to read about individaul events, visit the Poetry Center site
the Poetics of Healing: creative investigations in art, medicine, and somatic practice
project curated by ELENI STECOPOULOS
supported by the CREATIVE WORK FUND
"What might happen if we asked doctors to look at the art of their practice? What might happen if we asked poets and other artists to consider the somatic and therapeutic dimensions of their art?" –Eleni Stecopoulos
Supported by a two-year project grant from the Creative Work Fund, the Poetry Center will be hosting throughout 2009 a series of programs under the title The Poetics of Healing: creative investigations in art, medicine, and somatic practice. Curated by San Francisco poet and scholar Eleni Stecopoulos, the project will bring together innovative writers, artists, and medical practitioners doing parallel work within altogether different traditions and practices.
Guest participants will read, perform, and discuss their own work, talk with each other, and engage with audiences. Throughout the project, Eleni Stecopoulos will be writing an original book on the subject (incorporating material by other participants and as arising out of the public forum) to be published late 2010 by Factory School.
Our Spring 2009 program series is presented in collaboration with the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine Medical Humanities Initiative.
For details on the programs:
Wednesday–Saturday MARCH 11–14
Barbara Tedlock and Dennis Tedlock
Thursday & Friday APRIL 9–10
Raúl Zurita, William Rowe, and Nuri Gené-Cos
Wednesday–Saturday MAY 6–9
a symposium on the Poetics of Healing
Under the heading The Poetics of Healing, our project seeks to cultivate an important dialogue that rarely happens across disciplinary borders; to highlight the role of poetic language, sound, and imagery in somatic practices, medical treatment, and patient experiences; and to formally acknowledge and encourage a conversation that is already occuring among writers and in various academic medical humanities and healthcare fields, but has not yet been formally established as a field of artistic and intellectual inquiry.
With the recognition that poetry and medicine share the sense of engagement in a practice, or calling, and work within multiple historic traditions, we’ll highlight the progressive, experimental communities that have been conspicuously prominent in San Francisco in the arts and medicine.
