For our third event of the second season, we had a stimulating and moving conversation with Prof Margarita Saona, Professor of Hispanic and Italian Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. We spoke with Margarita about her experience as a literary scholar trying to find her way through the labyrinth of the health humanities after she started examining her own writing from a heart transplant patient’s perspective. Margarita also read poems from her collection Corazon de hojalata/Tin Heart, which framed our conversation about poetry, literature and health.

Here are some of our key takeaway messages from the conversation and some good reasons why you should listen to the podcast to find out more about Margarita’s fascinating work.

The label “therapy”

Margarita questioned the usefulness of the concept “therapy” to characterise her creative writing from a heart transplant patient’s perspective. She explained she has resisted this label in the past, because it introduces certain expectations that make the act of “just writing” sound less important. Instead, Margarita introduced a wonderful metaphor to frame why writing – just writing – is so important to her, i.e. because it offers an anchor for the self. We then explored whether this metaphor applies to all kinds of writing, including the writing we do in our research about health.

Why personal experience is not unscientific

There’s something quite provocative about framing research as an anchor for the self. Isn’t objective research supposed to be self-less? Isn’t the ideal researcher really just a “brain on a stick” – a thinker divorced from subjective experience? Margarita’s very practice as a writer and researcher throws this myth of objective research into question. Case in point, we were particularly moved by the many responses from people in the audience during our conversation, who resonated with the experiences that Margarita so openly shared.

The power of poetry

Margarita shared her experiences of illness through her poetry. We had the privilege of listening to Margarita reciting from her collection Corazon de hojalata/Tin Heart. This allowed us to recreate in our own minds, to some degree, what it may or may not feel like, or begin to understand the experience of illness from a different perspective. This was truly a special moment in our conversation series – and one we certainly can’t do justice to in this summary.

Even more reason to tune into to the podcast!

Dieter and Ian