Two Listener Poets brought their typewriters to Georgetown University Medical Center for one week, right before the COVID-19 pandemic began to shut things down in earnest, with a goal of helping fight burnout. Their signs offered Free Custom Poetry. Curious people stopped to take them up on it. Each time, the Listener Poet asked, “What should the poem be about?” Then, they listened.
Inspired by those conversations, the poems in this book tell the stories of some of the humans who spend time there.
Listener Poets Ravenna Raven and Jenny Hegland
Washington, D.C.
"I struggled to make friends until my junior year of high school," she said. "Then I finally opened up and became friends with so many people." She was now a freshman at Georgetown University and was learning how to bond with her new peers.
She immediately knew that she didn’t want her poem to be about cancer. She wanted it to be about friendship and asked if she could share a recent story.
“I miss my four cats back home,” she said. “Want to see pictures of them?!” She was a graduate student in biotechnology. She explained that the program consumed her life. She saw other students studying abroad, posting pictures of travel and fun, but there was no room for that in her life.
