Overexpressed

“Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick,” opens Susan Sontag’s book Illness as Metaphor.

And in the kingdom of illness, surgery, and disease, we encounter mysterious words such as electrocautery, compression deformity, and peak systolic strain. For those of us who are not medical professionals, these words may feel overly complicated and overwhelming.

So, what happens when we define these words? Explore their etymological roots? Demystify them? What happens when we listen to their musicality and rhythm? What happens when we begin to use a medical report’s terminology to craft a poem?

Transforming Medical Reports into Poetry is an interactive 90-minute poetry workshop that will invite you to reclaim what may feel like the disembodied language of a medical report, embody it, and utilize that language in a poem.

Throughout our time, I will share examples of poems that incorporate medical language and provide writing prompts. You will dig into the language of your medical report and transform it into a poem (or two or three).

Read Deconstructing “Deconstructing the Right Breast.” Here is an example of a poem made with a medical report and a narrative explanation of the process.

Sign up for Transforming Medical Reports into Poetry TODAY!