I look forward to this presentation for another happy reason that is personal and professional. My co-presenters Dr. David Watts (producer of Healing Words: Poetry & Medicine) and Dr. Laury Rappaport (editor of Mindfulness and the Arts Therapies: Theory and Practice) are friends. David and Laury have influenced me with their humor, insight, humanity and a consummate professionalism that has not lost heart.

For full flyer, please click here.   

Stories of Arrival:

Youth Voices: Stories of Arrival

& Project Feast

An Exploration of Culture, Poetry and Food

Presented by Merna Ann Hecht

and Carrie Stradley of Foster High School
Tukwila, WA 

"In each year of the Stories of Arrival project, poetry has been our main ingredient in a complex and spicy global meal we partake of together; in doing so we have become more able to "right what happens in the world." The nourishment of partaking in poetry allows the students to learn to communicate in a language that celebrates both individual experiences and an overall compassionate spirit of hope and courage. Poet Ngoc Minh Tran, from Vietnam, expressed this same sentiment when he wrote his project reflection. Ngoc wrote, 'We learned that a poem is like food-- poems need smells, feelings, images, memories and color to be perfect just like food needs herbs, salt, sugar, color and fragrance to be delicious.'"

Merna Ann Hecht,

Writing in Poetic Medicine Journal

September 2011

Merna Ann Hecht with foster students

Merna Ann Hecht, who IPM is funding for the 6th time in seven years, in her incredible rain-maker ways, told me a few days ago she is in creative conversations with the various players for start of the Youth Voices & Project Feast work next autumn.

Stories of Arrival: Youth Voices

This year Merna's efforts, are, per usual, all about maximizing student, community, family and school involvement.

Describing this new project to IPM, Merna wrote the following: (Please note the third paragraph to understand my words Merna's rain-maker ways!):

Project co-director and ELL teacher Carrie Stradley and I are continually looking for ways to expand the poetry project so that it is more inclusive of the refugee families and by extension the many refugee communities who live in Tukwila.

One of our thoughts for 2015 is to bring in younger and more diverse spoken word and "page poets" for performances and mini-workshops who will reflect the students' cultures back to them and further their inspiration in performing/presenting their own poems.

Besides maintaining and nurturing our current partnerships with Jack Straw Cultural Center, KBCS FM Radio, Carrie Curley and United Reprographics, photographer David Lynch, the ELL Services of the Tukwila School District, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and the Refugee Women's Alliance there is a project that seems to us to be the ideal community partner for our dreams of how to enfold the poetry project into the local refugee communities and community at large. This is a relatively new project in Tukwila only a very short bus ride or even a doable walk away from Foster High School. It is called Project Feast.

Project Feast unites people of different cultures through the universal love of food.

Our idea is to create a cookbook/poetry book in concert with this project. We are currently in the "dream and scheme" phase of this idea since it will require some substantial fundraising and coordination. The idea is to bring our students to Project Feast as part of a community service activity and engage them in helping with the food preparation.

We would focus our poetry writing on memories of food as related to culture, home, rituals, festivals and family. We would also open up the writing to aspects of hunger, of food rationing in refugee camps and of the survival that is part of forced migration. Ultimately what we want to do is engage our students in collecting recipes directly from the women of Project Feast and from their own family members.

We then want to co-create a stand up book with recipes on one side and a poem written by our students on the other side. The book would be for sale as a fundraiser for both our project and Project Feast. We feel that this partnership be the kind of service-minded community poetry project that will enhance community spirit and the intergenerational voices and experiences of refugees and immigrants in a positive and far-reaching manner.

Click here to learn more about the project.

Who I am, Where I live &

Who we are, Where we live

The Collinwood Neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio

Presented by Cindy Washabaugh

I am so glad IPM is sponsoring a project led by Cindy Washabaugh. I met Cindy almost 20 years ago at a conference of the National Poetry Therapy Association in San Jose, California, and the next year in Cleveland. We have gladly stayed in friendly contact since.

Cindy Washabaugh

Noteworthy about this tapestry with Cindy are a few personal things. My sister, Shelley Fox, who sustained a traumatic brain injury in her mid-twenties, was a participant in PLAN. Shelley died in June 2011 and I am glad on her behalf that something she loved, creativity, can continue with Cindy's work. Another connection: I invited Cindy and her poetry troupe Take Nine to perform poems at my mother's eightieth birthday!

