LISA D. HINZ, PhD, ATR-BC
I work as a psychologist and art therapist and in July 2020 I began facilitating an online “Imagery and Poetry” group at a senior center in the Napa Valley where I live. The group uses half an hour to create a collage in response to a suggested theme. Another half hour is spent writing in response to the collage and a final half hour to share our work and process thoughts and feelings. The rapid pace pushes group members to respond intuitively and a great deal of emotional material comes to the surface in poem and in image. Collage has been a wonderful medium for initiating poetry because unexpected, intuitively chosen image combinations spark metaphorical meaning. Although we have yet to meet as a group in person, participants have supported one another to express and process thoughts and feelings about this difficult time of uncertainty and social isolation. Some of the tools used in the group are: Rhythm and color, metaphor and rhyme, picture and humor, imagination and time. Members received from the group: Support to be daring, understanding through sharing, pride and joy, and a felt sense of caring. Participants have shared their work in two virtual art exhibitions and the responses to the deeply personal yet profoundly universal images and poems have been heartfelt.
Dreaming of Thriving after Covid
(Paper Collage, 5” x 9”)
I am laughing again, feeling the world spin, in and with and around me. I am rocking a neck scarf again, not using it to cover my chin, and mouth and nose. I am visiting friends; I walk right in with a hug or a handshake and less personal space. I am dancing again, going out on a limb spontaneously, and completely abandoning, social distancing. I am singing again, a chorus is not a sin and I praise the Earth and Ferris wheels and skies full of stars and the planet Mars and candy bars and fast cars and I am not at all lonely. Just dreaming of thriving after Covid.