Illness and the Art of Creative Self-Expression
Stories and exercise from the arts for those with illness and disability
- 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
Add it to your shelf
Where to buy it
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