NEA Big Read AZ Speaks Virtual Keynote: Where Healthcare Meets the Humanities: The Therapeutic Value of Poetry

In this Zoom presentation led by Rosemarie Dombrowski, we’ll explore the history of poetic therapy in America in both clinical and communal environments. We’ll also discuss the features that make poetry an ideal (and efficacious) form of augmentative therapy—in other words, how it can help us discover creative ways to explore our vulnerabilities, re-cast our narratives, and encourage hope and healing. Given these properties, we’ll also be addressing how poetry can potentially revolutionize the ways in which we educate future practitioners and, most importantly, the ways in which it can revolutionize patient care.

Zoom registration link found here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_rTwbYPRoQCeadiQKOFudbg

Rosemarie Dombrowski is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Phoenix, AZ and the founding director of Revisionary Arts, a nonprofit that provides therapeutic poetry workshops for vulnerable populations, the medical community, and the community at large. She’s published three collections of poetry including The Book of Emergencies (Five Oaks Press, 2014), a lyrical ethnography of the culture of nonverbal Autism. She’s the recipient of an Arts Hero award, a Great 48 award, a Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, and others. She serves on the advisory board of the Narrative Medicine program at the University of Arizona Biomedical campus and teaches courses in literature and the medical humanities at Arizona State University’s Downtown Phoenix campus.

The NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. AZ Speaks is made possible by AZ Humanities.