Archives for November 2017

“When the body shrinks, the spirit grows”

November 27, 2017 2 Comments

Jan FitzGerald

I fell into becoming a professional caregiver after caring 24/7 for a terminally ill husband with a brain tumour. Needing to pay funeral expenses, all savings exhausted in the fight for his life, I was weary of having been turned down for jobs as “too qualified” and so settled for $9.50 an hour in a private hospital/rest home, where I worked as many shifts as I could. On account of age and life experience (having had three children and nursed ailing elderly parents and husband), my roster was soon changed from downstairs Rest Home to upstairs Palliative Care.

I felt very comfortable there. There is an honesty of heart shared by poets and the terminally ill. Words and emotions are not wasted. Often, as a qualified grief counsellor, I was asked to stay behind after a death on the shift to “talk with family,” but I think the best contribution I made was to listen. Really listen.

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There is nothing wrong with this lady’s head (it’s official)

November 27, 2017 1 Comment

Liz Breslin

A year almost to the day from getting concussed and it seems safe enough to talk about it in the past tense. “She was SO WEIRD. Like she’d ask things and ask them again, like, all the time.” So say the kids to visitors over the dinner table.

“You were so weird, like you were there but nothing joined up inside.” So say friends at work, who I thought I’d done a good enough job fooling. Head up, eyes down, go straight, smile. I was so weird. Weird. Wired. Rewired. Caged in on autopilot. Wouldn’t be told or slowed; wouldn’t sit; so, so tired.

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“Medicine and the novel”: a short story

November 27, 2017 1 Comment

Sue Wootton

Medicine went to the doctor. “What brings you here today?” asked the doctor.

“I’m limping,” said Medicine. “My right side is strong, but my left side is weak. I’m tired but I can’t sleep. I never feel refreshed. I’m exhausted. I have everything I need but I’m not content. I don’t know what I want. I can’t see the wood for the trees.”

“When was the last time you sat under a tree?” asked the doctor.

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“The Poetry Pharmacy”

November 20, 2017 2 Comments

Emma Storr

Can poetry be therapeutic? William Sieghart, editor of the recently published The Poetry Pharmacy: Tried and True Prescriptions for the Heart, Mind and Soul, certainly believes in the power of a carefully selected poem to comfort and to make sense of feelings that threaten to overwhelm us at times of great stress. He argues that a poem can help us understand our emotional state and alleviate our fear that we are the only person who is suffering in this particular way. The inspiration for the book arose from a friend’s suggestion that after his talk at a poetry festival, Sieghart should offer short consultations to audience members and prescribe a suitable poem for their individual state of mind. It proved a great success and Sieghart subsequently toured the UK offering poetry pharmacies in libraries and festivals. As he states in the introduction to the book:

In all of this, I learned how much most people’s heartaches have in common.”

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Writing Minnie Dean

November 20, 2017 Leave a Comment

Karen Zelas

Minnie Dean is the only woman to have been hung in New Zealand (Invercargill, 1895). Her story wasted no time entering our country’s mythology and to this day she remains a cautionary figure used by some parents to foster compliant behaviour in their children. Earlier this year, Mākaro Press published my verse biography: The Trials of Minnie Dean.

I first became acquainted with her circumstances a hundred years after her death, when asked to review Lynley Hood’s 1994 biography Minnie Dean: her life & crimes for the International Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect. At that time, I was a Child and Family Psychiatrist, accepted as a specialist in this area. From Hood’s research I was satisfied that, at least in part, Minnie Dean became a scapegoat of Victorian morality. She cared for unwanted young children, raising some to adulthood. It was inevitable that there would be deaths, since the infant mortality rate at the time was extremely high (up to 90% in institutional care). I drew a parallel with contemporary fostercare and the undervaluing of the role of fosterparents.

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