Anna Cusi Delamerced

Year of Selah Anna Cusi Delamerced

Selah. It means "to praise," "to lift up". In the Psalms, it's also a musical direction - "to pause", or a musical interlude. So in essence, I like to think of poetry as that: to both pause and praise. The roots of this anthology stemmed from my gap year. After finishing my 3rd year clinical rotations, I wanted to take a year away from the usual pace of the medical school life, and craft my own rhythm. The Bray Medical Humanities Fellowship provided funding to support me as I launched a poetry program at the local children's hospital. As I spent time with pediatric patients and engaged in poetry together, the more I observed the power of words for healing, finding meaning, and making sense of uncertain situations. Each week during my gap year, I also wrote poems for a total of 52. Hence, this book is called Year of Selah. Poetry is a vehicle for wrestling with thoughts, emotions, and experiences. The pieces in this book explore aspects of medicine, from life as a patient to life as a trainee in the hospital, from death and dying, faith and hope. There is no one, right way to interpret a poet's words. Whether haiku or sonnet, free-form or rhyme, there are as many ways to write a poem as there are to read one. Perhaps that's the pull of poetry - sitting in the gray, and still finding beauty amidst the unknown. As you read this collection of poems, may you find your own moments of reflection and wonder. May you find your own moments of Selah.