A Poetic Language of Ageing - (Bloomsbury Studies in the Humanities, Ageing and Later Life) by Olga V Lehmann & Oddgeir Synnes (Paperback)

About the Book

"Exploring the potential of poetry and poetic language as a means of conveying perspectives on ageing and later life, this book examines questions such as 'how can we understand ageing and later life?' and 'how can we capture the ambiguities and complexities that the experiences of growing old in time and place entail?' As poetic language illuminates, transfigures and enchants our being in the world, it also offers insights into the existential questions that are amplified as we age, including the vulnerabilities and losses that humble us and connect us. Literary gerontology and narrative gerontology have highlighted the importance of linguistic representations of ageing. While the former has been concerned primarily with the analysis of published literary works, the latter has foregrounded the individual and collective meaning making through narrative resources in old age. There has, however, been less interest in how poetic language, both as a genre and as a practice, can illuminate ageing. This volume suggests a path towards the poetics of ageing by means of presenting analyses of published poetry on ageing written by poets from William Shakespeare to Wallace Stevens; the use of reading and writing poetry among ordinary people in old age; and the poetic nuances that emerge from other literary practices and contexts in relation to ageing - including personal poetic reflections from many of the contributing authors. The volume brings together international scholars from disciplinary backgrounds as diverse as cultural psychology, literary studies, theology, sociology, narrative medicine, cultural gerontology and narrative gerontology, and will deploy a variety of empirical and critical methodologies to explore how poetry and poetic language may challenge dominant discourses and illuminate alternative understandings of ageing"--

Book Synopsis

Exploring the potential of poetry and poetic language as a means of conveying perspectives on later life, this book examines questions such as 'how can we understand ageing and later life?' and 'how can we capture the ambiguities and complexities that the experiences of growing old in time and place entail?' As poetic language illuminates, transfigures and enchants our being in the world, it also offers insights into the existential questions that are amplified as we age, including the vulnerabilities and losses that humble us and connect us.

This volume suggests a path towards the poetics of ageing by means of presenting analyses of published poetry on ageing ranging from William Shakespeare to George Oppen; the use of reading and writing poetry among lay people in old age, including persons living with dementia; and the poetic nuances that emerge from other literary practices and contexts in relation to ageing - counting personal poetic reflections from many of the contributing authors.

Review Quotes

A Poetic Language of Ageing is a text that evidences unequivocally that literary gerontology as a discipline has come of age...it retains at heart the impulse that has fuelled most of the branches of gerontological research: a recognition that older age be seen as more than a period of decline or deterioration, and an insistence that ageing individuals be given the opportunity to have their value recognised.
Journal of Literary Studies

About the Author

Oddgeir Synnes is Professor of Health Humanities at the Centre for Diaconia and Professional Practice, VID Specialized University, Oslo, Norway. Synnes has a master's degree in Nordic literature and a PhD in illness narratives and works with applying perspectives from the humanities to healthcare, both through practical projects and in research. His key areas of interest include cultural and narrative gerontology, creative writing (e.g., in cancer care, palliative care, and dementia care), literary representations of illness, and narrative inquiry. His most recent book is Ways of Home Making in Care for Later Life (2020), co-edited with Bernike Pasveer and Ingunn Moser.

Olga V. Lehmann, PhD, is a researcher, lecturer, and mental health activist. She is an associate professor in Psychology at the University of Stavanger and she has a private clinical practice. Her main areas of interest involve feelings and emotions, silence, communication, humanistic-existential psychology, grief therapeutic writing, grief and bereavement, poetic instants, and qualitative methods. She has published, among others, Poetry and Imagined Worlds (2017) and Deep Experiencing: Dialogues Within the Self (2017).