denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance

Our co-worker, the poet Rebecca Guest, writes about the shared experience of making PATIENCE.

These lines occur because of company they are nothing without company.  These lines occur because as the tongue rolls a pen captures; conversations that are captured upon the page express the core of what is latent, meant.  The work is cut to bring the intensity of emotion to the forefront with the maximum expression.  These exchanges of experience are a point of contact which moves beyond people as statistics and beds - to value what it means to be human.

PATIENCE searches our existential struggle with those who are currently amid emotions of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

One difference to other poetic explorations of grief is that these people are not alone, the contributors have a scribe, to express their thoughts to.  The second difference is that participants of this project are speaking whilst in the midst of physical and mental life challenges.

The book's rawness and rich content through words, imagery, subtext and understanding is because of the unique relationship and setting these exchanges of experience take place to create PATIENCE.

Rebecca Guest

Rebecca Guest has been a long-standing collaborator with arthur+martha. She helped to set up Kindness our holocaust survivor project and has supported us during many hundreds of hours in hospital workshops. Rebecca led several sessions for PATIENCE, gathering poems and insights for the book. Her editing work on the poems helped to push their aesthetic, to let them stretch out.