APRIL IS POETRY MONTH – Poetry and Medicine Events 🗓

1) FUNDRAISER April 5, 2020

Poetry and Healing: A Benefit for Sick Kids Hospital at Supermarket in Kensington Market 

Sick Kids Hospital and The League of Canadian Poets announces the inaugural fundraiser for Sick Kids hospital, ‘Poetry & Healing’.

Join us for an afternoon of poetry for a great cause.

12 poets share their poetry, and within it, the healing journey of writing, or reading, or sharing, poetry. This day explores the indigenous concept of “medicine,” the healing power of words, and the transformative and inspiring power of poetry.

The League of Canadian Poets presents:
Al Moritz, (Poet Laureate of Toronto), Luciano Iacobelli, Kate Marshall Flaherty, Lois Lorimer, Daniel David Moses, Ronna Bloom, Rajinderpal Pal, Catherine Graham, Dr. Conor McDonnell, Jacob Shier, Ayesha Chatterjee, Corrado Paina

April 5, 2020
Supermarket
268 Augusta Avenue

1pm-4pm

2) WORKSHOP with Ronna Bloom – April 15, 2020 (See Ronna’s bio below)

Postcards from the Edge: Addressing Compassion Fatigue in Note Form
* Registration is now FULL – see below for another workshop

Perhaps you are too overwhelmed to read this? Let’s be brief: this workshop will address impacts, physical or emotional, personal or professional, of caring for human suffering. In notes. A creative writing workshop. With other hesitant people. Using poems as guides. Have a rest; write something. No experience necessary.

Time and place:
April 15, 2020 6PM-8PM
Mount Sinai Hospital,
600 University Avenue
Open to all U of T Medical Students, Residents, and Learners from other disciplines. To register contact ronna.bloom@utoronto.ca

3) POETRY PANEL AND READING – April 23rd – ALL ARE WELCOME 

How a Poem Moves with Illness and Disability: a Reading and Discussion with Moira MacDougall, Roxanna Bennett, and Adam Sol

Thursday April 23, 2020

18th Floor, Mount Sinai Auditorium
600 University Ave., Toronto
Hosted by Allan Peterkin
Curated by Shane Neilson MD,PHD

6:30-8pm

Moira, Roxanna, and Adam read from their new books as they pertains to illness and disability. Throughout the reading, Adam will move the audience through an open, non-specialized, organic method to draw connections between poems and create discussion.

Learning objectives:

— to recognize that the non-linear experience of poetry has fidelity with the chaos of the illness experience
— to encounter and practice a means of “understanding” poetry that deliberately avoids reading poem as riddle or puzzle to solve, but rather as a place to start making connections
— to understand the contribution that disabled experience can make in the discipline of medicine

Ronna Bloom (workshop leader for event 2)

Ronna Bloom is the author of six books of poetry, most recently, The More (Pedlar Press, 2017) long-listed for the City of Toronto Book Award. Her poems have been recorded by the CNIB and translated into Spanish, Bangla, and Chinese. She is currently Poet in Community to the University of Toronto and Poet in Residence in the Health, Arts and Humanities Programme. Her “Spontaneous Poetry Booth” and “RX for Poetry” have been featured in hospitals, conferences and fundraisers in Canada and abroad. She runs workshops and gives talks on poetry, spontaneity, and awareness through writing.

ronnabloom.com

Scheduled News