Dr. Rafael Campo, in an interview for the Boston Globe, spoke of the ability of poetry to reveal the “interior story” of the creator. He highlighted the rhythm of poetry and how it mirrored the rhythm of the body.
Dr. Rafael Campo, a Harvard trained doctor, is a highly acclaimed poet, essayist and medical specialist at Harvard Medical School. He is an untiring advocate and health professional for HIV infected patients. Rafael is the author of nine books of poetry and other publications. He is also the poetry editor for the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA). He teaches primary health care at several medical institutions, including Harvard Medical School.
Rafael has received many awards and honours for his poetry and prides himself in using a “palette of poetry” by adopting a diversity of poetic forms, thus reflecting his “hybrid” experience. Rafael uses his poetry to express his feelings for his cancer and AIDS patients as well as emergency room patients who have encountered the brutality of racism and homophobia in America. He also teaches poetry to patients and medical professionals alike.
Listening to the rhythm of poetry
Rafael considers poetry to be “the opposite of silence” because it expresses the stories of patients and medical professionals. He maintains that patients are often silenced by the biomedical focus of doctors who are trained to be “relentless in the pursuit of facts”. He argues that doctors are taught to suppress their own feelings and adopt a “detached” stance. In the process, doctors don’t listen to the life stories of patients and lose valuable insight into the “context” of the patient’s illness.
Rafael contends that just like listening to a heartbeat with a stethoscope, doctors can listen to “the physical rhythms of the body” expressed through the language of poetry. In his own words, “poetry is full of the music of the body”. He highlights the corporeal nature of poetry because, in his view, it fundamentally expresses “in a visceral way what it is to be human”.
Rafael argues that listening to patients’ poems and writing poetry makes him a better doctor because he is more attuned to the “context” of an individual’s illness and their “interior story”.
Writing prompts for our Creative Meetup Group inspired by Rafael Campo
I participated in the June, online Creative Meetup sponsored by the Health Story Collaborative for writers-with-chronic-illness. Our facilitator, Jennifer Crystal, read an extract from Boston Globe’s interview with Rafael. When Jennifer introduced Rafael’s perspective on the human rhythm of poetry, it immediately struck a chord with me.
The interview extract served as the stimulus for our writing during the Meetup. We were invited to write poetry or prose around the theme of the stimulus piece and the related writing prompts offered by Jennifer. I chose to write a free-form poem about my experience of chronic illness while addressing both the writing prompts.
Writing prompts:
- What are the sounds and/or rhythms of your medical story?
- If you could hold a stethoscope up to your interior story, what would you want us to hear?
After we had completed 20 minutes of writing, Meetup participants shared their writing which was rich with metaphors to describe the sounds of their medical story and the nature of their “interior story”. The metaphors employed by the participants focused on both disruptive/disturbing sounds and soothing sounds:
Metaphors of disruptive/disturbing sounds:
- like war sounds
- the storm that couldn’t kill
- church bells ringing
- loud chaotic concert
- waves crashing
- noisy, electronic hospital environment
- like trumpet blasts.
Metaphors of soothing sounds:
- sweet melody of harp
- whispers of nature and beauty
- soft pattern of soothing sounds
- silence and solitude.
Poetry affords the opportunity to blend opposites (e.g. noise and silence) and change metaphors to break frames and create a new mindset. Poetry has the power to transform our perspective.
My response to the writing prompts is reflected in the following poem:
The Sounds of My Medical Story
A story that lacks rhythm,
a staccato effect.
Flare-ups like trumpet blasts,
Disrupting and interrupting.
Periods of silence and solitude,
A soft pattern of soothing sounds.
Poetry as alchemy.
Reflection
I have been inspired by The Book of Alchemy authored by Suleika Jaouad in which she explores the art of journalling with 100 very accomplished contributors. As Suleika was writing the final chapter of her book she received word that her aggressive leukemia had returned. While preparing herself and her house for another extended hospital stay (for chemo and a third bone marrow transplant), she recalled the alchemy of writing a journal. This led her to write a poem about how journalling alchemizes isolation and suffering and leads to new insights and a newly envisioned future.
In her poem, Suleika draws on multiple analogies to express how she has experienced the alchemy of journalling:
- a companion to untangle the knots in her life
- a source of memory and reverie
- a teacher of mindfulness (through paying attention to the simple things in life)
- a mirror for her past, present and future self
- a refuge and hiding place and “finding place”
- a means “to write her way through”
- a co-creator of a future self.
On reading her poem about the alchemy of writing and journalling, I was inspired to produce an “erased poem”(in Haiku format) from her words:
An Ode to Poetry
Friend for company,
finding place for future self.
Create my way through.
As we grow in mindfulness through writing poetry, blogging or journalling, we can access our “interior story”, develop creative approaches to challenging situations (such as illness) and build a new level of acceptance of “what is”. We can also draw inspiration from others by writing in community – accessing the power of storytelling and sharing.
Rafael reminds us that a poem is “crafted” around a theme and structural elements such as rhyme. rhythm, alliteration, metaphor, length, format, and language. I found that I had to craft this blog post when I became overwhelmed by the volume of information about Rafael and his poetry. In crafting the post, I needed to reduce the focus to one key area, find ways to integrate disparate sources and explore avenues for integrating the material. The content and structure evolved through multiple edits and rewrites.
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Image by Olle August from Pixabay
By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)
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