It is December and I would like to make brief reports on some of my activities for The Institute for Poetic Medicine during this year, including activities initiated by others that were and are inspiring. It is my hope that you will make note of the wide-variety of poetic medicine happenings. Your active engagement, your awareness, makes a difference.
Coleman Barks, treasured translator (along with John Moyne) of the beloved Persian mystic poet Rumi, wrote many years ago:
"It is good work that John Fox does, celebrating the healing properties, the tenderness, of poetry in this time of turning-away and cruelty."
~Coleman Barks
It was true then – the time of cruelty and turning away – which makes what I and everyone associated with advancing the mission of IPM always necessary. Yet for me, Coleman saying this is especially true now.
Our commitment is to respond in all places and with all people with kindness & creativity, encouragement & poem-making, listening & and a healing spirit of surprise.
Yes, tenderness.
Cancer Lifeline, Seattle WA
It was in 1997 when I met Basha Brownstein, a social worker who did beautiful work in expressive arts at Cancer Lifeline. What I felt immediately and related to, resonated with, is her natural enthusiasm and keen intelligence directed towards helping people, people living with cancer. Basha invited me then over successive years to visit and bring poetry-as-healer. It was wonderful!
The river of time has its way of flowing and some years went by. Then Basha and I were happily back in contact. Coming after COVID, we were all in the new milieu of on-line programs through Zoom.
This past May, I brought 3-session experience to Cancer Lifeline called Poetic Medicine: Creating Your Narrative through Words. In the fall at their request we offered an additional single session because that first series was so richly appreciated.
Now, as the calendar turns to 2025, Basha and I will bring another 3-Session program (April 8, 15, 22) on-line to those living with cancer and to their caregivers and loved ones. Please keep in touch to find out more.
If you would like to learn more about Cancer Lifeline, IPM's April 2024 Newsletter has this spotlight on our work together and Basha:
Arts & Healing Resiliency Center, Portland OR
It has been my good fortune to have long-lasting relationships with the persons and often organizations that welcome me and what poetic medicine offers. I find that it is the relationship with the person that is often the strongest and most lasting. Such is my friendship with Dr. Diana Kaufman.
Originally, in around 2010, Diana invited me twice to Grand Rounds at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, where she was a child psychiatrist.
Then, Diana - retired from UMDNJ and moved to Portland, OR - founded the Arts & Healing Resiliency Center under the larger umbrella of the Hold On Campaign. IPM has been involved with AHRC with our PPM Graduates doing presentations and with me returning this past November to a joyful collaboration with Diana. This year we offered A Daily Practice of Kindness: Bringing this with you into the New Year. Stay tuned via our newsletter - surely, there will be more.
Crescent Moon Center, Lafayette CA
I keep speaking of good fortune!
Four years ago – or was it five?! – I was on a panel of poets and writers discussing how writing can heal. The panel, gathered by Joan Baranow at Dominican University in San Rafael, CA, had roomful of listeners, participants. One of them was Karen Kahn. There was something compelling about Karen and her immediacy, her presence, her energetic movement through space that caught my attention. Something about poetic medicine had caught her attention. I learned she was in the process of founding the Crescent Moon Center (CMC) whose mission “is to build a community of support around people in recovery from, or at risk for, alcohol and drug dependency, and those facing life challenges due to stress, trauma, and disability by, among other things: offering experiential equine-assisted learning and creative arts programs.” Karen wanted me and poetic medicine to help bring this vision into reality. I wanted to help and for the past four years that has been a steady and significant commitment I have made to Karen and her wonderful CMC team. We have done things in-person and on-line.
Jerri Chaplin, who attended a recent on-line program, wrote this:
“So many excellent, evocative poems; thanks for giving us more than we can chew. Your skills at igniting the poems into life were so creative and thoughtful, individualized to match the poet and poem.”
Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up to date on the IPM and Crescent Moon collaborative events happening early in 2025.
Art from Ashes, Denver CO
I met Catherine O’Neill Thorn, founder of Art from Ashes, back in the late 90s.
Catherine and I were both passionate about the healing power of poetry. We each had our own unique calling about how that passion would manifest in the world. I can’t emphasize enough how empowering it was to me to meet someone who shared this passion on the same level of commitment. We did have some contact years and years ago. Then we lost touch in an outward way but in my mind & heart, I carried an appreciation for Catherine and Arts from Ashes, a nonprofit that was founded a few years before IPM.
They describe their purpose this way,
“Art from Ashes exists to empower struggling youth by providing creative programs that facilitate health and hope through expression, connection, and transformation.”
Since I was going to Denver in December, I decided to contact folks at Art from Ashes. Through my outreach I learned Catherine is retired and has moved overseas. The Executive Director, Jessica Jarrard, knew of me, and we set up a 2-hour program for staff, board members and facilitators. Jessica said her people, who are always giving, needed to replenish. I felt beautiful affinity sitting in that poetry circle as we explored Nourishing Resilience together. Jessica and I felt certain that new and more collaborations are in our future.
Read more about the 2024 work of IPM in this report about our program Poetry as a Tool for Wellness and look for our 2024 Year in Review later this month. These are exciting times!
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