Wonderful review of Eloquent Body in Slipnet by Liesl Jobson

http://slipnet.co.za/view/reviews/bearing-witness-to-the-truth-of-our-own-lives/

Article for Body Language, Mail & Guardian 16th Nov 2012

Ordinary Madness

Recently an overweight friend announced proudly: ‘I lost two kilogrammes this week, so I celebrated by going to the deli and eating a big piece of chocolate cake.’

The other day I was called to see a patient who was having palpitations and difficulty breathing. Her symptoms were caused by a large intake of caffeine, nicotine and the stress of building renovations. I advised her to reduce drinking coffee and smoking, and to look at how she can manage her situation better. ‘Oh I can’t give up coffee and cigarettes now,’ she objected. ‘I am far too stressed for that.’

These are wonderful examples of ordinary madness. Both these women recognised the irony, and we had a good laugh.

When I started out as a doctor, I thought well-presented arguments would change people’s minds. Here are the facts, I would declare, conjuring up ghastly images of blackened, stiff lungs, and scarred, hardened livers. I would draw graphs, and pull out charts. My patients’ eyes would glaze; they would wait impatiently for me to finish so they could hurry off to the pub to have a double whiskey and a smoke. I could see them laughing with their buddies about the ridiculous GP while hacking up pieces of lung.

My training is in evidence-based medicine - prescribing treatments that have been proven to work. Yet if my patients acted on what researchers know is good for health, I might well be out of a job. Self-inflicted conditions are the doctor’s bread-and-butter.

I confess that I, too, exhibit some worrying trends. I bite my nails. I would rather no-one knows that I tear off bits of my own body with my teeth while reading. Not again, I think. What happened? This has to stop. I work with the public. I put my hands on their bodies, and they look down and see: a self-mutilator. My patients will know I am as mad as they are.

I have painted my nails. I have invested in gloves which remain at the bottom of my sock drawer. I sit on my hands while reading. I have a nail file next to my computer to deal with those irritating little sticky-out bits that tempt me to the point of my undoing. I reassure myself that - unlike eating sugar when you are diabetic – nail-biting is not a life-threatening condition.

In my defense, I never hurt myself. Almost never. I have perfected the art of nibbling down to the verge of hurt.

Rationally, like quitting smoking or resisting the cream cake, I could just stop. Stop it. STOP it. But the groove is so deep, so well-worn, so . . . potentially comforting. If logic is frequently, and surprisingly, unhelpful, instead of trying to get rid of our non-rational ways, we could turn and face them. Bravely, with curiosity.

For thousands of years, humans have understood why we are here and what to do about it by telling stories. Thunder was an angry god. The moon was Mantis’s shoe. Now that science gives us new ways of looking at thunder and the moon, many have ceased to take stories seriously.

Yet we resist being fully known through the tape measure and the set square. We are poetic as well as scientific beings. We respond to holy stones, lotus flowers and sacrifice. These images stimulate the poetic foundation of the mind – which merges and connects.

Mythological narratives inform our decisions. Psychologists and artists know this; their work is to reveal these underlying patterns and motifs.

The bite at my fingertips is also in my back. I have the jaws of a bull mastiff locked into my right thoracic back muscles. I have tried many therapies, but it is determined to hang on forever.

My backache is part of an autoimmune condition. There are scientific ways to describe my intransigent illness. Doctors usually stop at that. Yet the dog also resides there. This is the poetry of the body – the subjective experience. It is another way of understanding, and it is as valuable as medication.

My back talks to me in the only way it can, using symbol / symptoms, making me aware of an embedded story. Since investigating the biting motif through imagination and art, I am not as tensed against the ferocious canine. When I notice the grip, I become aware of a need to get tough, more protective.

The body does not speak English, so it can be difficult to work out what these crazy symptom-poems are saying. I wait, with curiosity, for the ordinary madness of my story to unfold. And sometimes I risk appearing really deranged by suggesting this approach to my intransigent patients. 

Review of Eloquent Body for the SA Medical Journal

by Prof Peter Folb 

There is a creative artist within every person and everyone has something unique to explore.   Few realise and actualise it; many have no time or interest, or are overcome with the apprehension of self-revelation.   It may be that doctors and scientists have a special opportunity or talent for creative art, be it music, poetry, writing or the fine arts, given their privileged insights into the human condition and the scientific method.   One thinks here of Chekhov, Marie Curie, Borodin, Frida Kahlo, William Carlos Williams, AJ Cronin, Conan Doyle, Somerset Maugham, Alexander Doblin, Keats, and Kathe Kollwitz.   Not uncommonly, patients, too, seek refuge in the creative arts.

