My guest is Christopher Lane , the director of NORAZ Poets, a non-profit organization headquartered in Sedona , Arizona .

Mr. Lane ’s organization uses creative ways to promote poetry in the southwest. On March 25, 2006 NORAZ rolled out The Alzheimer Poetry Project in Sedona. The project takes poetry to Alzheimer patients and uses classic poems as a way to engage the attention and interest of the patients who attend their readings.  

This is a quote from their website: 

“The Alzheimer’s Poetry Project uses classic poems, so we are not primarily engaged in creating new work. It is through the recitation and performance of these poems, that we express creativity and artistic quality by tapping into the oral power of poetry. 

One must constantly gauge how this audience (as with any audience) is responding to the poems, and adjust their delivery accordingly. The use of character voices, tempo, emotion, jokes and movement are all part of keeping the audience engaged, but especially one that is afflicted with dementia.”

When I started this show one of my goals was to demonstrate the power of poetry by adding an audio component to what has become for us a printed format. 

This show is dedicated to all of the caregivers of people suffering from dementia who refuse to lose hope, and who work tirelessly to make this a better world.