We are happy to announce that our newest anthology, Poetry for the Dementia Journey, will publish in paperback and ebook on June 1st.
Here you will find a variety of voices writing from different stages of caregiving: pre-diagnosis, after the diagnosis, years of care, end of life, and beyond. You will encounter voices from the many different caregiving situations: caring for a spouse or partner, a mother, father, grandparent, or sibling, and you will experience the pain, fear, and joy that accompanies a dementia diagnosis, as well as the love and the loss.
An Excerpt
You Dance, by Sue Fagalde Lick
“To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be.”
Heidi Priebe
To love someone as they are at that moment,
to treasure the look in their eyes when they see you
and you see them,
charges you like electricity.
It lights you up.
You don’t walk anymore;
you dance.
Long-term is a blessing to be sought,
10, 20, 30 years, a golden anniversary.
Balding, sagging in our worn skin,
losing parts, accumulating scars.
You see the lights flickering.
Now you walk with a cane,
but when the music plays,
you dance.
A thousand funerals, it feels some days,
so many might-have-beens too late,
but despite their thickening cataracts,
they see you, they know you,
you see them back.
The lights are dim but lit.
You hold on not to fall.
You dance.
The people they used to be have died,
melted into the snow of elderhood
to rise up someone new, someone
who sees but doesn’t know.
The power has gone out.
Each day’s another funeral,
but you hold them anyway;
you dance.
The ebook is now available for pre-order on Amazon.
Coming soon to online retailers everywhere.
Please join us for a poetry reading with some of the poets who have contributed
on Monday, June 3rd at 4 pm EST.
