"When my last book came out in 2012, I was just starting my job as Poet in Residence at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, and was beginning to bring poetry to other unexpected places. I didn't know that this book would be about health, care, mortality, meditation, vulnerability, compassion, loss, subversion, and spontaneity until it began to coalesce. On an airplane, I wrote the essay "Walking the Hospital," the centre of the book, a space that contemplates the activity of walking within an institution while trying to see what's needed and what can be offered in moments of need, when nothing seems enough. What is different about these poems is that they attempt to 'see' and 'feel' what is happening simultaneously." Bloom's command of rhetoric and cadence, her radical emotional honesty, and blunt, deep humour . . . create a fearless poetry. -- Rhea Tregebov About the Author: Ronna Bloom is a self-employed poet who works in hospitals and universities. She leads workshops there, prescribes poems, and writes them on the spot. Permiso (Pedlar Press, 2009) was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award. Her poems have been translated into Spanish and Bengali and broadcast on CBC Radio. Her She is currently Poet in Community at University of Toronto, and Poet in Residence at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. An active psychotherapist, Bloom lives in Toronto.
www.ronnabloom.com |
