Jessica Greenbaum got in touch with us because decades after becoming an established poet and a teacher of poetry with three books and national recognition, she decided art can’t do everything and went back to school to become a social worker. Melding the fields of poetry and social work, she runs workshops for communities who have experienced trauma and she wanted to offer one to people who have considered themselves to have sustained moral injury. She has run such workshops for 9/11 First Responders, under the auspices of NYU Langone’s Medical Center; for people who have left Jewish Ultra-Orthodoxy, under the auspices of a service organization for that community called Footsteps, and for adult survivors of childhood brain tumors, under the auspices of the Child Brain Tumor Foundation. Inside academia she has taught at Barnard College and Vassar, and she also designs classes around Jewish text for two New York synagogues. She’s here to answer the question of why poetry people who feel they have sustained moral injury and how does it work?

Resources:

 

website: https://poemsincommunity.org/

 

bibliography

 

Burack-Weiss, Lawrence & Mijangos, editors, Narrative in Social Work Practice; the Power and Possibility of Story (Columbia University Press, 2017)

Coleman, Elizabeth J, editor, Here: Poems for the Planet (Copper Canyon, 2019)

Collins, Billy, editor, Poetry 180; A Turning Back to Poetry (Random House, 2003)

Dungy, Camille T, editor, Black Nature; Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (U. Georgia Press, 2009)

Herman, Judith, Trauma and Recovery (Basic, 1997)

Hirsch, Edward, A Poet’s Glossary (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014)

Levine, Peter, Waking the Tiger; Healing Trauma (North Atlantic, 1997)

Press, Eyal, Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America (FSG, 2021)

Stavans, Ilan, editor, All the Odes by Pablo Neruda (FSG, 2013)

van der Kolk, Bessel, The Body Keeps the Score; Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (Viking, 2014)

Plays at the end of each episode. 

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The Tubman Chaplain Network (TCN) is a network dedicated to matching qualified women chaplains with current and veteran servicewomen in need of spiritual counseling for moral injuries suffered during their military service. To learn more about the network and how to apply, go to: https://chaplainconsultants.com/tubman-chaplain-network/. Use the passcode: 34663965. 

Support the show (https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=FURKS5NYJVH9L)