Whenever I meet someone new who happens to be a nurse—in both clinical and social settings—I wait for the right moment to mention my work on AJN‘s Reflections column.
Rattle Issue #28, Winter 2007
At social functions, when someone asks me what I do for a living, I answer that I'm a nurse, and that I also write poetry. As a rule, the conversation then turns down the path I've taken as poet. Few people ask about the nursing (unless of course they happen to be nurses too). Few are curious about the connection between nursing and poetry.
When I was a nursing student, back in the late '60s, Principles and Practices of Nursing was held in a dim classroom on the first floor of our nurses' residence. There the freshman students would sit in the old, theater-style tiers, intent on the instructions of Sister Thecla.
Madeleine has 3 stories in
Learning to Heal: Reflections on
Nursing School in Poetry and Prose
October 2018, Kent University Press