By Kathryn West
It is often the case that a person’s first encounter with The Good Listening Project (TGLP) feels more like a happy twist of fate than an inevitability. This was certainly true for Marius Birlea, MD, of University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus; he first came to know TGLP by chance during the difficulty, stress, and uncertainty of COVID-19’s early days.
In recalling that introduction, Dr. Birlea takes us back to early 2020 as the novel coronavirus spread across the country and doctors and health systems stood at the forefront of the pandemic. Against this backdrop—and seeing the toll already taken on his colleagues—Dr. Birlea founded and co-led his Department’s Wellness Committee. Dr. Birlea describes the Department of Neurology as the place where he “grew up,” in a sense, as a doctor; he has been on campus since 2006 where, after immigrating to the US from Romania, he started as a volunteer before becoming a resident and working his way up to his current role as an Associate Professor of Clinical Neurology and inaugural lead of the Department’s headache section.
His fondness for his colleagues led him to notice the early effects of the pandemic on their wellbeing and take up the mantle of the Department’s wellness work. It was another founding member of the Wellness Committee who originally mentioned The Good Listening Project, which she became familiar with when she herself was a poemee. And, thus, a new partnership began.
Their first foray into working together was internal to the committee itself, with TGLP’s Education Lead and Listener Poet, Ravenna Raven, interviewing 4 committee members and writing a collective poem based on what they shared, entitled “Endless Currents.” This was such a positive, healing experience, Dr. Birlea said, that the committee decided to broaden the partnership and, with the Department’s support, were able to offer individual listening sessions to all faculty and staff. In total, 36 of Dr. Birlea’s colleagues participated in individual sessions with Listener Poets and, later, facilitated group discussions about the impact of the poems received.
“I’m not a poet, but I like reading poetry. And I care about my colleagues, my patients, the healthcare system.”
TGLP’s Executive Director, Jenny Hegland, helped to facilitate and evaluate those group discussions, providing the Department with an accounting of the impact of this initiative. The results of the conversations and a subsequent survey showed Department members feeling more connected to their colleagues—both those they knew before and those they were meeting through this project—through having humanizing conversations, feeling heard, and reflecting on topics that really matter to them and their work. This all, Dr. Birlea shared, was especially important as it came about during a time of isolation and anxiety. It also started a broader conversation about the intersection between neurology and poetry, a topic about which Dr. Birlea is especially passionate. As he puts it, “I’m not a poet, but I like reading poetry. And I care about my colleagues, my patients, the healthcare system” and believes that the wellbeing of all can be improved when poetry is included in the conversation.
While the official partnership between TGLP and CU’s Department of Neurology’s Wellness Committee has come to a close, Dr. Birlea has stayed in close touch with the TGLP team. Just last year, he served as a practice poemee for TGLP’s 11th Cohort of Listener Poet learners. He was interviewed via Zoom by Listener Poet Sibihan Lawrence while the cohort of trainees took notes on the conversation and then each produced a poem based on what was shared. Dr. Birlea shares that the opportunity to be a poemee again and to contribute to the learning of new Listener Poets was an honor and gave him a place to express his uncertainties, his hopes for his patients, and his desire to bring cultural awareness to each visit. The poems that were written through this process will be published in a digital anthology, Why Poetry Matters in Healthcare: a Neurologists’s Perspective available soon for download on TGLP’s website.
In reflecting on the poems he received and the conversation that led to them, Dr. Birlea realized pathways of his mind and his thinking that can help his patients; these things were there all along under the surface, brought to light with the help of carefully crafted questions and poetic verse. They were also reminders of the ways he can bring poetry into his work, whether that is by discussing poetry or recommending specific poems to his patients or by introducing them to TGLP so that they can have their own poemee experiences.
Why Poetry Matters in Healthcare: a Neurologists’s Perspective
A free digital anthology based on a listening session with Dr. Birlea, available soon for download.