Listener Poets sat in the lobby by the registration table for four days during the Gold Humanism Summit at Planetree’s International Conference in Orlando, FL with a Free Custom Poetry sign and their typewriters. When a curious person stopped to take one of them up the offer, the Listener Poet asked, “What should the poem be about?” Then, they listened.
Inspired by those conversations, the poems in this book tell the stories of some of the humans attending that event.
Listener Poets Ravenna Raven, Kay McKean, and Frankie Abralind
Orlando, Florida
She talked about how hopeful med students feel when they first start out, and told me she worried that it would get harder for doctors to hold onto hope and empathy the further along they were in their careers.
“I have a lot of unresolved grief,” she confessed. It was her grief that made her good at empathizing with the hospice community she served. “Would resolving my grief make me less effective with my patients?”
“Relationships — children, grandparents, siblings, spouses, parents are all a reflection of your journey,” she said. “They can be fulfilling or agonizing."
“It feels like time is running out to make big changes,” she shared. The last 6 months were full of transition in all aspects of her life.
The five of them work together in a Pediatric ER unit. “People die here,” one exclaimed, and part of their job is to bring light to a dark place.
