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Illness and the Art of Creative Self-Expression

Stories and exercise from the arts for those with illness and disability

by (author) John Graham-Pole

cover design or artwork by Maureen St. Clair

preface by Patch Adams

Publisher
HARP Publishing The People's Press
Initial publish date
Nov 2022
Category
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781990137181
    Publish Date
    Nov 2022
    List Price
    $24.95

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Recommended Age, Grade, and Reading Levels

  • Age: 12 to 18
  • Grade: 7 to 12

Description

About the authors

Contributor Notes

John Graham-Pole is a retired professor of pediatrics. He has been a clinician, teacher and pioneer researcher in the field of childhood cancer for forty years. Educated in Britain, he co-founded the Centre for Arts in Medicine at the University of Florida, now among the world's leading art-and-health organizations. He is author of twelve works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. He lives in Nova Scotia with his wife Dorothy Lander, where they co-founded HARP The People's Press (www.tryhealingarts.ca), a multimedia publishing house dedicated to exploring how the arts can enhance our individual and communal health and contribute to the social determinants of health equity.

Excerpt: Illness and the Art of Creative Self-Expression: Stories and exercise from the arts for those with illness and disability (by (author) John Graham-Pole; cover design or artwork by Maureen St. Clair; preface by Patch Adams)

If you do invite her back into your life again, I promise it will serve you well. Your artist-muse

will help you shape and express your every emotion, especially those half-formed and confusing

notions that you find hard to put into words. She will leap to your aid, and help you take back

once more the delight that comes from focusing on this very present creative moment. She will

recapture for you the endless joy of dabbling and doodling, of playing and concocting, of putting

your endless imagination to work. These are the things every young child does instinctively. And

I’m going to make it my job to help you conquer any lingering doubts you may have about indulging

yourself and letting your creativity fly to the sky. I am going to give you my joyful permission to

once more make art.

 

New Ways and Old

All of us have had some acquaintance with hospitals, and with other places where health care is

offered. We have almost certainly either been ill or known someone who has been ill enough to need

this care. This book is meant especially for you or your friends or family members who have been or

are right now in this situation. Today’s hospitals are twenty-four-hour places, like police

stations and prisons, fire and rescue services, all-night cafes and grocery stores. Actually, the

bigger ones have got a bit of all of these: their own police and phone switchboard, mainframe

computer and helicopter pad, all-night cafes and cleaning crews, banks and post offices and all

manner of vending machines, laboratories and operating rooms, delivery suites and mortuaries. They

are not just twenty-four-hour places, they are small—or not so small—townships.

 

And it is within these townships that we human beings get sick and well, give birth and die. You

find newborns and centenarians, the prematurely old and those with a new lease on life. Here are

the over- and underweight, the addicted and abused, the halt and the lame, the healers and the

heal-ees, the prayed for and the pray-ers. Workers of every skill and age and ethnicity play their

part in a hospital’s dramas: high tragedy and soap opera, horror movie and high farce. You will

find doctors rubbing shoulders with repair men, nurses with lab techs, social workers with cleaning crews.

 

Despite all these life-and-death dramas—the miraculous recoveries and breakthroughs beloved by our

media and often the stuff of soap operas—most illness today comes on slowly and persists

chronically. Perhaps this has been the case with you. These are the ailments of our Western

civilization—legacies of stress-filled lifestyles and fast-food eating habits. These chronic

ailments—high blood pressure, arthritis, osteoporosis, chronic backache and headache, cancer,

cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease, depression, anxiety and insomnia, hyperactivity and

Alzheimer’s disease—are much less seen in indigenous cultures, whose communities and ways of life

are mostly much more slow-paced and traditional. But the diseases I list here affect millions of

white North Americans and Europeans, cost billions in quick-fix treatments, and result in enormous

amounts of lost work and school time. The latest annual budget for American health care tops a

trillion dollars.

 

It is abundantly clear that hospitals and other places of health care need something more to set

beside the medical science that is trying to stem this tide of illness—something that will make you

really feel better, healthier in every way. Not just in body but in mind and spirit too. This is

what art and art-making offer—and I’m going to show you how.

 

Editorial Reviews

Not taking myself or life too seriously is a constant challenge. It can choke a person! But from

the expertise and experience of John Graham-Pole found in his book, Illness and the Art of Creative

Self-Expression: Stories and Exercises from the Arts For Those of Us with Illness and Disability, I

negotiate a new tune for stepping around, welcoming in, living through the challenges. One of my

favourite lines is as follows: I trust you’ve learned to fill your lungs and heart with its (your

life force) inspiration, and to celebrate life again, no matter what infirmity or limitation is

afflicting you. Such encouragement enlivens a new flame in my furnace and a willingness to keep

singing with others.

  • Barbara P Steinhaus, DMA, C-AIM; Chair, Music, Brenau University; President,

National Organization for Arts in Health (NOAH)

 

This book is alive with possibilities. The encouraging tone keeps the reader active and engaged.

John Graham-Pole shows us not only the how but also the why behind these many art-filled exercises.

This translates the whole notion of creative self-expression into an entirely reasonable and

worthwhile undertaking.

  • Judy Rollins, PhD, RN Adjunct Assistant Professor, Family Medicine and Pediatrics, Georgetown University

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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