Produktdetaljer
Biographical note
Oddgeir Synnes is Professor of Health Humanities at the Centre for Diaconia and Professional Practice, VID Specialized University, Oslo, Norway. Synnes has a master’s degree in Nordic literature and a PhD in illness narratives and works with applying perspectives from the humanities to healthcare, both through practical projects and in research. His key areas of interest include cultural and narrative gerontology, creative writing (e.g., in cancer care, palliative care, and dementia care), literary representations of illness, and narrative inquiry. His most recent book is Ways of Home Making in Care for Later Life (2020), co-edited with Bernike Pasveer and Ingunn Moser.
Olga V. Lehmann, PhD, is a researcher, lecturer, and mental health activist. She is an associate professor in Psychology at the University of Stavanger and she has a private clinical practice. Her main areas of interest involve feelings and emotions, silence, communication, humanistic-existential psychology, grief therapeutic writing, grief and bereavement, poetic instants, and qualitative methods. She has published, among others, Poetry and Imagined Worlds (2017) and Deep Experiencing: Dialogues Within the Self (2017).
<i>A Poetic Language of Ageing</i> is a text that evidences unequivocally that literary gerontology as a discipline has come of age…it retains at heart the impulse that has fuelled most of the branches of gerontological research: a recognition that older age be seen as more than a period of decline or deterioration, and an insistence that ageing individuals be given the opportunity to have their value recognised.
Journal of Literary Studies
<i>A Poetic Language of Ageing</i> has several strengths, including an in-depth approach to understanding the relationship of ageing and creative processes such as poetry. The authors explore this with empathy and add significant value to the much-needed narrative around ableism, creativity, and agency in older adults.
The British Society for Literature and Science
Exploring the potential of poetry and poetic language as a means of conveying perspectives on later life, this book examines questions such as ‘how can we understand ageing and later life?’ and ‘how can we capture the ambiguities and complexities that the experiences of growing old in time and place entail?’ As poetic language illuminates, transfigures and enchants our being in the world, it also offers insights into the existential questions that are amplified as we age, including the vulnerabilities and losses that humble us and connect us.
This volume suggests a path towards the poetics of ageing by means of presenting analyses of published poetry on ageing ranging from William Shakespeare to George Oppen; the use of reading and writing poetry among lay people in old age, including persons living with dementia; and the poetic nuances that emerge from other literary practices and contexts in relation to ageing – counting personal poetic reflections from many of the contributing authors.
List of Contributors
Foreword Gregory Orr
Acknowledgements
Introduction: A Poetic Language of Ageing Olga V. Lehmann and Oddgeir Synnes
1. The Mother of Beauty: Notes on the (Possible) Poetry of Dementia Mark Freeman
2. Poetry and Dementia: Imagining and Shaping More Just Futures Aagje Swinnen
3. Time and Dignity: A Phenomenological Investigation of Poetry Writing in Dementia Care Oddgeir Synnes, Eva Gjengedaland Målfrid Råheim
4. Growing Older with Haiku: What Haiku Offers to Japanese Expats in Denmark Kyoko Murakami
5. Poetry Lasts Forever: Case Study of a 100-year-old Brazilian Poet and His Daughter Ana Cecilia de Sousa Bastos
6. ‘An Old Man Can Do Somewhat’: Styles of Male Old Age in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2 Arthur W. Frank
7. Virtuous Ageing as a Poetic Endeavour: Motivations to Write and Effects of Writing among Older Adults in Norway Olga V. Lehmann andSvend Brinkmann
8. The Poetics of Growing Old: Metaphoric Competence and the Philosophic Homework of Later Life William L. Randall
9. Poetry, Science, and a Science of Poetry: With an Illustration of Poetry and Ageing Steven R. Brown
10. Writing Lives Merete Mazzarella
11. Other Voices: George Oppen, Dementia, and the Echo of Lyric Alastair Morrison
Index
Bloomsbury Studies in the Humanities, Ageing and Later Life responds to the growing need for scholarship focused on age, identity and meaning in late life in a time of unprecedented longevity. For the first time in human history, there are more people in the world aged 60 years and over than under age five. In response, empirical gerontological research on how and why we age has seen exponential growth. An unintended consequence of this growth, however, has been an increasing chasm between the need to study age through generalizable data - the "objective" - and the importance of understanding the human experience of growing old.
Bloomsbury Studies in the Humanities, Aging and Later Life bridges this gap. The series creates a more intellectually diversified gerontology through the perspective of the humanities as well as other interpretive, non- empirical approaches that draw from humanities scholarship. Publishing monographs and edited collections, the series represents the most cutting edge research in the areas of humanistic gerontology and aging.
Series editorial board:
Andrew Achenbaum, University of Houston, USA
Thomas Cole, University of Texas Health Science Center, USA
Chris Gilleard, University College London, UK
Ros Jennings, University of Glouchestershire, UK
Ulla Kriebernegg, University of Graz, Austria
Roberta Maierhofer, University of Graz, Austria
Wendy Martin, Brunel University, London, UK
Produktdetaljer
Biographical note
Oddgeir Synnes is Professor of Health Humanities at the Centre for Diaconia and Professional Practice, VID Specialized University, Oslo, Norway. Synnes has a master’s degree in Nordic literature and a PhD in illness narratives and works with applying perspectives from the humanities to healthcare, both through practical projects and in research. His key areas of interest include cultural and narrative gerontology, creative writing (e.g., in cancer care, palliative care, and dementia care), literary representations of illness, and narrative inquiry. His most recent book is Ways of Home Making in Care for Later Life (2020), co-edited with Bernike Pasveer and Ingunn Moser.
Olga V. Lehmann, PhD, is a researcher, lecturer, and mental health activist. She is an associate professor in Psychology at the University of Stavanger and she has a private clinical practice. Her main areas of interest involve feelings and emotions, silence, communication, humanistic-existential psychology, grief therapeutic writing, grief and bereavement, poetic instants, and qualitative methods. She has published, among others, Poetry and Imagined Worlds (2017) and Deep Experiencing: Dialogues Within the Self (2017).