Eliette Markhbein
New York, New York, USA
Poet and artist’s statement: I started to write poetry a year after a traumatic brain injury and damage to my spine, the result of being struck by a speeding car. It stemmed from the necessity to escape pain and mental chaos as well as the physical and emotional seclusion it brought along. Writing allowed me minutes of stillness and peace and helped me find a way through and out of despair.
Though complementary, the poems and the drawings originate from different perspectives, emphasize other aspects of the issues at hand and fulfill separate quests. For example, the poem “Braced-up” addresses issues of self concept and acceptance, while the illustration was drawn live as a series of sketches exploring feminity and searching for my own after the accident.
The poems presented are part of a larger collection called A Journal of Rehabilitation, which illustrates universal aspects of disability and rehabilitation, focusing on 3 periods: succumbing, hoping, and coping.
“Braced up,” “Eternal Rhythms,” and “I So Miss Us” are from the succumbing period, which articulates emotional distress, pain, depression and unbearable loneliness. “Travel” is from the coping period and speaks of group identification.
By making issues “public,” writing creates for me a safe distance from which to explore and assess them and ultimately gain control over them. This once removed position allows me to engage a dialogue within myself and with others that generates clarity, compassion, humanity and growth.
I So Miss UsWhere have the playfulness Your time is You are lost |
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Eternal RhythmsInjuries clawing at freedom I move in the backdrop of life filled with unspent tears arms heavy with renunciation yet fighting to remain alive. Unable to bear the pain I struggle to find the strength, the light to break through the tourniquet to let life flow. Craving eternal rhythms the wind on my belly the ocean’s pull on the sole of my feet I dream the impossible dream: to taste the unity of space, body and mind to know no pain to live minutes of eternity to dance the beat of the universe. |
ELIETTE MARKHBEIN is the founder of the Therapeutic Arts Program, which serves the brain injury and spinal cord injury population in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. The program is the recipient of the 2010 “Best Practice Award” from the Society for the Arts in Healthcare. Eliette is formally trained in Studio Arts, as well as Neuro Art Therapy and Rehabilitation Psychology. To read A Journal of Rehabilitation in its entirety, please click on the following link:http://medhum.med.nyu.edu/blog/?p=106.
Highlighted in Frontispiece Fall 2010 – Volume 2, Issue 3
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