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“An Evening Celebrating the Lives of Nurses and Nursing” featuring: Lift-Breathe-Carry, a spoken-word performance by Verb Ballets, Readings by Cortney Davis, RN, MA, ANP, from her latest book Audience Talk-Back moderated by Martin Kohn, PhD, Center for Literature, Medicine and Biomedical Humanities, Hiram College Saturday, May 30, 2009 Pasquerilla Performing Arts Center Doors open at 7:15 pm Admission: Free Lift-Breathe-Carry is a spoken-word performance based on poems in the book Tenderly Lift Me by Jeanne Bryner, RN. These poems tell the stories of nurses from around the world, spanning over three centuries. From a nurse in a Quebec hospital in 1694 and a nurse caring for victims of the Oklahoma City bombings in 1994, to Helen Albert, civil rights activist and first African American nurse from Trumbull County Ohio, Lift-Breathe-Carry will encourage audience members to “see” the uniqueness of the one-on-one interactions between two strangers. Verb Ballets is Cleveland’s National Repertory Dance Company. The mission of Verb Ballets is to promote and develop interest in and appreciation for contemporary dance nationally, regionally and locally through performance, programs that promote learning and nurture wellness, audience and community dialogue and advocacy efforts to support the art form. As a curator of expressive movement that is globally connected and nationally respected, Verb Ballets is a leader in performing dance works of the highest caliber including historical masterpieces, works by outstanding contemporary choreographers and by dynamic emerging artists. While performing nationally, from its Northeast Ohio base, this repertory company presents programming for youth through adults that promotes learning, nurtures wellness and encourages dialogue on the dance art form to stimulate and enliven the community. For Honoring Nursing, Verb Ballets performs “Lift. Breathe. Carry” – based on Tenderly Lift Me – Nurses Honored, Celebrated, and Remembered and other works of Jeanne Bryner, R.N., B.A., C.E.N. Cortney Davis, RN, MA, ANP, is a nurse practitioner at the Wellness Center, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, Conn. For the Honoring Nursing events, she reads from her latest book The Heart’s Truth: Essays on the Art of Nursing. It is a collection revealing the joys, fears, intimacies, and transcendent moments shared by a nurse and her patients. What is it like to be a student nurse washing the feet of a dying patient? To be a newly graduated nurse, in charge of the Intensive Care Unit for the first time, who wonders if her mistake might have cost a life? Or to be an experienced nurse who, by her presence and care, holds a patient to this world? Davis answers these questions by examining her own experiences and through them reveals a glimpse into the minds and hearts of those who care for us when we are at our most vulnerable. Davis is the author of three poetry collections, including Leopold’s Maneuvers (2004), which won the Prairie Schooner Poetry Prize and the American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award. She has coauthored two anthologies of poetry and prose by nurses, Between the Heartbeats (1995) and Intensive Care (2003). Her memoir, I Knew a Woman: The Experience of the Female Body (2001), won the Connecticut Center for the Book Nonfiction Prize in 2002. Her work has been published in numerous journals, including “Poetry,” “Massachusetts Review,” “The Sun,” “Witness,” “Crazyhorse,” “Ontario Review,” “Hudson Review,” “Bellevue Literary Review,” “Poetry East,” “Rock & Sling,” “Antigonish Review,” “Descant,” “The New York Times,” “Lancet,” “JAMA,” “American Journal of Nursing,” “American Nurse Today,” “RN Magazine,” “NP for Nurse Practitioners” and “Discover Magazine.” Jeanne Bryner, R.N., B.A., C.E.N. is a registered nurse at Forum Health Trumbull Memorial Hospital in Warren, Ohio. Bryner has gathered biographical sketches of remarkable nurses, each accompanied by poetry and photographs, and has created the multi-genre presentation that is the compassionate and complex: Tenderly Lift Me: Nurses Honored, Celebrated, and Remembered. This is the first book in the Literature and Medicine Series (Kent State University Press) that concentrates on nurses’ voices and their experiences with providing health care. It enhances and extends perspectives on how health care is understood and delivered by recognizing nurses as the primary care givers. In addition to Tenderly Lift Me, Bryner has published several books of poetry, essays and short fiction. Her poems and stories have appeared in several magazines and journals, including “Annals of Internal Medicine, American Journal of Nursing,” “International Journal of Arts Medicine,” “The Sun” and in the anthology Intensive Care. She is the author of the Wick Poetry Chapbook “Breathless.” She has received numerous awards and honors for her writing and poetry.
The Center for Literature, Medicine and Biomedical Humanities is the home of a distinctive interdisciplinary program that serves undergraduates, health care professionals and the wider community. The College’s unique biomedical humanities major gives the students important advantages in preparation for medical school and other graduate programs.The mission of the Center is, through literary works, to examine thoroughly questions of human values in health care contexts - and to do so within clinical settings, medical and other health professional schools, and the liberal arts environment. Founded in 1990, the Center for Literature, Medicine, and Biomedical Humanities provides interdisciplinary programs, courses, and summer seminars integrating humanities and health care. Through the study of the humanities, and in particular, through literary works, the Center examines critical health care issues. This work has application in clinical settings, academic medicine, health policy, and the liberal arts environment, and serves to deepen participants' ability to recognize, understand, and address ethical and humanistic issues in health care contexts. The Literature and Medicine series from Kent State University Press, edited by Martin Kohn and Carol Donley, has published both Jeanne Bryner’s Tenderly Lift Me—Nurses Honored, Celebrated, Remembered and Cortney Davis’s The Heart’s Truth: Essays on the Art of Nursing.
Funded by: Hiram College Center for Literature, Medicine, and Biomedical Humanities; The Ohio Arts Council; the University of Pittsburgh Consortium Ethics Program (CEP); University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing; and University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown.
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© 2008 Consortium Ethics Program. No portion may be reproduced without permission. Last updated: May 4, 2009 |
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