Cindy's project will involve an outreach to an entire neighborhood in Cleveland called Collinwood. Cindy wrote about her vision to the board of IPM:

This is a multi-faceted program focused on giving voice to both the individual and community identities of residents of the ethnically and racially diverse Collinwood neighborhood on Cleveland's near east side, where rapid change is now ensuing.

Once a major enclave of heavy industry, Collinwood drew large numbers of ethnic white Europeans (mainly Slovenians, Irish and Italians) and Southern Appalachians to its neighborhoods in the post-war industrial boom of the 1940s and '50s. In the '60s many of these residents left for the expansive promise of suburban America. This time period also brought an influx of African Americans, who now make up 63% of the population. As big industry declined in the area, so did the many storefronts and neighborhoods of Collinwood. This decline has continued for decades. Housing foreclosure rates are among the highest in the city and more than half of the original storefronts and businesses are unoccupied.

The 21st century has brought its own shifts, with many members of the Millennial generation seeking to leave suburbia behind, with its cookie-cutter neighborhoods and high cost-of living, and return to urban neighborhoods where their grandparents and great-grandparents grew up, lured by the proximity to Lake Erie beaches, downtown attractions and low-cost housing. Thus Collinwood is coming back full circle, and has become a testing ground for artists and young families, hoping to have the best of all worlds. There are real opportunities for renewal.

Similar neighborhoods in Cleveland and other rust belt cities have become prosperous and lively communities. In Collinwood, there are anchor organizations, backed by federal grants for redevelopment, like Arts Collinwood (café and visual art gallery) and the Collinwood Community Center (recreation and fitness center), along with a few long-standing organizations, like the beloved music venue, The Beachland Ballroom, and the Slovenian Workmen's Home, which provide a nucleus for the community. Still, crime remains high (16% higher than in urban Cleveland itself), rebuilding is slow-going by nature, and the incredible diversity of Collinwood's residents creates as well the opportunity for mistrust, misunderstanding and segregation of cultures within the same small community.

It is thus incredibly important to reach out and reach into this group using the power of poetry to create a context for sharing uniqueness as well as creating a sense of shared identity. A community this long in flux is in need of support: those who have experienced the loss that comes with decline and dissolution as well as those who seek the haven that a new community can ultimately offer need to be grounded, healed, and welcomed to come together.

The Heart of the Project

Residents will gather at local organizations like Arts Collinwood, The Collinwood Community Center and The Slovenian Workmen's Home, to create poems or other short pieces of creative writing that articulate who they are as unique individuals and to describe their homes and/or neighborhoods. Poems of place and identity will be used by the facilitator as springboards for writing and discussion throughout the workshop series. Some potential examples follow:

From: Photograph of my Room, by Carolyn Forche

Thirty years from now, you might

hold this room in your hands--

So that you will not wonder:

The china cups are from Serbia

where a man filled them with plum wine

and one night talked of his life.

The quilt was Anna's,

there are swatches taken

from her own clothes.

In the black cheese crock

are the ashes, flecked

with white slivers of bone,

that should have been scattered

years ago, but the thing

did not seem possible.

The rest of the room remains

a mystery.

Some questions for writing and discussion might be:

• The objects we live with can tell much about us--what are some things in your home or room that speak to who you are? Where you're from?

• If you left a record of your life for someone 35 years in the future, what are some things you'd like them to know about your life and your home, that are important to who you are?

• Describe a place that you enjoy visiting in your community. What makes it special to you?

Writing Workshops, Artists' Workshop and Culminating
Community Reading Event

Two-hour writing workshops will be held at the three locales noted (two workshops at each). While all of these organizations are utilized by all parts of the community, each is especially magnetic to a specific segment of the community: Arts Collinwood is a flagship for new families and visual artists in the community. The Collinwood Community Center is a focal location for much of the African American community with its gym and rec center, while the Slovenian Workmen's Home, which holds community polka dances and fish-fries, has been operated by the local Slovenian population for over 90 years. All residents will be invited to attend workshops at the location of their choice. Offering them at these diverse locations will ensure the widest variety of residents are served and that all are welcomed into the various community organizations, whatever choice they make.

Once the writing workshops are complete, there will be a final half-day Artists' Workshop at one location. All primary workshop participants will be invited to gather to create simple visual representations for their poems for display in the Arts Collinwood Gallery.

