Verbatim Poems with NHS Nurses

Across 2022 and 2023, writer Dr Kim Wiltshire (Edge Hill University) was awarded a British Academy Innovation Fellowship to work with award winning arts and health organisation Lime Arts, based at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) to explore embedding the arts further into NHS settings.

Part of her work involved creating what she is terming 'verbatim poems'. For this, Kim worked with renowned musician, composer and sound artist Caro C (@carocsound) and together they interviewed nurses, took the recordings and created 4-5 minute sound pieces.

This blog showcases both the written poems and the sound versions, which have been used across MFT for District Nurse recruitment, as well as being used in the 2023 Liverpool Being Human Festival Be My Guest, where the tracks were used by Fusion Dance to create immersive theatre experiences. You can also listen to the podcast (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0fy7702)

Please keep an eye for more posts as we work with more nurses and find new and creative ways to share their experiences.

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