In “Eloquent Body” Dawn Garisch examines her own creativity in a frank and carefully researched semi-autobiographical new book.   She is medical practitioner, novelist, poet, walker, mother and patient herself.   She sees herself as a doctor who writes, wanting to become a writer who doctors. Her conflict is not resolved.   She is an accomplished writer and her life is enriched by doctoring.   She draws widely on her experience with patients – their fortitude, frailties, obstinacy and quirks.   She is influenced by Jung.   It is as a doctor that she explores, confronts and embraces issues of truth, fear, doubt, service and trust in the creative process.   She believes in the innate self-healing capacity of the body and in the part that the arts can play in achieving that.   She has discovered that it is important to relinquish the illusion of control.   She maintains that in completing her book the two streams of her life converge.   One is not convinced that she has at last found repose, and quite possibly that is a good thing – for her, for us her readers and, not least, for her patients.

Creative art is therapeutic, if not necessarily curative, for patient and for health practitioner alike.   Dawn Garisch knows.   It’s there, clearly, in her book and she has written it modestly and with courage.

"Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation." ~ Graham Greene

Dance with Suitcase

Work in progress - A memoir that rests on movement

An aspect of writing that interests me is how to make form and content work together to enhance the piece. When I started this memoir, I intuitively decided against too formal a structure in which to place the narrative. I wished to honour an analogy between a particular approach to writing and to dance. In this second half of life I am more attracted to free movement than in learning formal steps.

The thrust of the book is towards developing an attitude of trusting body signals and symptoms, and trusting error, as means to invite untutored unconscious material to spill over into awareness. It assumes that non-rational physical and artistic processes have immense value, both in anchoring ourselves and in finding a way forward.

Yet the unconscious is hard to follow, difficult to grasp, as we know from our dreams. I sometimes think of the flow of life as an incomprehensible wash over which we must superimpose a grid or raft – something to hold onto to help us make sense of our lives and the world, to prevent us from drowning.

If we hold on too hard, we can mistake the grid for reality itself and we become rigid, unable to sense the enigmatic flux. But without the grid, we flounder and feel lost.

The art, I think, is to develop an ability to both stable oneself using an approximate raft, and a the same time, to be able to see through the mesh – of words, guidelines, rules, interpretations, models, analysis, structure – so as not to lose sight of the immensity of the mystery out of which we exist and live.

In dance - in movement of any kind - we have schools and forms, cultural practices and rituals, taboos and constraints. Underneath this, and within us all, is the flux and wash of life in all its patterns and guises.

I wish for this memoir – run through as it is by the origins and development of my own movement practice – to pay homage to it all.

Published in The Cape Times on Aug 15th 2012

Revolutionary New Programme Brings Art And Medicine Together

Recently I found myself in a seminar room in the old Groote Schuur Hospital – the establishment where I trained to be a doctor. I was invited there to give one of a series of talks to six arts students from the University of New Mexico and six medical students from UCT.  They constitute a pioneer group of an Art-In-Medicine (AIM) initiative.

The last time I stood on that spot, it was the trauma unit on the black side. The place was crammed with bloody patients. Two of them come to mind: an elderly man in his Sunday best, waiting in patient disbelief with a large gash on his head, his clothes soaked with blood. A female farm worker, referred from upcountry where her leg had been dragged and crushed in some vehicle accident a few days before. Her bones had not broken, but the local doctor had managed the injury so badly that she had a serious infection. There were still pieces of grass and small pebbles stuck in the wounds.

The ER been moved to the new hospital. The space I stood in is now a common room with a flip chart and place for making tea. Over a cuppa, I asked Professor Steve Reid, who is developing AIM, how the UCT students were selected for the course. He explained that the 200 second year students have a month in which they can choose one of many options from the medical to the artistic. AIM was hugely oversubscribed. A computer made the selection, then he asked each student why they had chosen this field.

Their replies echo a familiar refrain, one I have heard frequently from colleagues. These students were afraid that a career in medicine would require them to sacrifice their love of and engagement with one of the arts. They are musicians, dancers, poets, painters. They wanted to know how they might keep that nourishing flame alive as they succumbed to the demands of the training and work as doctors; also how to use their creative energies to assist patients.

Associate Professor Patrice Repar, the Director of an established AIM department at the University of New Mexico, and who brought the arts students out for the collaboration, told me a little about what she and her colleagues do. There are three prongs to her work: helping medical students and health care professionals to integrate their artistic selves with their medical practice, using art to assist patients, families, and medical staff cope with stress and trauma, and promoting art in rural community clinics as a way to foster health and wellness.  Hospital staff can participate in a meditation group, and are offered massage, artistic activities, and deep relaxation treatments during hospital hours. Staff musicians also collaborate for an on-going concert series.

