The Monthly interviews Renee Liang and Loredana Podolska-Kint regarding poetry with people working in the field of medicine? – Part 4 – Completing the projects

Where to now?

Renee Liang

I’m not sure. I did meet up with one of the participants who suggested that we needed to keep the momentum going. She felt that writing poetry was an extremely valuable experience for her and others. (Her husband happens to be the editor of a very long running and respected poetry journal here in Aotearoa so she was speaking with some weight!) We acknowledged that I work on a lot of projects and I have to make sure that I have the energy for them all. If it was suggested that I should run another project at the next conference in two years, I would probably agree to that.

Every time I put in all this effort and it’s a race to the finish line, I do get a massive level of enjoyment just watching people experience the joy to seeing their words reach others. I love the idea that I have been part of setting them off on a journey, hopefully to keep writing and maybe published again.

I do want to keep giving people opportunities to write and publish poetry and this is the second community chapbook I’ve done this year so – watch this space!

Loredana Podolska-Kint

I am close to the point where the anthology is getting near completion. It is close to being finished regarding layout and formatting, it is being proof read, double checked, and pulled together. There is a cover being designed.

It will be launched in November and that will take place on the 15th anniversary of The Centre for Brain Research and it quite an honour to have them include the anthology as part of their existing celebrations. Every poet will get a complimentary copy of the book and they can get that by coming to the launch or I will mail it to them.

I already have an idea for Volume 2 and Volume 3. I would like to widen the approach, open it up internationally. I would like to include more Māori people in the project as I wasn’t able to connect with the people I needed to contact during this project.

Perhaps it would be possible to look at other illnesses. I actually recall that Endometriosis was a topic that someone recently produced  a “medical arts compilation book” a year or two ago, so it may be possible that someone else could run with a similar format to this project.

So, there will definitely be more projects once this one is completed.