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Author: Fiona Hamilton

Abstract:

This essay looks at medical students’ poetry on a curated website and design of a course for medical undergraduates called Poetry of Medicine. A close reading of poetry and commentaries on the website outofourheads.net informed aims and design of the course, which had three strands: 1) study of poetics and analysis of poems; 2) practical exploration of applications of poetry within medicine; 3) writing poems and reflecting on them, and reading work by a range of poets. This essay focuses on the third of these. Recurring themes in students’ writing and reflections suggested that writing poetry can offer an outlet for expression and a way of processing personal and professional experiences that may be helpful as a supportive resource for students.

Authors: Lucy Windridge-Floris and Shaamil Windridge-Floris

Abstract

This duo-autoethnography explores responses to a recurring hiatus in conversations when I, a white English woman, state that I am married to a man with an Arabic name. Together, my husband and I have used practices of creative writing for therapeutic purposes to examine our personal encounters with Islamophobia in the UK. This article evidences the power of co-inquiry, demonstrates the necessity of flexible responses to written expressions of trauma; and reveals outrage and silence as distinctive ways of coping with discrimination. It shows an incongruence in the binary which presupposes white non-Muslim men to be superior in their ability to respect women and highlights the need to dismantle white supremacy in trustworthy environments to avoid unhelpful fight-or-flight responses. Personal responses have been written, acknowledging structures of wider political, social, and historical contexts shaping social conditions.