I was so excited to discover that this revolution is already starting to take place in my own city, I was the first to arrive in the seminar room. As I stood up to give my talk, I half expected one of the professors who taught me over thirty years ago to storm in, demanding that we stop this nonsense immediately, that Groote Schuur is a place of serious scientific study, and flaky nonsense does not belong in the hallowed halls of learning.

But just imagine a hospital where a musician is called to play singing bowls beside your deathbed. Imagine knowing that your specialist is rehearsing for a concert, and one of the performances will be for patients, or having a general practitioner who prescribes journaling, singing or clay work to help decrease your levels of stress and gain insight into your difficulties. Imagine hospital staff painting murals to make the new Groote Schuur building a less forbidding place, one that your body might delight in. Imagine nurses, physiotherapists and doctors singing acapella to patients at the beginning of a ward round.

Last year a group of medical students played their instruments in the Groote Schuur hospital corridor as an experiment. A security guard tried to stop them, saying it was against the rules. When the students politely asked which rule they were infringing, all he managed to insist on was that we are free, but we are not free.

It is counter-intuitive for anyone, whether they inhabit the role of doctor or patient, or any other for that matter – teachers, lawyers, politicians, street sweepers – to cut off their creative limbs. Creativity is allied to eros, to libido, to the life force itself. Why would we want to exclude the life force from the healing of our bodies, our politics, our education systems?

There is an ever-widening crack in the way we have been brought up to think of as the normal and effective way of doing things. The Art-in-Medicine initiative is one of the new shoots that will flourish in the gap.

NEW PRINT RUN IS OUT

I am pleased to report - back to the normal price. Eloquent Body is also available as electronic downloads.

BAD TIMING

Just as Eloquent Body gets a big thumbs up from both Oprah and Shape Magazines, the first edition sold out! A delay with the next print run means the book is currently advertised at a huge price online (as it reverts to print on demand). I am assured that it will sell at the normal price shortly.... Thank you for all the support!

 HOW WELL DO WE SEE?

Two investigations into problems with vision, both recommended:
Oliver Sacks' The Mind's Eye and Teju Cole's piece
http://www.granta.com/New-Writing/Blind-Spot

So. This is how it is.

Publishers in SA go a little way towards helping their authors market their work, but mostly it is up to us and word of mouth. So please bear with me, I am going to mouth away for a while.

Eloquent Body is the result of over 5 years work. It felt like my life work; I felt propelled to garner everything that had helped me through crises in art, psychology and medicine, and to investigate these fields further. I wrote it to assist my workshop participants and my patients and myself. We all have areas where we do not act in our own best interests, and we need to get curious about that. Methinks.

The response so far has been overwhelmingly positive. This is hugely gratifying, as I did what I had to do, wrestled it down onto the page, and was frequently worried that I was not doing my subject matter justice. Eventually I just had to walk away, and hope that it was good enough.

It turns out that Eloquent Body is a word-of-mouth book; lucky thing, as it has only had two (good) reviews since the launch. I have had a number of people ordering several copies to send to their friends and relatives. One young man asked me to write an inscription to his family member: Dear X, Let go. Get a life. I declined politely.

The more books go out into the world, the more people are likely to talk about it, the more people will buy it. This is not (just) about my retirement plan (heh heh), this is about getting interesting, helpful and collated ideas out into the world.

So, if you liked the book, for the month of August 2012, I am offering copies at R140 each if you fetch them from Kalk Bay or Tokai. If you are wondering about what to give your mother / uncle / friend / lover as a present, please consider Eloquent Body at this much reduced price. You will be gifting me too. You can place orders at dawn.garisch@gmail.com.

Sjoe. Phew. How do I look with my marketing hat on?

    A WORKSHOP ON WRITING MEMOIR

Writing is a way of getting to know who you are, what you are feeling and how you relate to people and the planet. Writing memoir focuses this project on the themes or motifs in one’s own life. We each have a life motif that is more or less unconscious. Yet a distinctive and evolving pattern binds our journey from birth to death into a whole coherent piece.

Imagination is an extraordinary tool. In this workshop we will reclaim imagination as a means to release ourselves into awe and creativity, connectedness and purpose, awareness and pleasure. Through becoming conscious of and engaging with the images that shape our time on earth, we will discover ways to live more creatively, as well as finding refreshing approaches to put our personal stories down on the page.

Beginner writers are welcome.

