Frankie Abralind began experimenting with this work when he was lead designer at Johns Hopkins Sibley Memorial Hospital's Innovation Hub. For years on the weekends, he'd been listening to and writing poems for strangers on the streets of Washington, D.C., under the "Free Custom Poetry" banner. Frankie relishes the overlap of human-centered design with Listener Poet work: listening to uncover truths and help people feel understood (and help them understand themselves).
Frankie lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife and six typewriters.
I started the initial organization, Poets In Residence, to expand the work that I was doing as a side project at Johns Hopkins Sibley Memorial Hospital. It had started as an art project, writing poems for strangers on the street in Washington, D.C. However, I’d learned quickly that the real gift I was giving people was not the poem, it was the feeling of being heard.
“I know ‘vibe’ is kind of a nonspecific term, but I think about people’s vibes all the time,” he said.“ Sometimes you come into a room and it’s just off.
She was tired after working twelve straight days on her current rotation. It was her third year of medical school, and she was already feeling burnt out. “I have five more years like this,” she said. “My sister tells me, ‘Keep pushing, you can get through it,’ but I don’t know if I can.”
“Relationships — children, grandparents, siblings, spouses, parents are all a reflection of your journey,” she said. “They can be fulfilling or agonizing."
He was an ICU doctor at a hospital in a big city, facing the pandemic head on. Having met him years ago, I noticed during our video chat that he'd shaved his longtime beard. “The N95 mask is a harsh master,” he said.
