A Message from Sharen I. Duke

“What does poetry have to do with HIV prevention and care?”

A decade ago, we launched ASC’s Creative Writing Workshop with the conviction that creative expression would open a path to social connection and healing. What emerged was amazing—fiercely honest, courageous poetry about living with HIV without being solely defined by it. The group became a place of solace and safety. The poets spoke passionately about painful struggles with addiction and relationships, homophobia, stigma, illness, and loss. They shared their experiences in brutally frank and profoundly openhearted ways that magically found hope in hardship.

ASC’s challenge was to convince the federal government to fund a “poetry program”—even one that integrated art, healing, and creative expression. With treatment advances, and people with HIV/AIDS living longer, healthier lives, we understood that people living with HIV/AIDS are more than their diagnosis, more than their addiction, and more than their sexuality, gender, race, or religion.

So we called the Creative Writing Workshop a “support group” for long-term survivors of HIV and ran the group in that spirit.

After several years, with support from the Zwickler Family Memorial Trust, ASC established a Poetry Leadership Program that cultivated the group facilitation and leadership skills of long-term workshop participants, so that they could lead groups when the workshop facilitator, Gerry Gomez Pearlberg, was away. This process significantly developed their skills and self-confidence, reinforcing their sustained recovery and positive health choices.

Over the past ten years we’ve lost many poets, many friends. Their courage and creativity continue to inspire us, and we are thankful for the legacy of their writing and their lives.

With this special issue of Situations, we celebrate all the poets, past and present, who have joined together to build a powerful and lasting community where creative expression really has become a path to healing and well-being.

Sharen I. Duke Executive Director/CEO AIDS Service Center NYC