    Venue:             The Forge, Windsor Rd, Kalk Bay      

     Fee:                 R1400
     Dates:              Thursday 13^th to Sunday 16^th September 2012          
     Times :            9am to 2pm daily

     To book:              dawn.garisch@gmail.com

      A deposit of R400 secures your place.

References:

 “I found Dawn Garisch’s memoir-writing course extremely useful and helpful: she provided a structure that held all of us would-be memoirists firmly to our task, while at the same time helping us to get in touch with our senses, our fears, our dreams, our stories. The image that comes to mind is of holding tight to the golden thread that will allow us to go down to the depths and emerge again, unscathed though not unchanged. The sense of community and support that is born of twenty-odd people meeting daily for four days to address themselves to such a deeply individual task was also one of the unexpected pleasures of the experience. I would heartily recommend this course.”

- Athalie Crawford

 “This course helped me to break through the block created by my own diffidence and reluctance, enabling me to find and become confident in the thread I must pursue in order to be true to myself. Dawn created an atmosphere of trust in which the participants felt free to go as far as they wished on this journey into memory and onto the page. The structure of the course was well thought out and effective, both day by day and as a whole. An unusual, highly effective and striking aspect of Dawn’s facilitative work is her insistence that writing, memory and creativity are not simply to be found in the ‘head’, but are lodged in and distributed through the ‘memory’ to be discovered in the body itself. The course was enlightening, stimulating, moving and fun.”

- John Cartwright

"Dawn's memoir writing workshop was a finely crafted and facilitated process that encouraged and enabled us to write. My creativity was stimulated by her use of poetry and prose, her listening and sensing exercises, her considerable knowledge and experience of the act of writing, and her easy manner when it came to holding and guiding the group and the process. In short: an excellent and productive experience!"

- Judy Bekker

“The evaluations from your students indicate that many felt they benefitted greatly from your facilitation and encouragement to draw on their own inner resources to spark their writing, and that through this they gained knowledge about themselves and insights that were highly enriching to the writing process. They were given some methodology and tools and felt supported and enabled to be self-reliant in their work. Although this made others used to a more didactic approach insecure at first, they adapted to it and acknowledged its value.”

                                                                                               - Feedback from UCT Summer School 2012

Short Biography

Dawn Garisch has had five novels and a collection of poetry published, a short play and short film produced, and has written for television, magazines and newspapers. Three of her novels have been published in the UK. In 2010 Trespass was short-listed for the Commonwealth prize in Africa, and in 2011 her poem Miracle won the EU Sol Plaatjie Poetry Award. A non-fiction work Eloquent Body was published by Modjaji in March. She runs workshops on writing and creative method, is a practising medical doctor and lives in Cape Town.

"If we are interested in the truth about life, we need to question whether it is symptom-free."

in ‘Eloquent Body’ (Modjadji Books, 2012), available at 
http://www.kalahari.com/books/Eloquent-body/632/44695330.aspx

Podcast interview on Eloquent Body

Dawn Garisch talking about Eloquent Body on Bruce Dennill's radio programme The Spotlight: http://bruced.podomatic.com/player/web/2012-06-04T01_53_52-07_00

Win a copy of Eloquent Body

If you listen to my interview on Radio Helderberg 93.6fm around 10am on Tuesday 29th May, then phone in the correct answer to the question Patricia poses, you could win a copy of Eloquent Body. Or you could just buy it.....

Op ed piece in Cape Times today

Of Poetry and Measurement, an article I wrote that points to the concerns of my non-fiction work Eloquent Body will appear in the paper today.

On tension and paying attention

Just finished reading Teach Us to Sit Still by Tim Parks, reporting back from the land of illness. He had incapacitating chronic pelvic pain that no-one could treat. He discovered it was generated by tension caused by his own bad habits, and learnt to manage this through meditation. Highly recommended.

Franschoek Literary Festival 11th - 13th May 2012

In May I am on three panels at the Franschoek Literary festival. On one I will be discussing the scientific and poetic concerns in my recent non-fiction book 'Eloquent Body' (2012), on another Bev Rycroft and I will be egging each other on about the poetic process in our collections, 'Difficult Gifts' (2011).  On the last panel, three teachers of creative writing will be in conversation about their method and experiences. I am looking forward to it. Booking is open online.

16h00-17h00 FRIDAY 11 MAY

Prizewinning poems (Screening Room)

Poets Dawn Garisch (Difficult Gifts) and Beverly Rycroft (missing), winner and runner-up in last year’s EU Sol Plaatje competition, read and discuss their winning poems.

13h00-14h00 SATURDAY 12 MAY

Singing the body electric (Council Chamber)

Carmel Rickard talks body language with Dawn Garisch (The Eloquent Body) and Marguerite Osler (The Art of Walking) who writes about conscious walking.

