Celebrating National Poetry Month at Harborview

"Harborview Medical Center channels pain into poetry."

Next week, the Harborview Art Program will deliver a Haiku and an American Sentence to every patient in the county hospital, and invite them to write their own poems. Peggy Weiss and I planned this project during my residency last summer, and it's coming to fruition during National Poetry Month. This morning, journalist Brandi Kruse at Seattle's KIRO radio ran a story about my work at the county hospital: "Harborview Medical Center Channels Pain into Poetry." I am looking forward to reading -- and sharing with you -- a collective poetic portrait of life at Harborview.

A Harborview Haiku and American Sentence

Life's garden shelters…
soil, sun, weed, root, rock. Bright shoot
cut, will grow taller.

As in our bodies: a break might mend more strongly than a bone unscarred.

Peggy Weiss and me, July 2010

Peggy Weiss, the Art Manager (aka Miracle Worker & Duchess of Art-Healing) at Harborview Medical Center, orchestrated my six-week immersion in the grit and wonder and pain of King County's public hospital and regional trauma center last summer.

Later this month, a Haiku and American Sentence I wrote one afternoon, thinking of Harborview's View Park, will be distributed via meal trays to all the hospital's patients. I am inviting them, along with their friends and family members, as well as Harborview staff and volunteers, to create their own poetry. I look forward to sharing it with you.