Ultimately, the poems will be collected into an anthology, and this, as well as the visual poems, will be shared at a culminating community event, to be attended by all participants along with other interested neighbors, family members, and business proprietors. Thus this project will have many facets, drawing together diverse constituents of a diverse community, and will serve as a vehicle for further understanding of the continually developing identity of this rich and growing community.

Goals:

• To deepen a sense of community among diverse residents through workshops and other communal program components.
• To create a collaborative, language-driven, visual representation of community identity for the Collinwood neighborhood.
• To familiarize participants with the intense, distilled language of poetry and provide opportunities for them to understand and integrate its power into their day-to-day lives. 

.......

Please anticipate hearing more from Judith, Wayne, Merna and Cindy as their programs unfold. We want to share ideas and ways to bring this work of poetic medicine to others in all of these ways.

We are storytellers, writers, poets, and artists who abhor
unfairness, and despise hypocrisy, and give voice to the voiceless,
and tell truths that need to be told.

Karina Epperlein

A few years ago, the beautiful and late Barbara Cushing, Director of Grant-Making for the Kalliopeia Foundation, urged me to attend a gathering in Akron, Ohio, where the filmmaker (and another grantee of Kalliopeia) Karina Epperlein, would be actively making her film Finding the Gold Within.

Kwame, Karina and Kalliopeia

This gathering was a program led by another Kalliopeia grantee, Kwame Scruggs of Alchemy, Inc. The subjects of Karina's film would be these African-American young men-- many of them in high school, others heading for college.

Led by Kwame and his team of teachers, these young men were taking part in an intentional and guided circle that included drumming, poetry, myth, fairy-tale and storytelling.

Enthralled and moved, I experienced the quality of work being done by Kwame and Alchemy, Inc in creating space for new stories to be told, for age-old wisdom stories to be learned.

I also saw the exquisite way that Karina was capturing what was unfolding. Karina's film-making challenge was to weave the threads of what happened in those wisdom circles into a life-story shared by each of the six protagonists: Brandyn Costa, Darius Simpson, Imani Scruggs, Shawntrail Smith, Stacee Starr, Tyler Jones. That journey involved following each for 3.5 years during their college experience and further life dreams.   

The Courage to Correct Injustice and Attend to Grievous Wounds

In this past year, especially since Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, MO, last August, I have been shocked by the police shootings of Walter Scott, John Crawford and Tamir Rice, who was only twelve-years old. Last July there was death by choke-hold of Eric Garner. This names just some of African-American men killed recently by police action. It is horrifying to me and perhaps it is horrifying to you. I am genuinely grateful to police who put their iives on the line every day; they receive my whole-hearted support. But these deaths demand investigation into the possibility of injustice, of something that is terribly wrong. The harsh facts of their deaths bring up difficult issues that, in my opinion, need attention: police brutality and misconduct, lack of accountability and structural racism. The deaths of these African-American men, young men and a child challenge the conscience of this country.  

Yet how can we also experience daily life in a way that illuminates what does not make it into breaking news? It helps us to hear stories. To learn the amazing stories of people's lives. Finding the Gold Within gives this in abundance: a way to know the lives/stories of real people reaching across racial barriers. Once again it is the arts that build the bridge--not only to the inner life of another person--we also learn how poetry and storytelling, myth and drumming help a young person create a pathway into a viable future.

Hometown Connections

Knowing Karina would be in Cleveland to show Finding the Gold Within at the Cleveland International Film Festival, I made a connection between her and a friend, Roger Osgood, pastor at Heights Christian, a wonderful church dedicated to peace and racial justice.

Roger, along with Kathie McWilliams (a Fox family friend for over 53 years!) of the Peace and Justice Task Committee at Heights Christian, along with the Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, Minister of Outreach, welcomed Karina and the young men in the film to offer a program at the church (shown below).

Left: Stacee sitting, Karina with Imani; Middle: Brandyn; Right: Brandyn, Stacee, Darius, Shawntrail standing, Tyler

The program was, in a sense, a re-creation of the wisdom circle they experienced during their time with Alchemy, but it was much more, too. As a way to extend the stories of the film into their living experience, they are now creating original performances and they have taken them "on the road." 

Karina, who is a trained dramatist, helps them. She wrote in response to my words here:

"Yes it "recreates the wisdom circle" and then takes it another step further somehow, and I can't quite explain it; I am allowing and asking the young men to celebrate themselves. Now it is their own story we share and elevate--with the world--like the film is sharing with the world precious deep things. 

