Narrative Medicine: Reading and Writing the Poetry of Illness and Healing with Owen Lewis (via Zoom)

How illness is lived and healing experienced is the subject of this  workshop. Illness and healing, whether experienced directly, through family or loved ones, or as part of one’s professional work, arouses complex feelings. Poetry, with its capacities for subtlety and allusion, often best embodies the full human experience of illness and the various meanings of healing. We will read poems of illness and healing, and in the second part, workshop participant’s writing.

NB: This class will be taught on Zoom and capped at 10. Link will be sent to email you use to register at the time of registration and again the day before the class. Please make sure to read our course policies page regarding workshop conduct and logistics before registering for any class at HVWC. Scholarship information will be available for this class on July 15, and applications are due on August 15, 2022.

Owen Lewis is the author of three collections of poetry, FIELD LIGHT (Dos Madres Press 2020, New York City BigBook Award “Distinguished Favorite”, Mass Book Award “Must Read” selection), MARRIAGE MAP (Dos Madres Press, 2017), and SOMETIMES FULL OF DAYLIGHT (Dos Madres Press, 2013), and two chapbooks. BEST MAN (Dos Madres Press, 2015) received the 2016 Jean Pendrick Chapbook Prize (The New England Poetry Club). Recent honors include 2018 Runner-up, Wigtown Poetry Competition (Scotland); 2017 Finalist, Pablo Neruda Award; 2016 Winner, International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine. His poetry has appeared in Nimrod, The Mississippi Review, Poetry Wales, Southward, The Four Way Review and other journals. He is a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University in New York City where he teaches in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics.