| autumn with alzheimer - she breaks the bread .. ... .. carefully |
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World Alzheimer's Day
September 21
Read my Haiku Archives 2007
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2 comments:
my poems retire
before they are written
... winter clouds
Ella Wagemakers
PS. Not sure if this is a ku or senryu, or neither, although there is a kigo.
Signs of Spring:
Haiku Poems by Persons with Dementia
Kingston, Ontario: Rideaucrest Home, 2007.
signs of spring celebrates therapeutic power of poetry
jumping in puddles
more water in your boots
than out
sitting around the table
grandmothers
remembering grandmothers
... the brainchild of Marjorie Woodbridge, co-ordinator of spiritual care at Kingston’s Rideaucrest Home. Woodbridge first witnessed the power of poetry in “Soul Sessions,” a spiritual-care program she created that uses the arts to stimulate the memories of people with dementia, helping them establish connections and make meaning of their world.
“The haiku poems came as a sidebar to this process,” says Woodbridge. “As I watched them respond to poetry in our sessions, I thought they might respond to haiku, as it is so sensory.”
But the poems in signs of spring are a delightful surprise that transport the reader beyond the therapeutic exercise. There is a startling naturalness and touching immediacy in the images of kitchens, kittens, crows, tomatoes, pumpkins and rain, offering intensely visceral moments of humour, playfulness, loss and sadness – without the panic and awkward bewilderment generally associated with those with dementia.
Instead, we see a husband’s memory of 40 Valentine’s Day celebrations with his beloved wife become an impish ode to 40 shared boxes of chocolates, while a woman’s delight in making snow angels becomes a sigh about society and fitting behaviour.
http://www.kingstonlife.ca/sitepages/?aid=1125
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