They want to show how their individual stories are also universal. One of my favorite parts of this original performance: I have them start with a medley of "once a upon a time..." which they are very familiar with from Alchemy. Their voices overlap as they speak these beginnings, like a chorus, or canon: 

...in a time, not this time, when myths spoke themselves,

metaphors were everyday occurrences...

Once upon a time, in a time not like this time, in a place unlike this place,

when the sun gave mercy and the answers came before the questions...

in a time when the earth was rich with food 

and men's souls were filled and greed didn't exist...

in a time when people didn't live to work, but worked to live 

in a much more simple place...

One comes in before the other is finished. It is moving, powerful and beautiful. They are making up their own beginnings!"

Roger Osgood, the pastor at Heights Christian offers us fierce commentary on the importance of this afternoon with the young men featured in Finding the Gold Within:

"The personal stories of the six men in the film, what they have experienced and, for many, what they have overcome, were a telling reminder of the fact that racism in America is anything but dead. They spoke powerfully of what it means to grow up as, and being, a black male in our society. I was especially moved by the poetry that they had written to convey their experience. As a pastor and member of our denomination's anti-racism efforts, I was inspired to redouble my efforts to work towards eradicating the destructive evil of prejudice and racism in American culture."

These young men also visited a plaque on the grounds of the church where in 1965 The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood and spoke to a crowd of thousands outside the church. That outside event occurred because of an internal conflict that erupted among the church membership at that time--many didn't want Dr. King to speak inside the church! They didn't realize that their act of exclusion, creating a circumstance of no room in the Inn, so to speak, increased King's capacity to reach more people a thousand-fold! Oh, things have changed!

In describing Finding the Gold Within, I wrote:

"Finding the Gold Within is one of the truly timely things happening in our country. Karina, with poetic grace, considerable grit and meticulous attention, gathers in a feature-length film the rich lives of six young black men. What I love about this work is the way Karina steps deeply into these stories and the lives of these young men. Yet, as close as Karina gets (and this is the magic!) she simultaneously gets out of the way.

I had the good fortune to spend a weekend with her when she was filming some of the sacred circle work with Alchemy, Inc. in Akron, OH. Holding the camera, I saw she was at once light on her feet and unflinchingly steady."

When the film was given a premier screening in Oakland, at its conclusion, Avon Kirkland, an esteemed elder Black producer and director, reflected on his experience of seeing it:

"I rose in the audience and thanked Karina Epperlein for her insightful and moving documentary. Finally we had a film that reveals the often difficult inner lives and striving of Black male teenagers. In stark contrast to the stereotype, these young Black men find within themselves a sense of authentic self-worth and learn to avoid self-destructive behaviors.

But as I was making those remarks I felt a great sadness welling up inside me, so much so that I finally had to pause to avoid weeping. As I recognized what I was feeling I shared it with the audience: as a now elderly Black man raised and educated in the segregated South, and as a Black PhD graduate student in a predominately white university, I had encountered the very same problems as Karina's subjects fifty years ago! In those fifty years so much and yet so little had changed. We've got more work to do..."

Avon Kirkland, Producer, Director, Ralph Ellison: An American Journey (American Masters), Simple Justice (American Experience)

I love this film not only for its timeliness but because it clearly shows poetic medicine in action. I'm grateful to Barbara Cushing for encouraging me to attend that weekend. I hope you'll look into this film and find ways to share it.

Click here to learn about Finding the Gold Within.

Click here to see Kwame Scruggs of Alchemy, Inc., receiving an Arts and Humanities Award from First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House.

Ellen Bass

AN OPPORTUNITY...

A Letter of Invitation from Ellen Bass

Current Santa Cruz County Poet Laureate

Bringing Poetry to Men and Women

Who Are in Prison

"During my first class a participant told me, 'I only have a third grade education, I can't spell, I can't write and I sure as hell can't write poetry.' By the end of that class he had written his first poem and proudly read it aloud. It was evident how pleased he was. The next week he told me he had shared his poem with everyone in his jailblock. On the day he was to be released, he shared that he was going to sign up for classes at the junior college because he had learned that it was okay to try doing things even if he didn't think he would be any good at them. His gratitude was humbling. I didn't tell him that I had been sure I wouldn't be any good at teaching."

