poeMS: How Can We Use Poetry to Talk about Multiple Sclerosis and Other Chronic Health Conditions?

The ‘poeMS’ workshop offers the opportunity to read and discuss poetry written by someone living with multiple sclerosis (MS). Participants will write their own poems exploring and expressing the experiences of chronic illness. Maybe you have MS or another chronic illness? Maybe you care for, or about, someone who does? Or maybe you’re just interested in how poetry can be an exciting and creative way to talk about health? Either way, this workshop is for you. Previous poetry experience is welcome but not required.

‘poeMS’ will be facilitated by Dr Georgi Gill. Georgi is a poet whose collection Limbo was shortlisted for Scotland’s National Book Awards’ ‘Best First Book of the Year 2022’. She is an Affiliated Fellow at the Centre for Music, Text and Cultures in Leeds. She is also a 2025-26 Public Engagement Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, where she has built on the findings generated by her PhD research in the project, Poems on my Mind, which explores how poetry can support people living with multiple sclerosis and other degenerative neurological conditions. Georgi was diagnosed with MS in 2003.

Tea and coffee refreshments will be available.