6:30 PM

Kinsella Auditorium

Hosted by the Gerontology Department, this year’s Dr. T. LeRoy Creamer Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Dr. Oddgeir Synnes, Associate Professor at VID Specialized University, Oslo, Norway. The lecture, ‘A tune beyond us, yet ourselves’: Creative writing in later life will be held in Kinsella Auditorium, McCain Hall on Tuesday, October 25 at 6:30 p.m.

In this lecture Oddgeir Synnes will talk about his long-standing experience of working with creative writing among older adults, including palliative care and dementia care. Synnes will exemplify how different texts perform work in the process of production, sharing, and reception. Access to an expressive language can open up perspectives of playfulness and wonder towards one’s life and oneself—as well as others. Furthermore, sharing one’s poems and stories in a supportive environment can provide validation and affirmation.

Synnes is a literary scholar and works with applying perspectives from the humanities to healthcare and care for older adults – both through practical projects and in research. His key areas of interest include cultural and narrative gerontology, creative writing and storytelling, visual arts and dementia, and literary representations of illness. His most recent books are Ways of Home Making in Care for Later Life (2020. Palgrave Macmillan) co-edited with Bernike Pasveer and Ingunn Moser and A Poetic Language of Ageing (forthcoming, Bloomsbury Academic) co-edited with Olga V. Lehmann.

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The Creamer Lecture will also take place in Saint John on October 26^th at 6:30PM at the Loch Lomond Villa Auditorium.