Nancy Gomez, teacher at R.I.S.E.

Dear Writers and Teachers,

As part of my term as Santa Cruz County Poet Laureate, I have been establishing poetry workshops for incarcerated women and men. Several of these workshops have been in collaboration with RISE and Gemma, two local organizations that help participants successfully reintegrate into the community as healthy, contributing members.

We've just completed our second ten-week session working at one of the Santa Cruz County men's facilities and have established two new workshops for women in the county. Another workshop that I started at Salinas Valley State Prison has been ongoing for more than two years. This work has been deeply gratifying and inspiring.

We are now looking for a few more poets and writers who would like to make a meaningful contribution to people who are eager for a chance to change their lives.

You don't have to have teaching experience to volunteer--just a genuine desire to bring the power of poetry to people to whom it will make a big difference.

Teaching men and women who have a deep need for poetry is a profoundly rewarding experience. The participants in these workshops are hungry for meaningful intellectual conversation and they are eager to study the craft, as well as delve into the emotion of poetry. If you've been thinking you'd like to share your passion and knowledge of poetry, I hope you'll join us.

If you have interest in teaching with this project as a volunteer, have the ability to be available in and around the Santa Cruz or Salinas areas on a regular basis, and can commit to facilitating a workshop each week or every other week, please contact us. We are hoping to expand this important work and begin several additional workshops in the Santa Cruz area and at the prison in Salinas Valley.

Please email me at ellen@ellenbass.com and include a little information about yourself, your experience, and what draws you to this work. Also, feel free to ask any questions you may have.

Thank you!

Ellen

"Drawing from a splendid range of sources, John Fox guides the reader gently into the wide realms where the shaping of words can connect the feeling heart and the world."

Jane Hirshfield

author Given Sugar, Given Salt,

editor Women In Praise of the Sacred

the trick of finding what you didn't lose

(existing's tricky: but to live's a gift)

the teachable imposture of always

arriving at that place you never left...

e. e. cummings

Dear Friend of Finding What You Didn't Lose,

I am not a big self-promoter! That may sound disingenuous as a first sentence let alone the fact that I'm very happily trumpeting the fact that this is...

Trumpet Please...(yes, you may click here)

The 20th Year Anniversary of the Publication of the Ground-Breaking Book, Finding What You DIdn't Lose: Expressing Your Truth and Creativity Through Poem-Making

If not for the vision and faith of Jeremy P. Tarcher, who published the book in 1995, Finding What You Didn't Lose wouldn't exist. Jeremy also gave the book its title. To describe my idea that poetry is intrinsic to us, I had written a letter to him including those four lines from E. E. Cummings. He wrote me back immediately giving the book its brilliant name.

To mention some: Linda Tuthill, Onie Kriegler, Ted Henry, Jack Coulehan, Jamie Pearlstein, Carole Dwinell, Robert Evans--their poems and stories grace this book. I am happy to recall my interactions with them 21 years ago while writing it.

There is a healing wellspring, a refreshing, creative fountain in Finding What You Didn't Lose. The flow today is as strong and true now as it was 20 years ago. If you haven't experienced this timeless journey called a book, I send you my personal invitation to get it. Let it be a catalyst for your writing. Stephen Levine and Jeremy Tarcher himself wrote these testimonials:   

"John Fox shows his fine heart through poetry, the possibility of grace in the potentials of poetry. Give this book to your daughter, your son, your parents, yourself."

Stephen Levine

author of Who Dies?

.......

For one cent it is possible to buy a copy of FWYDL! I've done this myself, bought a book for a penny! But I would ask that you buy a couple books at one cent and then I suggest purchasing one book at the going price of $15.04. The publisher, who is now Random House/Penguin, will notice.

From a 14-year span here are testimonials on Amazon:

"Finding What You Didn't Lose: Expressing Your Truth and Creativity Through Poem-making was my introduction to the field of poetry therapy. Although I have added many poetry therapy texts to my library since acquiring Mr. Fox's book, I still consider Finding What You Didn't Lose the premiere text. It is comprehensible; full of useful and thoughtful ideas; and beneficial for anyone seeking to cultivate healing in themselves or others."

Thorvald Satvig, April 2001

....... 

"Simply put, this is the go-to book I use to teach poetry when I'm looking to write bone-deep, soul-sorting poetry. It's not the mechanics of poetry, which can be found in many other places.

