Literature & Medicine: From the Inside Out
Interview with Judy Schaefer :::
bio, by Veneta Masson :::
bio
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| Veneta Masson |
I first “met” Judy Schaefer through a letter she sent to me and other nurse writers at the end of 1992. “The purpose of this letter,” she wrote, “is to share with you the list of poets and friends that I have collected to date…It is my impression that there is the wish to network, to publish and read together, and to work toward poetry pages in our nursing journals.” That networking, publishing and advocacy has continues unabated. She’s published four books (including two anthologies of nurses’ writing, edited with Cortney Davis) and is one of the principal go-to persons for the nurse-writer who wants information about other writers, workshops, conferences, publishing opportunities and publications of interest Though we meet from time to time and talk occasionally by phone, Judy and I decided to conduct this interview the most familiar way, back and forth by e-mail.
Writing Nursing From the Bottom Up
VM: Judy, what do you make of this lit-med phenomenon in medical schools and hospitals? How, if at all, does it affect day-to-day health care?
JS: Personally, I find it gratifying. Years ago, I felt I was a little less respected clinically because I wrote poetry. But I hung tough and eventually found like-minded colleagues including nurse-writer Cortney Davis and Joanne Trautmann Banks, the first full-time professor of literature at Penn State University College of Medicine.
Language and literature form a bridge that connects the flesh and the spirit.
Writing gives distance and subsequent perspective to disturbing and irresolvable clinical events. It offers a new language in which to converse with patients and colleagues. Once we clinicians incorporate lit-med into our practice, it becomes impossible to imagine a smaller world. Care is more informed and truly “given.” And, because writing is restorative, it keeps us in our profession.
VM: Say more about the impact of reading, writing and literary-clinical conversation on caregivers? Do doctors and nurses respond differently?
JS: Language and literature form a bridge that connects the flesh and the spirit. Literature is also a bridge between disciplines. I love the conferences where doctors and nurses can gather and talk the same language. Sure, we already had the language of medicine, of CBCs and EKGs, but now we have a deeper language.
When Joanne Trautmann Banks wrote the introduction for Between the Heartbeats, she said to me, “You know, you may be doing more than you know to define the nursing profession.” It took me some time to understand what she meant. Nurses who write define nursing from the bottom up. Nurses’ poetry tends to just tell it like it is while physicians’ poetry tends to be less explicit.
Nurses, in my experience, are initially more reluctant to play the intellectual “games” that literary exercise requires. Physicians early on had a concept of the Renaissance Man. Nurses didn’t. Now we are all Renaissance people. Confidence brought about by the feminist movement has had an impact on supporting this change in attitude and has been moved forward by the writing of nurses.
VM: Judy, I loved what you said about nurses who write defining nursing from the bottom up. Give me an example of how you’ve done this as a nurse and writer.
JS: I have always liked the idea that in 1995, when Cortney and I put together our first anthology of nurses’ writing, we were both full-time, non-academic nurses. We didn’t need tenure. We wanted to publish new voices.
It’s so hard to define caring. Here’s an example from one of my own poems, “The Tea-Master 3-11 Shift” (Harvesting the Dew, 1997, Vista). The final stanza ends:
I tell you I know it hurts / try to hold you in the nest of my arms / and remind you again to swallow / We both smile as if we had caught / the same allusive feather at the same time / We recall how the birds return to Capistrano / We know we need to trust something / You swallow and relax into the temporary nest / of my arms and your unmade bed
Poems like this tell the reader what nursing is. A young high schooler considering a nursing career could read it and be accurately informed.
Years ago, I felt I was a little less respected clinically because I wrote poetry. But I hung tough and eventually found like-minded colleagues including nurse-writer Cortney Davis and Joanne Trautmann Banks, the first full-time professor of literature at Penn State University College of Medicine.
VM: You have a valuable perspective on the lit-med movement as clinician, writer, workshop leader, speaker and editor. If you could wave a metaphorical wand and influence its evolution in some way, what would it be?
