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Poetry Pharmacy

Such an amazing concept to treat your existential woes with a dose of poetry. 

The whole impetus for that project was to be a vehicle (pun intended) for poetry to be delivered to people who don’t usually encounter it;  to be inviting and not intimidating, to counter the widely held perception that poetry is “difficult, obscure and not for the likes of me”

Thanks to reading about the poetry pharmacy, I felt motivated to find a poem I had never read that spoke to my current state of mind and found Keep The Rage Tender by Nayyriah Waheed. It soothed the spirit and made me reconsider and re-evaluate. 

Could not help comparing this to the times I have been to a doctor's office during the pandemic - it seems that the designated healers have completely lost the desire to connect to the human that they intend to heal. The interactions were more sterile, soul-less and unempathetic than ever before. After each of these encounters I felt no one cared about the body or soul of me. The doctors were not interested in what would be best for me long term - which in my age bracket is a very different time horizon than for someone in their teens and twenties. 

Maybe this is how pandemic fatigue is manifesting itself in the healthcare community - none of these folks got to shelter in place, work remotely and ride out the crisis. They had to be present every day at great personal cost and risk to help others and it does appear they are collectively worn out and at the brink. Medice, cura te ipsum could not need a more literal interpretation in these times we live in. 


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