Instead, it teaches you the way to distill your life, tidy your soul and create beautiful poetry. It's a satisfyingly fat book that you will never tire of using. Examples galore help you see what is being taught.

You can start at the beginning (the need for poem-making) and work your way through revealing yourself in your poems, reconnecting with your creativity, experimenting with language, metaphor, making poems from journal entries, creating a community of poem-makers, breaking through your pain with words, all the way to expressing the sacred through poetry. A powerful, thorough exploration of what poetry is and how to write it, it's much more than a resource, it's a guide and encouragement for those who want to write poetry."

I Carry My Mother

review by Judith Prest, LCSW

In I Carry My Mother, Lesléa Newman illuminates what it was like to lose her mother--taking us along on the journey from diagnosis, through decline, last moments and into the aftermath. The book is a record, written through the lens of grief and memory of how she met the challenge of losing her mother, how her mother met the challenge of illness and dying.

Poems in I Carry My Mother speak eloquently to the nuances of the mother-daughter connection. In this work, she captures the rip in a daughter's universe that accompanies her mother's death. And she bears witness to her own and her mother's courage and strength throughout the time her mother was dying.

Lesléa Newman

Newman sets the stage early on--in Thirteen Ways of Looking at My Mother, the artful juxtaposition of the woman her mother has been with the woman engaged in a losing battle with cancer make clear what the world is about to lose. In The Deal, we see a woman who once was elegant and slim, who colored her hair and painted her toenails "candy apple red', who "always loved her tiny feet"; the feet that now are "two swollen loaves of yeasty unbaked bread." A snapshot of her mother's character also comes through loud and clear in The Deal:

My mother points a finger.

Don't you cry

My life has been terrific until now

In Thirteen Ways of Looking at My Mother, it is clear how mothers' and daughters' lives are entwined--"I know how to make matzo balls/big as fists/and how to love on nothing/but cottage cheese, cigarettes, and air/but I know, too/that my mother is involved/in everything I know" And further along in the collection--My Mother Has My Heart:

my mother has my heart and I have hers

We traded on the day that she gave birth

rings true with this daughter who has also lost a mother.

As I read the poems in I Carry My Mother, there were many points where a line, an image, a turn of phrase in one of the poems took me right back into my own journey with my dying mother 13 years ago:

From Safe Passage:

to depart and will soon set sail

without me. Standing at sea

I keep a close watch.

and from In the ICU: 

my mother is awake and not awake

my mother is asleep and not asleep

my mother is alive and not alive...

the clock is moving and not moving...

I am beside her and beside myself...

and the last lines of My Mother Has My Heart:

A treasure I keep deep within my chest

From this day forth whatever else occurs

My mother has my heart and I have hers.

And, yes, I do believe we all carry our mothers with us, inside, after they have left the planet. I Carry My Mother captures this truth. The way Lesléa Newman's poems show the particularity of her bond with her mother exemplifies the universal connection of mothers and daughters.

The poems themselves are in a variety of styles--some rhyme, some do not, and in wide-variety of other poetic forms. Quite a few of them are modeled forms from works by other poets--we hear echoes of Wallace Stevens, Muriel Rukeyser, Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti and as far back as the 1500s to Sir Phillip Sidney! She uses his poem as a model for My Mother Has My Heart.

This variety of form and style serve her purpose--it shows that every death, like every birth and every individual human is unique and particular, but each resonates with our shared humanity.

I Carry My Mother would be a valuable addition to the library of anyone wrestling with the loss of a mother. The poems in this book would be helpful to people who work in the field of death and dying or who are working with clients who have grief work to do. The clear language and the striking images speak eloquently of loss and grief and recovery, and because of this, Newman's poems could be a catalyst for others who need to express their own experiences of loss.

Click here to see more about this book. 

....... 

Poetic Prescriptions for Parenthood

edited and with essays by Jane Hunter, M.D.

Sometimes you make me think of a magician

pulling a dove from his sleeve the way you say

bird and it seems to unfold its wings at your mouth

and fly up to a branch on the apple tree

Joan I Siegel

from First Words

In the mid 2000s I met a pediatric physician, Jane Hunter. I was invited to present at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley. Jane attended. She had been through a battle with breast cancer and the workshop met a real need for the next step in her healing journey. For quite a while Jane also attended my ongoing bi-monthly poetry circle in Berkeley. While she left the poetry circle after awhile, something struck a further chord. She didn't leave a desire to bring forth something profound with poetry and healing.

