The internationally-acclaimed poet, Micheal O’Siadhail (pronounced, Meehawl O’Sheel), joins us to talk about One Crimson Thread, a memoir of 150 sonnets he wrote about the last two years of his late wife’s life with Parkinson’s disease. O’Siadhail reads four sonnets from the book relating directly to clinical scenarios familiar to health care providers, caregivers, and family members, and to the trajectory Parkinson’s disease exhibits. We discuss the insights they offer that extend beyond those of conventional biomedical sources. O’Siadhail also tells us how the forms of poems contribute to their meaning, and offers thoughts on what drives fear of poetry among many, a fear that could needlessly result in missing the 150 opportunities in the book to better appreciate the array of issues confronting people with Parkinson’s disease than is otherwise possible.

Citation:
Micheal O’Siadhail. One Crimson Thread. Waco, Tx; Baylor University Press, 2015.

Links:
The sonnets read are reproduced and issues discussed during the podcast are summarized in Russell Teagarden’s companion blog piece in According to the Arts.
Micheal O’Siadhail’s website is here.
Baylor University Press details for One Crimson Thread are here.

The Clinic & The Person is a podcast developed by our editor Russell Teagarden to summon or quicken the attention of health care professionals, their educators, researchers and others to the interests and plights of people with specific health problems aided through knowledge and perspectives the humanities provide.

Feature photoo by Marco J Haenssgen