Poetry for Life

Minds like locked boxes
Presented in the round
I used language like keys
And love is what I found
Love for the now and for history
And the love was unlocked
With the key of poetry
- Jalen Bell

So excited with get to work with talented Jalen Bell, the 2014 Poetry Out Loud, Arkansas State Champion and his family! He wrote that wonderful poem after our poetry session on Tuesday performing and creating poems with the people at Innisfree Senior Living Community in Rogers.

His younger sister Jaden also participated in the session as did his father Donovan. Jaden is preparing to take part in the National Spelling Bee. When I asked about her favorite word to spell, she said Pfeffernuesse, the German Christmas cookie. As soon as she replied one of the men in the group jumped up, went to his room and brought back a Pfeffernuesse! It was delicious!

Yes we also read the patron poem of the home, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." The event was hosted by the Arkansas Arts Council. Big thanks to Cynthia Haas the Arts in Education Program Manager.

Poetry for Life is a pilot project to bring students who are participating in Poetry Out Loud to assisted living, adult day care and senior centers to perform and create poems with the elders.

Dementia Arts Research Article in the Washington Post

Fredrick Kunkle of the Washington Post asks, "Can Alzheimer’s be treated with the arts? Researchers aim to determine the answer."

Click here to read the full article.

The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Institutes of Health and others are pushing for more answers. At Birmingham Green, researchers from George Mason University are conducting a federally subsidized study to examine the impact of the arts on the emotional and cognitive health of older adults.

“There still needs to be a lot of work done,” said Sunil Iyengar, who heads the Office of Research and Analysis at the NEA. Iyengar said research into the effect of art on people with cognitive impairments has suffered from a lack of rigor.

Too many studies lacked proper controls, involved samples that were too small, and were poorly defined. They also may have been looking for the wrong thing, Iyengar said. While searching for hard evidence of biological improvements in memory or cognition, many also overlooked measurable improvements in the mood and well-being of people with Alzheimer’s, and their caregivers, too.

I am thrilled to be included in the article:

“But outside of these things is sheer joy,” said Gary Glazner, founder and executive director of the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project. Glazner said he was working at an adult day-care center in Northern California and searching for ways to connect with people with Alzheimer’s disease when he discovered the power of poetry to reach people with cognitive impairment.

Having studied poetry in college, Glazner shared Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Arrow and The Song” with a resident and from the first line — “I shot an arrow” — hit the mark. Glazner uses poetry, particularly beloved classics learned by older adults, in call-and-response with older people and guides them in writing poems. Jump-rope rhymes, even military cadences, can evoke responses from people with cognitive impairment that engage them, he said.