I've known about this book project for many years and last week, HOORAY! Jane sent me five copies of The Well-Versed Parent: Poetic Prescriptions for Parenthood. I am very happy for her seeing this through.

Jane Hunter

The book is a compilation of five finely written essays by Jane about the various stages in the lives of parent and child--from "Poems of Emergence" to "Poems of Independence." She has gathered from poets, known and unknown, poems for each of the five sections. Lovely line drawings open each section. 

I wrote this testimonial for The Well-Versed Parent:

"Throughout this slim book, Dr. Jane Hunter's sensitive and common sense pediatric expertise about newborns/children/teenagers and their parents shines through. Her commentary connects this understanding with the way poems capture the intense experience of growing up. Written by parents, these poems are selected with great care. They distill realities of daily life, realities that include your first-born breathing against your body and then, taking that child to college.

The Well-Versed Parent will help a parent notice their child in a new way when it comes to their health, and in particular to treasure moments that matter, moments that happen within the span of 20 years at most, years that are, after all, so quickly gone. Dr. Hunter has created an inspiring, unique and useful book that speaks to the whole child, the whole parent."

This is humbling for me to include here but it also makes me happy to share that Jane, when sending her book, wrote to me: "This book would not exist but for your inspiration."

It is exciting to see this kind of literature flourishing. If I wanted IPM to make a difference in medicine, this is a sure sign of it. If you know of pediatricians or parents, new mothers or parents further on, anyone who might find this book heartening and useful, please let them know!

Click here to see more about this book.  

Cataclysm and Other Arrangements

by Karen Morris, NCPsyA

I am glad to share with you a collection of poems by Karen Morris, published by Three Stones Press. When I say "I am glad" it doesn't mean that I am happy. Actually, I am near to tears. Some of these poems reflect on shattered lives. Yet there is in these pages a redeeming witness to truth. Cataclysm does courageous work.

These poems arise via this poet's and psychoanalyst's harrowing awareness of a painful and hidden subject: child sex and slave trafficking. These poems are a great challenge to a reader--without losing the darkest shadows of human nature from which this reality of child sex trafficking comes, Morris delivers to

Karen Morris

the light of day compassion, insight and potentially healing images that are the cornerstone of both depth psychology and spiritual practice.

I write "potentially" because these poems, if they are to do more than simply cry out, they ask for-- perhaps I really want to say they demand--your engaged witness.  

From the Amazon page for Cataclysm and Other Arrangements:

"Drawing from years of experience that integrates Zen, psychoanalysis, trauma study and poetry, Karen Morris' poems speak to 'the reality of this world' (which) is the concern for many of these poems, one of the few recourses I have to send out my alarm for what is happening to the women, young girls and boys of this world, entrapped within the commercial sex industry and slave-driven economies which have become social norms throughout the world, supported by demand and addiction, fueled by the three poisons at the hub of the wheel of life and death: anger, greed and ignorance...Many of these poems reflect my involvement in the study of these issues and my commitment to public education as well as the education of professionals in my field, with concern for prevention, saving and restoring lives."

I wrote a testimonial for Karen's book and she asked to use it as Preface:

"In these poems, Karen Morris makes it her job to visit the underworld, the one happening right in our midst, embedded in the current world you and I actually inhabit and do our best to avoid because it asks us to become more feeling of an intense suffering that is not other than us--and even more, appreciative of an exquisite beauty that is also ours:

Your face is a world

on the brink of releasing

its first cloud.

Morris's report of her journey does not come in language like a Frommer travel guide. No! She throws, with considerable courage and trust, yarrow sticks of her unconscious upon the page.

These poems present, like the art of Ikebana Karen loves so much, their arrangement for us to discern and divine.

I suggest you put this book under your pillow and go to sleep. You'll get it better that way, to start. Remember, in reading her poems, what Einstein once poignantly said: 'No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.'"

Click here to see more about this book.    

Next Poetic Medicine Journal we will feature an interiew with Karen Morris.  

The Longing in Between: A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology

Sacred Poetry from Around the World

Edited with Commentary by Ivan M. Granger

Poetry Chaikhana

"The Longing in Between is a work of sheer beauty. Many of the selected
poems are not widely known, and Ivan M. Granger has done a great service, not only by bringing them to public attention, but by opening their deeper meaning with his own rare poetic and mystic sensibility."

