Long Night's Journey into Day: Writing Poetry Through & About Serious Illness

Writing through and about serious illness can spark powerful poems into being. It also can help us integrate and learn from our experiences as patients, survivors, and/or caregivers.

Poetry especially—in its compression of language and focus on rhythm and imagery—shifts us out of our usual relationship to words, opening up our peripheral vision and innate voice so that we can access more of ourselves. Receiving a difficult diagnosis, living with chronic or serious illness, or navigating a disability so often strips away the story we thought was ours. By writing and reading poetry, we can remember—a word rooted in bringing together all the parts of us—that we are far more than a single story or diagnosis and that we’re not alone.

We come together in this class as a witnessing community where we can more fully hear ourselves and each other through our poetry. Such witnessing helps mitigate the isolation of living with serious illness. By writing together from wherever you live, we forge a circle of understanding and inspiration that helps us unearth a new normal in our lives and on the page. All the writing prompts are open-ended, allowing us to write about everything from a delightful connection with a friend to the weight of treatment or even grappling with mortality.  See more here.