16h00-17h00 SATURDAY 12 MAY
Walking the talk (Library)
Finuala Dowling discusses inspiration and practicalities with fellow creative-writing teachers Dawn Garisch and Dianne Stewart.

http://www.flf.co.za/

Interview on Otherwise 13h10 ish Monday 23rd April

I am lucky enough to have a slot on Otherwise, Nancy Richards' radio show on SAFM. She will interview me about my non-fiction work, Eloquent Body, tomorrow just after 13h00.

Working with your Life Stories

Working with your Life Stories A workshop on writing memoir facilitated by Dawn Garisch ‘here I am once again, disguised as myself’ - from 'About Death and Other Things', poem by Aleksandar Ristovic

Writing is a way of getting to know who you are, what you are feeling and how you relate to people and the planet. Writing memoir focuses this project on the themes or motifs in one’s own life. We each have a life motif that is more or less unconscious. Yet a distinctive and evolving pattern binds our journey from birth to death into a whole coherent piece.

Imagination is an extraordinary tool. In this workshop we will reclaim imagination as a means to release ourselves into awe and creativity, connectedness and purpose, awareness and pleasure. Through becoming conscious of and engaging with the images that shape our time on earth, we will discover ways to live more creatively, as well as finding refreshing ways of putting our personal stories down on the page.

Beginner writers are welcome.

Venue: The Forge, Windsor Rd, Kalk Bay
Fee: R1400
Dates: Mon 21st – Fri 25th May 2012
Times : 9am to 1pm daily

To bring: 

• Unlined, ring-bound A4 notebook and pen 
• A cushion and a blanket or rug. 
• Two objects from the period of your life that you want to write about - one that represents something you loved about it, and one that represents something you disliked about that time. 

To book:  

dawn.garisch@gmail.com

A deposit of R400 secures your place.


References:

“I found Dawn Garisch’s memoir-writing course extremely useful and helpful: she provided a structure that held all of us would-be memoirists firmly to our task, while at the same time helping us to get in touch with our senses, our fears, our dreams, our stories. The image that comes to mind is of holding tight to the golden thread that will allow us to go down to the depths and emerge again, unscathed though not unchanged. The sense of community and support that is born of twenty-odd people meeting daily for four days to address themselves to such a deeply individual task was also one of the unexpected pleasures of the experience. I would heartily recommend this course.”

- Athalie Crawford

“This course helped me to break through the block created by my own diffidence and reluctance, enabling me to find and become confident in the thread I must pursue in order to be true to myself. Dawn created an atmosphere of trust in which the participants felt free to go as far as they wished on this journey into memory and onto the page. The structure of the course was well thought out and effective, both day by day and as a whole. An unusual, highly effective and striking aspect of Dawn’s facilitative work is her insistence that writing, memory and creativity are not simply to be found in the ‘head’, but are lodged in and distributed through the ‘memory’ to be discovered in the body itself. The course was enlightening, stimulating, moving and fun.”

- John Cartwright

"Dawn's memoir writing workshop was a finely crafted and facilitated process that encouraged and enabled us to write. My creativity was stimulated by her use of poetry and prose, her listening and sensing exercises, her considerable knowledge and experience of the act of writing, and her easy manner when it came to holding and guiding the group and the process. In short: an excellent and productive experience!"

- Judy Bekker

“The evaluations from your students indicate that many felt they benefitted greatly from your facilitation and encouragement to draw on their own inner resources to spark their writing, and that through this they gained knowledge about themselves and insights that were highly enriching to the writing process. They were given some methodology and tools and felt supported and enabled to be self-reliant in their work. Although this made others used to a more didactic approach insecure at first, they adapted to it and acknowledged its value.”

- Feedback from UCT Summer School 2012

Short Biography

Dawn Garisch has had five novels and a collection of poetry published, a short play and short film produced, and has written for television, magazines and newspapers. Three of her novels have been published in the UK. In 2010 Trespass was short-listed for the Commonwealth prize in Africa, and in 2011 her poem Miracle won the EU Sol Plaatjie Poetry Award. A non-fiction work Eloquent Body will be published by Modjaji in March. She runs workshops on writing and creative method, is a practising medical doctor and lives in Cape Town.

Dawn Garisch Wins the 2011 Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Award

Dawn Garisch won the inaugural Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Award for “Miracle”, a poem about infidelity.  This was announced at the Poetry Africa International Festival 2011.  The announcement co-incided with the launch of the Sol Plaatje European Union Anthology 2011, a collection of the poems submitted for the competition.

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