Roger Housden,

author of Ten Poems to Change Your Life series

Each little flower speaks a truth...

In my practice of the therapeutic and healing uses of poetry I leave plenty of room for spirituality. That is, the mystery which infuses experience. That is, the various and specific practices taught by spiritual traditions and religions that inform and may guide our healing journey. That is, a sense that poetry and poem-making offer a person a pathway for an increasingly authentic expression of their inner life.  

It does not have to be explicit, this spirituality. I am feeling that what is true is something close to what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote, "Things have their within." Poetry gives us a way to speak the wordless, express the ineluctable, find the trail of bread crumbs that could help us feel the within.  

Ivan M. Granger, creator and founder of Poetry Chaikhana.com, has lifted up to people around the world the great wealth of spiritual poetry available to us. Ivan draws from every religious/spiritual/ mystical/indigenous tradition. I hold Ivan in such high esteem for this work!  

So when he asked me to write a testimonial for The Longing in Between, I was glad to do it. It is my own longing "in between" that captures my deep wish to offer Ivan some words. I've wondered whether that longing I feel isn't somehow also felt towards me by what I long for:

There Is An Origin

For each true poem born there is an origin:

Blessed ignorance of words that turn

To splendid fire, as stars in space will yearn

To find on earth their up stretched twin.

John Fox

Here is my testimonial:

"One thing I love about The Longing In Between, Ivan Granger's new anthology of poetry and commentary, is how inclusive this book is. With an open heart it is not that surprising or even difficult to be inclusive. It's the nature of the open heart! However, what is different here is that Ivan's heart is not only open, it's made deep from spiritual practice; and with increasing depth comes a greater clarity and clearness. Nothing is forgotten or overlooked; virtually everything that delivers a vibration of the sacred shows up on these pages.  

The other thing I love is how Ivan unfolds each poem with equal attention. Everything matters. This equal attention informs me not only about nuances and details, mysteries and questions that might slip by my reading, but through Ivan's reflections I learn about respect, and gain a much greater respect for--and love, yes, love for the longing in between."

John Fox              

The Institute for Poetic Medicine

Click here to see more about this book. 

Click here to learn more about Poetry Chaikhana.   

Poems for the Time Capsule

Collected by David Watts

Wolf Ridge Press

"Whoever opens "The Time Capsule" in some imaginary future
will discover a collection of beautiful and evocative poems--the editor's unabashed favorites--that show how abundantly we human animals
are capable of intelligence, tenderness and love."

Ann Fisher-Worth, author of Carta Marina and Dream Cabinet,
co-editor of the Ecopoetry Anthology

....... 

"Poetry is critical to our existence. Built into our basic instincts
is the impulse to turn to poems in times of need."

David Watts, M.D., from the Foreword

I am always on the lookout for anthologies that gather poems I could use in my practice. There are the excellent time-tested gold standards like Marilyn Sewell's Cries of the Spirit and The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart edited by the late James Hillman, Robert Bly and Michael Meade. Both of these appeared in the early nineties and I do not tire of them!

There are specific anthologies that serve beautifully such as Mosaic Moon: Caregiving Through Poetry, Easing the Burden of Alzheimer's Disease edited by Frances H. Kakugawa. It is a very moving book of gritty and compassionate poems written by people caring for loved ones. If I am working with medical students I can draw from Body Language: Poems of the Medical Training Experience, edited by Neeta Jain, Dagan Coppock and Stephanie Brown Clark. I have a few dozen anthologies on my shelf like this. These anthologies cover a wide range of needs and themes.  

Now I have a new general anthology that I am going to call my favorite! Poems for the Time Capsule is collected by the estimable David Watts.  

David, who is a fine poet himself, is also a beloved physician. I know him mainly as a convener of Writing the Medical Experience, which for many years was a gathering of physicians, nurses, health care folk and people who are or who were once patients--all of whom value the healing art of writing--and made both fun and meaning sharing that writing together in one space whether it was at Squaw Valley, Sarah Lawrence College or Dominican University.

David and his wife, Joan Baranow, are the primary force behind the PBS documentary Healing Words: Poetry & Medicine. But here we have David as the skilled and artful anthologist: literally, a flower gatherer!