Suzanne Edison, MA, MFA

Poet • Educator

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Poem published in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association)

 

I am happy to announce the publication of my poem, Still Life Without Skull on April 17, 2018 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

While writing about the experiences my child and I have gone through is painful at times, I fundamentally believe that by trying to capture those moments, feelings and events in writing. I find an order from the chaos they brought.  And I hope that these words might reach others who’ve gone through similar experiences, thereby making a connection and helping them feel less alone.

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The Effects of Misdirection

My daughter was diagnosed in 2007 with a rare autoimmune disease, Juvenile Myositis (JM). Since then I’ve been writing poetry about my journey, teaching writing workshops for parents and teens who live with, or care for others, living with autoimmune diseases, and working with a national foundation that supports research and awareness for JM.

Over the past few years I have received artist grants to interview parents of kids with a variety of autoimmune diseases and I wrote a book of poems based on those conversations. This led to the publication of my chapbook, The Moth Eaten World, Finishing Line Press, 2014.

Now, I am embarking on The Effects of Misdirection: a poetry and visual art project on the psychosocial, scientific and medical aspects of autoimmune diseases that I dreamed up a couple of years ago. I have received grants from 4Culture; City Artists: Office of Arts and Culture, Seattle; and Artist Trust to pursue this project.

In my work supporting Seattle Children’s Hospital (SCH) Rheumatology Department and as a board member of the Cure JM Foundation, I was fortunate to meet a forward thinking scientist and doctor, Jane Buckner, who is the Executive Director of the Benaroya Research Institute (BRI) in Seattle, Washington. BRI’s mission is to find the causes and cures of autoimmune diseases, including diabetes, multiple sclerosis, allergies, and rheumatoid arthritis, to name a few of the 80 diseases. Dr. Buckner became excited about this project and subsequently I am partnering with BRI to bring this project to fruition.

I have conducted 28 interviews of scientists, doctors / nurses, patients (both adult and teens) and their caretakers/parents. Currently, I am writing poems, organizing artwork for the final publication of a poetry and art book, and setting up reading venues for the fall. The books will be available in clinics and hospitals locally that see patients with autoimmune diseases and the readings will be free and open to the public. For more information and to be put on a mailing list for notification of the readings, please contact me.

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Resources for Writing, Illness, Grief, Loss, & Healing

I have been accumulating books and articles that might help people who have come to my workshop, Writing as a Righting Journey and also to my class at Hugo House, The Words to Say It.

In my teaching I bring in many other poems, stories, (fiction and non-fiction) and essays that are too numerous to mention here.

Please see this document, on the Resources page. There will be some duplication from the Resource listing of books, but there is also more related to writing in the document. And More Resources.

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The Words to Say It: Writing about Illness, Trauma & Healing–excerpts

I thought I’d send out some enticing pieces from my planned readings for the course, The Words to Say It: Writing About Illness, Trauma and Healing.  Sometimes just a list of possible readings doesn’t fully bring you into the experience.
Here is a poem by Alicia Ostriker from her series “The Mastectomy Poems”, from The Crack in Everything. What I like about it is how she starts right in with her thinking, that is a universal thought. She includes the details of the body, (cells, estrogen, breast), images of women in daily life, and then how this particular diagnosis heightens (figuratively and literally) her perceptions of her everyday world.
The second piece is an excerpt from Gregory Orr’s, The Blessing. He’s a poet and essayist and his memoir is about how he dealt with accidentally killing his brother when they were both kids. In this excerpt, he’s describing trying to talk to his mother about the accident. I find his language to be both personal and the details telling (the cake with fourteen candles, his mother not touching him). I think it’s heartbreaking, see what you think.
If you think someone would be interested in taking this class, please pass this on to them. Here is the link for registering at Hugo House.
Wishing everyone a great fall of writing.
Suzanne

The Crack in Everything

“The Mastectomy Poems:”

1. THE BRIDGE

You never think it will happen to you,
What happens every day to other women.
Then as you sit paging a magazine,
Its beauties lying idly in your lap,
Waiting to be routinely waved goodbye
Until next year, the mammogram technician
Says Sorry, we need to do this again,

And you have already become a statistic,
Citizen of a country where the air,
Water, your estrogen, have just saluted
Their target cells, planted their Judas kiss
Inside the Jerusalem of the breast.
Here on the film what looks like specks of dust
Is calcium deposits.
Go put your clothes on in a shabby booth
Whose curtain reaches halfway to the floor.
Try saying fear. Now feel
Your tongue as it cleaves to the roof of your mouth.

Technicalities over, medical articles read,
Decisions made, the Buick’s wheels
Nose across Jersey toward the hospital
As if on monorail. Elizabeth
Exhales her poisons, Newark Airport spreads
Her wings–the planes take off over the marsh–
A husband’s hand plays with a ring.

Some snowflakes whip across the lanes of cars
Slowed for the tollbooth, and two smoky gulls
Veer by the steel parabolas.
Given a choice of tunnel or bridge
Into Manhattan, the granite crust
On its black platter of rivers, we prefer
Elevation to depth, vista to crawling.

The Blessing-excerpt