Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

The 2010 Quandaries in Health Care Conference (hosted by the University of Colorado as Aspen's Center for Bioethics and Humanities) is titled "A Need to Confess?: Writing About the Healthcare Experience,” and it seems like it may very well be of interest to TLA folk.  It happens Sept. 30-Oct. 2, 2010 in Aspen,  so if you aren't going to be able to join us in VT, perhaps you can make it out there.

Quandaries in Health Care is a conference series in which keynote discussants, guest faculty and conference participants gather at the Given Institute in Aspen, Colorado, for two and one-half days of large and small group discussions on emergent and perennial issues in biomedical ethics and health humanities.

The theme of the 2010 conference, "A Need to Confess?:Writing About the Healthcare Experience,” explores the literary trend among healthcare professionals to reveal the pressures faced and felt by them, such as the expectations to be perfect, to enact compassion, and to demonstrate respect for patients—even the most difficult ones. These narratives, many of them autobiographical in form and confessional in tone, often detail breaches in those expectations as well as the shame, guilt and anxiety that such breaches evoke.  

Additional information can be found here.

Just wanted to recommend Jennifer Lawler's great blog, Particularly amazing is her essay, "For Jessica," which is simply the most powerful thing I've ever read about being a parent, loving another person, cultivating courage in the face of the impossible, and what love is truly about.

For Jessica

July 19th, 2010

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine and I were talking about a study she’d just read, which concluded that people without children were happier than people with children; or, to put it more precisely, despite what conventional wisdom holds, the study found that having children did not increase anyone’s happiness.

At which all I could do was burst out laughing.  Because, well.  Duh. (Read more)

In an exciting piece of news from the poetry therapy front, TLA Network Council Member Sherry Reiter shares that she has been invited to the 2010 "Conference on Humanities Therapy," sponsored by Kangwon National University in Chuncheon, Gangwon-do province, South Korea. 

The conference organizers there are affiliated with The Humanities Therapy Research Institute, which "aims to study wide-ranging theories, methods, and practices to prevent and cure manetal and emotional problems, seeking to improve the quality of life by integrating the curative contents of humanities and its related fields. The goals of Humanities Therapy are to keep one's life happy, recover peace of mind by preventing and curing mental and emotional problems, and help with quality of life."

Congratulations to Sherry and past Power of Words presenter John Fox, who will also be part of this fascinating gathering. We hope to hear more when you return!

For more on the writing life, visit A Wing and a Page, a blog put out by a group of writers in Lawrence, Kansas, including novelist Lucia Orth, free-lance writer Susan Kraus, travel writer Beth Reiber, poets and writers Denise Low and Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, author Pam Grout, writer and web developer Mary Howe, and blogger Mary Margaret Simpson. The women write about everything from J.D. Salinger, the courage of Miep Gies, and various book reviews to blogs on publishing, the lows and highs of the writing life and how to keep on keeping on. Between this group of authors, they have over 50 books published and have endured stacks of rejection slips as well as enchanted little triumphs along the way. Visit and share your ideas and ponderings about the writing life.

Thanks to Caryn Miriam-Goldberg who offers us this piece from her own blog. 

A few weeks ago, I had the joy of hearing Mary Oliver read, talk about poetry and life, and simply just visit with some of us. I found her to be exactly like her poetry: clear, precise, kind but unwilling to suffer fools, gracious and as excellent at listening as speaking her truths. Thanks to the Hall Center of the University of Kansas for bringing her in. Here’s some of what she said over an evening and the following morning.

* “Don’t be ashamed of anything. Ever.”

* A writer has an obligation not to miss the marvelous things that happen in the world.”

* A perfect day? A little love, a little work, a good meal.”

* “Now is the only time there is.”

* “We can wonder if trees have a language” (when asked about multi-culturalism and after praising what we can learn from people in different cultures).

” We’re in a terrible, terrible [ecological] struggle now because we’re too inventive.”

* “The only thing we can do as individuals is to believe in community, and communities of all sorts, and remember how much we need the stories that are in poems.”

* “It’s the first time I’ve been in Kansas, and it occurred to me that I had to land in Missouri to do it.”

* “I’ve had people tell me that when they read my poems, it brings down their pressure, so I’m as good as a dog.”

* She says she had “two friends while growing up: the forest and books of poets.”

* “As I age, my heart grows younger.”

* “I love the earth so much, and I am so grateful for my single life that it doesn’t scare me that I would give my life back one day. I would give the earth everything.”

* While writing something new, “I wonder if Yeats would have liked it. I’ve been writing everyday for 60 years.”

* “I believe in doing something in your life that is helpful to someone.”

* When asked how to practice being present, “The most important thing is that it takes a lot of time.”

* “We need our worlds. We need our first worlds around us to even grasp the larger world, not to mention the stars.”

* “You can’t just write about how you feel about things without the world being in existence too.”

* “The natural world is our warehouse of language.”

* When asked about visiting her on the Cape, “You’re all welcome to come visit, but you won’t find me.”

* “Writing is my way of praying. Writing is my way of praising.”