Poetry for Life (PFL)
We offer a wide-range of programs using the performance and creation of poetry as the basis of our work. We can custom design the program to best meet your needs. We are happy to set up a time to talk about how to best build the program for you. Contact poet Gary Glazner for more info at: garyglaznerpoet@gmail.com
Our Method
What happens during a typical PFL session? We perform classic poems and create original poems inspired by those well-loved poems. We use a call and response technique to perform the poems. To create poems we ask a series of open-ended questions around our theme. The person’s answers form the lines of the new poem. Please see below for a PBS NewsHour video of our work.
Our Goals
To use participatory arts to best represent the “best practices,” of person-centered care. To help reduce social isolation. To honor give dignity to each person and their creativity.
Poetry for Life: Memory
We offer programs for people living with dementia and their care partners. Participatory Poetry can help people step out of the daily requirements of safety, nutrition and hygiene, to experience moments of joy, laughter and creativity.
Poetry for Life: Youth
We offer one-on-one workshops for youth of all ages. We have worked with all ages from preschool to university. Participatory Poetry can help youth express themselves and connect to their community.
Poetry for Life: Diabetes
This fun program uses poetry and the arts to help educate and reinforce the benefits of staying on track to manage your Diabetes. Participatory Poetry can help deepen your experience.
Poetry for Life: Participatory Poetry for People with Cancer
A diagnosis of cancer brings many challenges both emotional and physical. Normal emotions like anger, anxiety, depression, grief, guilt, and hopelessness. Participatory Poetry can help you understand these feelings and find relief.
Poetry for Life: Autistic
We focus on the person’s interests and build skills to use the interests to create poems and stories. Participatory Poetry can help build these skills.
Poetry for Life: Palliative Care
Using oral history techniques we create poems, stories and songs with the person about their lives. Participatory Poetry can help the death process by allowing the person story to be told.
Poetry Party!
We are custom designing Poetry Parties held online through Zoom for your community. We are happy to talk with you about helping to create an event for your school, adult day care, memory cafe, assisted living center or skilled nursing home. Poetry Party is a 30-minute to hour long show suitable for all ages! Funny Poems! Happy Poems! Poems that make you want to Dance. Love Poems! Silly Poems! Won’t you listen in and take a chance?
Poetry for Life is a division of the Alzheimer's Poetry Project
In 2013, the U.S. Poet Laureate, Natasha Trethewey, choose the Alzheimer's Poetry Project for the initial broadcast of her new PBS NewsHour series, “Where Poetry Lives.” The series is a partnership between PBS and the Library of Congress. Trethewey writes about working with the APP, “…our grasp of language has a beginning in poetry. To see it used at a very different stage of life, and to such effect, was deeply moving.”
PBS NewsHour on the Alzheimer's Poetry Project and how to perform and create poetry with elders:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec13/poetry_09-12.html
"It was at this moment I was shown the absolute power poetry has over Alzheimer’s." Cody Tulip, Durand High, Durand WI
Click for students writing on their experience with Poetry for Life.