An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Georgi Gill (Public Engagement Fellow, 2025-26)
poeMS: the possibilities of poetry writing by people living with multiple sclerosis (MS) as a tool to explore and communicate their health experiences.
How we do we express our experiences of chronic illness to others? Not just the medical symptoms that we tell a doctor, but the cracks in our identity that a long term, degenerative illness can cause. In the Poetry and Multiple Sclerosis Study, poet and researcher, Georgi Gill, worked with nine participants to investigate whether writing poetry may help us to understand and describe ourselves and our medical condition better.
In this presentation, Georgi will provide an overview of the original research methods before setting out her current IASH public engagement work which expands the project reach and legacy by engaging with medics, neurology charities and literature communities. She will introduce the poetry anthology and toolkit which derive from the research data and methodology and share sample poems from poeMS: an anthology by people living with multiple sclerosis. As part of a discussion of the research findings, Georgi will invite seminar attendees to offer their responses to the poems.
Meeting ID: 384 971 962 716 1
Passcode: nV6Rg79e