JS: The best influence is going to be the full involvement of the humanities in schools of nursing and medicine. Ironically, the technology that we use in nursing and medicine changes rapidly but human beings are classic, that is to say they still have two eyes, two arms and two ears. They have vital signs. In literature there are classics, pieces of work that endure over time. Our culture is not so good at nurturing the art of writing and the art of finding meaning in what we read. So, yes, departments of humanities within the schools of nursing and medicine.
VM: What about the clinicians and other health workers out there in what I think of as the fray of everyday? What do you want for them?
JS: I want them to have the same opportunity we experience when we attend conferences like the one sponsored by the Maine Humanities Council in November. It is so difficult—nearly impossible—to reach the nurses and caregivers who are trying to get everything done by the time the shift ends. My best experience has been to remove them from the workaday world and put them into a conference at least a daylong. But the nursing leadership at every level must support it in order for them to feel comfortable. Getting nursing students involved is easier, because there is a structure to support them.
VM: Tell me which came first for you, writing or nursing? What was your first nursing job? your first publication?
JS: Writing came first. I can’t remember not wanting to write. Nursing came later. My first job was on the night shift on a ward with three wings, orthopedics, ENT, and neurology. I can’t really remember my first publication but it was probably in a grade school newsletter. Many years later, I published often in the local newspaper. They had a poetry column. Imagine! But it served a very sound purpose for me and other local poets. The newspaper was my public debut. Neighbors and colleagues could read and acknowledge what I was doing.
VM: Of the things you’ve written or edited, what has meant the most to you?
JS: Tough question. That is like asking which of your children you love the most!
I love The Poetry of Nursing (2006) the most because it is the baby and for the first time tells the autobiographies as well as the poems of fourteen nurses writing in the English language. I love the bright red leaves on the cover of TPN, a photograph by a dear friend. And the book is all about poetry, my first and strongest love.
I love Between the Heartbeats (1995) the most because it is the oldest and would lead the way. It was the first international anthology of writing by nurses.
I love Harvesting the Dew (1997) the most because it was my first personal collection of poems, using Wallace Stevens quotes as a cohesive device.
I love Intensive Care (2003) the most because I had the pleasure of collaborating again with Cortney. In contrast to Between the Heartbeats, we used e-mail to correspond with contributors and were gratified to discover that the quantity and quality of submissions had increased greatly.
I also want to mention Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine, an e-magazine that has just been launched after a long gestation. I have great expectations for this baby!
VM: There are now a number of blogs and online journals focused on health care and the humanities. Say I’m a busy and often weary professional. Why would I want to bookmark Pulse?
The lit-med movement gives linguistic reference to the mysteries of nursing and medical practice. Language will return us to something new and ancient at the same time-a full appreciation that we, the caregivers, bring ourselves into the healing process with the patient. We heal and we are healed at the same moment.
JS: Pulse is seeking voices from the heart of medicine (we use the term in its broadest sense) and will not shy away from controversy. Pulse invites and welcomes comments about the pieces that are accepted for publication online. By its very nature as an e-magazine, it will be international. Some of this dialogue will be absolutely new! Pulse will create a body of work that will be available for review, reflection and research.
VM: Judy, on behalf of our readers and all the “literary nurses” whose work you’ve brought to light, I want to thank you for your contributions to health care and literature. The last words in this interview belong to you.
JS: Zeitgeist! We have participated in a zeitgeist. For nurses, it really started with the 1991 book of writing from women in the Vietnam War edited by Lynda Van Devanter and Joan A. Furey, Visions of War, Dreams of Peace (Warner Books).
Cortney and I met around that same time and began to call for submissions for a nurse-only body of creative work that became Between the Heartbeats. More than fifteen years ago!
The lit-med movement gives linguistic reference to the mysteries of nursing and medical practice. Language will return us to something new and ancient at the same time—a full appreciation that we, the caregivers, bring ourselves into the healing process with the patient. We heal and we are healed at the same moment.