ASU’s Director of Strategic Communications and English alumna presented poetry from Poesía del Sol, a program with Mayo Clinic’s patients, on Friday at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe.
In 2004, ASU’s creative writing program partnered with Mayo Clinic Center’s Humanities in Medicine program to create poetry group Poesía del Sol, or poetry of the sun. Sheilah Britton was a master’s student at the time when the program started and was one of the first students involved in the program.
Now she works in the office of vice president of research and economic affairs at ASU as the director of strategic communications, writing publications for print and electronic media.
Students and staff work with palliative patients at the Mayo Hospital, or patients whose medical care concentrates more on reducing disease symptoms than delaying the disease or providing a cure. The group members ask if the patients would like to talk and their conversations usually last about an hour to an hour-and-a-half.
“It’s interesting how many people don’t say no,” Britton said.
After the conversation, the writer leaves for a few hours, writes a poem, types it, prints it out in the hospital and frames it. Later, the writer returns to the patient and reads him or her the poem, presenting it as a gift.
“Sometimes I’m surprised by the absolute spirits of humans,” Britton said, adding that patients react with tears or are just completely moved.
Alberto Ríos, creative writing program manager at ASU, said the program helps patients and their families remember the small things from their lives that they might forget later on.
“[They are] poems which are aimed at the smaller things, like the blue shirt in second grade,” Ríos said. “It helps us understand who we are as people and that people have something to say even when we think they don’t.”
On Friday, Britton’s soft voice filled the small room in Changing Hands with stories of strangers from the different rooms of the Mayo Clinic throughout her experiences with Poesía del Sol.
One after another, the poems shared the life and love Britton helped capture from the conversations she and patients once shared.
She ended the series of poetry with a happy ending about a patient who was waiting for a heart transplant and got one shortly after Britton wrote the poem.
“To have the chance to reflect on the happy things in their life … it makes a difference,” Britton said.
Many of her poems are read at the patients’ funerals and memorials and families cherish the words, she said.
Laura Palmisano, a broadcast journalism junior, said she attended the event after hearing about it through an e-mail.
“I thought the poems were really moving,” she said. “It’s sad but it’s not, because you feel their emotion and you feel part of their story.”
Katherine Kough, humanities in medicine coordinator at Mayo Clinic Center, oversees four programs at Mayo Clinic including Poesía del Sol.
Kough said she was able to sit in on one of Britton’s sessions with a patient.
“These people are facing such monumental things. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be them,” she said. “Well, that’s not the point. The point is that you go in there and be with them and to see what they need and provide what you can.”
Reach the reporter at mpareval@asu.edu
