Suzanne Edison, MA, MFA

Poet • Educator

Suzanne’s Blog

Thank you for visiting my blog! I write on many topics and your comments are always welcome.

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Reading Trisha Ready in The Stranger-Music, Healing, Cancer & More

I want to make a plug for reading Trisha Ready’s article in The Stranger from last week. It is a brilliant piece of writing about healing from cancer with music, and fighting against the pronouncements of Susan Sontag in her book Illness as Metaphor.  

While I have not had cancer, I have read Sontag’s book, and recently, a few others on the topic of Language, Metaphor and Writing about Illness and I think Ready does considerable work in articulating the medical aspects, choices and limitations of allopathic medicine along with the possibilities, and need for, less traditional forms of healing.

I am not ready to post my own essay on the topic of language, illness and healing, as I have it out for consideration of publication, but I hope to be able to offer it soon.  In the meantime, read Ms. Ready!.

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I’m Done Falling

This could be the anthem for the entire session of Teens Writing from the Heart of Illness & Healing.

I'm Done Falling photo

This is the cover of the anthology of the teen’s writings. After 8 weeks of reading and writing prompts in which a diverse group of students gradually opened up about the health issues they deal with, through their writing, we gathered them into this final version.  They were a reticent group to begin with, or perhaps, just more reserved overall than the previous two groups, and they came from the eastside of Lake Washington, Beacon Hill and the central area in Seattle.

The poem from which the title was taken was written by a senior in high school. It was actually the last thing she wrote, written surprisingly quickly from a prompt on the second to last session that my co-teacher, Aaron Counts provided. The prompt started as a way to get them to write a brief biography of themselves in 24 words. In each successive version they had to reduce the “biography” by half, eventually whittling it down to one word.  Then, they were to take that one word and write a poem from it. Falling is the name of the poem and I am including it (but not the author’s name)  here.

 

Falling

 

Falling into a dark hole.

Someone catch me,

don’t let me fall.

Catching myself fast

to try and land on my feet.

Maybe falling feels better,

not knowing where I’m going

Fear, discomfort, curiosity, darkness.

I’m done falling, I landed on my feet.

I made it, but I’m not done,

I never am.

 

For a copy of this anthology or any of the other two, please let me know. I am especially happy to get them into the hands of anyone working with chronically ill kids in any setting..

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Graduate School again? Poetry and Healing

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I have begun an MFA in Creative Writing through Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is a low-residency program that I attend on campus, twice a year. In between I read, write and submit my work to a faculty mentor.  This first semester I had the privilege of working with Rafael Campo, MD. and poet. Rafael is well known as a doctor who works primarily with oncology and HIV patients. He is also well known for his poetry and his unique teaching program in the medical school at Harvard University.

In his course at Harvard Medical School (HMS) Rafael exposes medical students to writings in a diverse array of literature. In his own words he says: “Medical students and house staff, as well as their medical faculty supervisors, find Art + Humanities @ HMS an invaluable resource in renewing their commitment to medicine, by stimulating their personal growth, mirroring their own life experiences through the lens of diverse peoples, and offering an alternative discourse of empathy and mutual respect to counter the growing cynicism in our profession.”

My work this past term was not only to read a range of poets and essayists who write about illness, the body, healing and language and write both poems and essays myself, but also to choose a variety of readings and create writing prompts for a class called Poetry and Prose Rounds held at the U of WA.  I taught this course in conjunction with a professor of nursing, Josephine Ensign, who started it a couple of years ago. I had gone to the original workshop and found it very stimulating. The people who attended were from a variety of health fields.  We again offered it to anyone in the health science field.

I will write more about the readings and prompts for Poetry and Prose Rounds, though some of that information is already available if you click the link for the class, above.

In addition, I also taught the third round of Teens Writing from the Heart of Illness & Healing and you can read about that and read some of the student’s work under another blog post.

 

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The Healing Art of Poetry Reading

Seven kids from the workshop Teens Writing from the Heart of Illness & Healing read a selection of their poems the other night to crowd of parents, friends, community members, medical doctors and staff at Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic in Seattle.  They read with power and conviction and wowed everyone in attendance. Parents were surprised at the strength and insightfulness of their words, at the deep emotional clarity and risk-taking.  The audience was supportive and appreciative and I think the teens themselves were proud and maybe amazed, at the effect their words had.

Here are a few excerpts from their work:

from Lost

 

I’m lost in my mind spinning around.

I’m lost in my memories still to be found.

I’m lost in my heart deep inside.

I’m lost in my smile so sweet and kind.

I’m lost in my past I’m lost in my present.

                                                        (Elijah Jones)

Where I’m from smells of fresh-baked bread

and rosemary rubbed between

warm hands.

I’m from dancing like drunk people

on the altar platform

twirling through

Christ is born

and Christ is risen

from Rejoice! and the corners of creation.

I’m from the perfect

is the enemy of the good

and good enough

is never really good enough….

                                                   (Kat Santarelli)

from Sickle Cell

…Constantly in hospitals accompanied by televisions and books

as best friends

tears became my voice, fear was my only choice

at the age of eight.

I was given opportunities to only be turned down

as the pain arised and the devil tattooed the word, “demise.”

my life had reached it’s point…

                                                     (Laelah Ndifon)

You can find the full body of their work in the chapbook Based on a True Story: Just Beyond the Gate,Based on a True Story: Just Beyond the Gate available through the Online Store.

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