{"id":1131,"date":"2015-07-22T06:46:29","date_gmt":"2015-07-22T06:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/?p=1131"},"modified":"2025-12-27T13:55:56","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T13:55:56","slug":"breaking-dementias-silence-with-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2015\/07\/breaking-dementias-silence-with-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking dementia’s silence with poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Over the Years, a poem about ageing and Alzheimer\u2019s, stirs a sad, sweet memory but also hope. Dementia is part of family life \u2013 and loss \u2013 for so many of us now and I remember how it silenced my once sociable father. Yet Paula Jennings\u2019 poetry, drawing on her work in a nursing home, invites a new way of talking and listening. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There are days and ways that are different<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and you don\u2019t know if you\u2019re right or wrong<\/p>\n\n\n\n

or round the corner.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Over the Years<\/a> \u2013 a recent Poem of the Moment on the Scottish Poetry Library website \u2013 is published in a new pamphlet Under a Spell Place<\/a>, inspired by experience gained from friendship and conversations with a resident with Alzheimer\u2019s in a nursing home.  <\/span>At first the resident\u2019s words seemed incoherent, \u201cconflating past and present\u201d, but over time Paula Jennings found they started to make sense, \u201ctaken on their own terms\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It strikes a chord.  <\/span>Dementia dismantled my father\u2019s way with words. He was Irish; he loved to chat, better still to argue about politics or sport, history or food \u2013 any topic that would get a good discussion going. When his memory began to fail he gradually lost the knack of casual conversation.  <\/span>Unable to remember last night\u2019s television, today\u2019s newspaper headlines, or his beloved cricket scores, he withdrew into a small and increasingly silent world. Without short term memory there is no easy small talk and that, he discovered, is cruelly impoverishing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet he could recite great chunks of Shakespeare and long lines of poetry learned by heart as a boy.  <\/span>He was word perfect in all three verses of WB Yeats\u2019 Lake Isle of Innisfree and would reach the \u201cbee-loud glade\u201d with tears in his eyes and a beam of achievement on his face before carrying on to the \u201cdeep heart\u2019s core\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The powerful pleasure of speaking poetry out loud in the company of others is part of Living Voices <\/a>\u2013 a joint project between Scottish Poetry Library and Storytelling Centre \u2013 which has been taking poetry, song and storytelling into Scottish care homes for the past three years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Martha Pollard, Living Voices co-ordinator at the Scottish Poetry Library, it\u2019s an inspiring project which has proved that sharing poetry and storytelling out loud can rekindle the spark of that essential enjoyment in conversation, and that it is as important for the wellbeing of carers as it is for the people they care for.  <\/span>That\u2019s why she chose Paula Jennings\u2019 poem for her Poem of the Moment, as an example of what we can all gain from spending time and listening to people with dementia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paula Jennings<\/a>, who lives in Fife and works freelance, runs poetry writing workshops and takes special interest in working creatively with people who have dementia, producing \u201cunexpected and moving triumphs.\u201d  <\/span>Through foggy confusion, there are moments of wry clarity: \u201cmy mind\u2019s gone all middling in the centre.\u201d      <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under a Spell Place is her second pamphlet published by Happenstance. Reviewing the first From the Body of the Green Girl<\/a>, Lyn Moir observed \u201cJennings is adept at getting into other people\u2019s skin.\u201d  <\/span>Reading Autumn Equinox<\/a>, where a young women sees in her mirror signs of the Old One coming, it seems she is also unusually comfortable in her own:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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and I hand her the unmarked oval<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of my face. Then she smiles<\/p>\n\n\n\n

my seasons into me, so implacable<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and tender that I want to keep her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Autumn Equinox<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

To read Over the Years in full, visit the Scottish Poetry Library<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is also much more about Living Voices, and the new life it can bring, on the Scottish Poetry Library website.  <\/span>To quote Sally Magnusson, author of Where Memories Go: Why dementia changes everything<\/a> and founder of Playlist for Life<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Poetry, story and song can all help people with dementia to access memories, words and a sense of their own identity. For many years I observed the same effect on my own mother\u2019s dementia.  By singing old songs and familiar tunes with her, my family was able to keep bringing her back to a sense of herself. It\u2019s something I have observed over and over in my work for the charity Playlist for Life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

   <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the day that the world is shown potential break-through drugs for treating Alzheimer’s, we show via Paula Jennings how poetry can break down the barriers with others experienced by dementia sufferers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18246,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131\/revisions\/18246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}