Poetry and Dementia by Killick John;

Author:Killick, John;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784504489
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Published: 2017-10-25T04:00:00+00:00

Portraits

I now turn to examples of where subject and facilitator were unknown to each other before work commenced. Three of these accounts have been supplied to me by other writers.

Fred London

by Gary Glazner

Claudia, a caregiver, called me on behalf of the wife of Fred London, who she explained was a retired doctor, who loved poetry and would it be possible to work with them. I arranged a visit to his home.

When I arrived, I told Dr. London I had heard he loved poetry and that I also loved poetry and wanted to share some poems with him. The doctor, Claudia and I sat down in the living room, where she had stacked many of his favorite poetry books. He put off a game of tennis to speak with me.

I taught Claudia the technique of call and response. We performed a number of poems from his books, including Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare. Dr. London and Claudia enjoyed saying the poems. We all laughed and had a fun time.

I asked Dr. London if he would like to try creating a poem together. Dr. London said, ‘If I don’t write it down, it’s shhhhhhh’.

I started by repeating his opening line, which had such a resonance regarding memory loss. That prompted him to look out the window and give a wonderful description of the rolling hills of Northern California. I then asked him a series of questions to explore the theme of poetry through his senses. What does poetry taste like? Smell like? etc.

After each question Dr. London would close his eyes, scrunching up his brow in concentration, and then the words would come pouring out so fast it was hard for me to keep up in writing them down.

This was on a Thursday afternoon. On the following Saturday morning, I got a call from Dr. London’s wife Trudie, telling me that her husband had died peacefully that morning. She wanted to know if I would send her the poem Dr. London and I had created. I was honored to send it to her and to have spent time with Dr. London at the end of his life.

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