Poem based on Anthony Komaroff ME/CFS article is a finalist in US poetry contest

No, really:

@Veronica Ashenhurst is a poet with severe ME. Her poem “Redefining Her” was chosen as a finalist in Health Affairs’ poetry contest. It’s a “found poem,” meaning that text from another source is used to create poetic meaning. Specifically, in writing the poem, Veronica restricted herself to only using words from Anthony L. Komaroff’s article Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: When Suffering is Multiplied. She selected specific words from Komaroff’s article and rearranged them to create the poem.

This might seem an unlikely route to poetry but, as you can see, it works:

…One cloud-high day, she cleared
for takeoff on a runway. Next, her hard,
sudden fall. Illness, a large exhausted lack.
“There is nothing wrong with you,” said doctors,
in decades multiplied like judgments …

View the shortlisted poems here (scroll down a bit to read or listen to the full version of Redefining Her).
here is a direct link to Veronic reading her own poem.

There is a separate thread with Veronica's other published poems.

 

It is very challenging to write a "found' poem because the poet must not change verb tense, nor make a singular noun plural, nor add in a single word of her own. It's about creating your own meaning using another text, and all the vocabulary found therein. It is also about creating a dialogue with the original text. Maybe someone should send this to Komaroff??

 

Completely wonderful

 

Here's someone who did a lovely job of making a graphic of Veronica's poem on twitter:



https://twitter.com/user/status/1590248133216591872