Poetry in Community: Q & A with Ronna Bloom in Spacing Magazine

I was interviewed by Emily McCrae of Toronto’s Spacing magazine about community-engaged poetry. We talked about writing poems for people in hospitals, poems painted on roads and more. Here’s an excerpt:

Based on your experiences (doing poetry) at Sinai Health, how do you see the hospital connecting to the rest of the city?

I see the hospital as an extension of the city. It is the place that underlines the fact that everyone is vulnerable. When I used to go into Sinai Health to bring poetry in, I’d say to myself “Wake up, you’re going into a hospital. There are sick people here. Pay attention.”

By sick people, I meant also vulnerable people. I never knew who that might mean, because many of those I met were not patients but staff or family members or people walking through. My mantra is: everyone who is alive could use a poem. Whether they want one is a different matter. In that sense, the work of poetry can be done anywhere there are people.

Read the article in Spacing Magazine. Poetry in Community with Ronna Bloom