List of ContributorsForeword Gregory OrrAcknowledgementsIntroduction: A Poetic Language of Ageing Olga V. Lehmann and Oddgeir Synnes1. The Mother of Beauty: Notes on the (Possible) Poetry of Dementia Mark Freeman2. Poetry and Dementia: Imagining and Shaping More Just Futures Aagje Swinnen3. Time and Dignity: A Phenomenological Investigation of Poetry Writing in Dementia Care Oddgeir Synnes, Eva Gjengedaland Målfrid Råheim4. Growing Older with Haiku: What Haiku Offers to Japanese Expats in Denmark Kyoko Murakami5. Poetry Lasts Forever: Case Study of a 100-year-old Brazilian Poet and His Daughter Ana Cecilia de Sousa Bastos6. ‘An Old Man Can Do Somewhat’: Styles of Male Old Age in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2 Arthur W. Frank7. Virtuous Ageing as a Poetic Endeavour: Motivations to Write and Effects of Writing among Older Adults in Norway Olga V. Lehmann andSvend Brinkmann8. The Poetics of Growing Old: Metaphoric Competence and the Philosophic Homework of Later Life William L. Randall9. Poetry, Science, and a Science of Poetry: With an Illustration of Poetry and Ageing Steven R. Brown10. Writing Lives Merete Mazzarella11. Other Voices: George Oppen, Dementia, and the Echo of Lyric Alastair Morrison Index

A Poetic Language of Ageing 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.

Represents a truly interdisciplinary and international collaboration of experts in the field, from disciplinary backgrounds as diverse as cultural psychology, literary studies, theology, sociology, narrative medicine, cultural gerontology and narrative gerontology

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, USAThomas Cole, University of Texas Health Science Center, USAChris Gilleard, University College London, UKRos Jennings, University of Glouchestershire, UKUlla Kriebernegg, University of Graz, AustriaRoberta Maierhofer, University of Graz, AustriaWendy Martin, Brunel University, London, UK