The Monthly interviews New Zealand poets, Renee Liang and Loredana Podolska-Kint, about poetry and people working in the field of medicine – Part 3 – Loredana Podolska-Kint and poetry on the subject of the brain

Loredana, is your project connected in any way to Renee’s project or is it a separate project?

In some ways the project is similar and in others it is completely different. There is a common point in that some of Renee’s poems are in my book and some of mine are in hers.

The project I have been working on since November 2022, is a community poetry anthology but the theme is the brain and neurological conditions. The community I have brought together is anyone from New Zealand and it isn’t limited to medical staff, but anyone who is impacted by the various elements of brain injury, nurses, doctors, carers, family members, speech therapists, support groups, the potential membership is substantial. So, a very large pool of people but a more focused topic.

The point of the project, where it is very similar to Renee’s, is that I wanted to be a gate opener for people to use poetry as a method to express themselves. I also wanted to celebrate the diversity of the participants, so I decided to include at least one poem from every participant who submitted to me, rather than cherry-picking the very best material.

The project also fundraises for The Centre for Brain Research, which is based in Auckland, New Zealand. It is New Zealand’s centre of excellence for all sorts of neurological research. I wanted to contribute to that centre as part of the project.

I always have a few motives for each project I undertake, so this one had the community element, the poetry motive and the fundraising component

How many people have you pulled together in this community?

I think there are about 80 poems and 55 poets.

And how did you pull everyone together?

We used a bit of social media, emails, my friends put up posters in hospitals where they were working. There was a news article and I sent it out through University mailing lists and we were shared by the Neurological Foundation which is a major group which does advocacy work.

I did sit down at one point and wrote up a list of all the conditions I could think of that might have a local or national support group, such as Alzheimer’s, Stroke, Huntingdon’s Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and I contacted them and as far as I know most of them sent the information out to their members.

This sounds like a huge amount of effort on your behalf?

Yes, it was and I do feel like I have spent a lot of time emailing people over the last couple of years.

I did make certain decisions though, so rather than send out group emails, I did try and answer everyone individually. It was often the case that the questions were very unique for each person anyway, so that made sense to do it that way. Some people wanted feedback, some just wanted to send in their poems.

There were other things which emerged that I didn’t expect. I had a Google Form with all of the fields I needed populated and when I was in University everyone knew how to populate a Google Form, but that was not necessarily the case with people who got in touch with me. There were some who were older, some had cognitive issues, and they just weren’t familiar with the Google Doc way of doing things.

I had to keep going back and forth with people about, for example, their bios or mailing them forms, or emailing them, or sending them a PDF. I really do feel that I have spent a huge part of my life emailing people, and I have spreadsheet after spreadsheet keeping tabs on everything. With this project often the admin is the biggest job of all.

But regardless of all of the work which goes in to the project, it has been a wonderful to be part of.