The Outworker
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The Outworker
#029 - Oliver de la Paz - How Poetry Heals Physical Pain
Oliver de la Paz discusses the intersection of poetry, physical pain, and the healing process. As a former EMT turned poet and professor, he brings a unique perspective to this interesting topic. Oliver shares how writing and reading poetry can be a transformative practice that helps individuals navigate their experiences with physical pain and ultimately find healing. For me personally, I took Oliver's class "Poetics of Pain" when I was a senior in college. Ironically, about a month into the class I started having debilitating chronic pain from a herniated disc injury in my lower back. His class and this overarching theme of poetics of pain had a profound impact on my healing process and my evolution as a person.
Timestamps:
00:00 How I Was Introduced To Poetics of Pain
01:23 From EMT to Poet
04:35 The Healing Power of Poetry
08:27 Writing vs. Reading: Different Paths to Healing
11:35 Recovery vs. Healing: Understanding the Difference
13:18 Poetry Bridging The Gap
19:01 Misconception of Poetry in Medicine
22:36 Experiencing Pain: A Shared Journey
25:58 Art as Sustenance: The Importance of Creativity
27:51 Reflection on Pain: Writing from a Distance
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What’s up Outworkers. Oliver de la Paz discusses the intersection of poetry, physical pain, and the healing process. As a former EMT turned poet and professor, he brings a unique perspective to this interesting topic. Oliver shares how writing and reading poetry can be a transformative practice that helps individuals navigate their experiences with physical pain and ultimately find healing. For me personally, I took Oliver's class "Poetics of Pain" when I was a senior in college. Ironically, about a month into the class I started having debilitating chronic pain from a herniated disc injury in my lower back. His class and this overarching theme of poetics of pain had a profound impact on my healing process and my evolution as a person.
Tim (00:01.739)
Oliver, welcome to the show.
Oliver De La Paz (00:03.623)
Thank you for having me.
Tim (00:05.598)
As we've spoken about before your class, Poetics of Pain, when I was a senior at college at Holy Cross had a profound impact on me because I was going through a lot of physical pain at the time with a bad back injury and it really didn't just feel like another class I was taking, but it was more so of a enlightening and eye -opening experience. And I'm really curious to know what's the origin story for you.
getting introduced to this type of work and this concentration of poetics of pain.
Oliver De La Paz (00:39.795)
Sure. I was in my younger years, roughly when I was an undergraduate like you were at Holy Cross, I was also an EMT. I was an EMT certified 1A, which basically means that I could go along on ride -alongs and that sort of thing. And every once in a while they would throw me a
But I was I was pre -med and I had for all intents and purposes the plan to go into medical school. So, you know, the medical profession was something in the back of my mind. I was raised by a physician. My mother is a doctor. Retired now. And so things that deal with the medical profession or
medicine were always on the periphery of my life. The other thing that, you know, drove me to be interested in the topic is that I'm the father of children who are on the autism spectrum. So I have in my own life, you know, a relationship with folks who are neurodiverse, including my own father. And
A lot of the interest for the topic stems from my own personal life. I wrote a book that was from the point of view of a parent thinking about issues of neurodiversity. And so I think that, you know, the object is not perif or the subject is not peripheral. The subject is actually in front of me.
It's a subject that actually I encounter every day.
Tim (02:37.55)
So when you were in EMT and thought you were potentially going to go down the medical route, were you also very interested in poetry at the time? And were you a writer back then? Or when did that start to enter into your life?
Oliver De La Paz (02:52.103)
Yeah, I was a double major. So I was a major in biology and I was also majoring in English. And I had decided to major in English because I wanted access to the courses that would allow me to take workshops. And at the time I was living in LA at the time, you know, the only way to do that was to have an English major. Some of the higher end courses were really not.
You know, it was not allowed for me, a non -major, to take them. And so I thought, okay, well, first I'm going to minor in English. That makes sense. Then I would be able to take some of those courses. And then eventually I decided, hey, I really like this. I'm going go ahead and double major. So, you know, I think that my time in LA while I was an EMT was filled with both the sciences as well as the humanities.
Tim (03:52.696)
In your experience, how do you think the act of writing poetry contributes to someone's healing process?
Oliver De La Paz (04:00.189)
That's a great question. And I think that one of the things that is often forgotten is that poetry used to be considered one of the healing arts. That for the longest time, prior to having psychologists and psychiatrists, those sorts of folks who worked on the dimensions of the mind, we had folks who wrote plays and who wrote poetry.
as a way to explain or to come to understanding of the dilemmas that fill the human experience. And in a lot of ways, the stories that were told in poetry as well as on the stage healed people. They allowed people to see themselves and to see and to learn from the dramatic reenactings.
how it is that certain choices that they might have made.
affect them and affect those around them. And so I think in this way, it's really useful to think of the arts as something that has the capacity to heal.
Tim (05:16.718)
Do you see any fundamental changes in the role that poetry plays in this whole healing process when the foundation is more so focused on physical problems and physical pain compared to mental or emotional pain?
Oliver De La Paz (05:35.057)
Yeah, I think that oftentimes poetry is considered a way to talk about the pain that is not necessarily physical, but internal. It is often the province of psychological pain or the province of one's grief or the province of one's misunderstandings. But I also know that
within one's physical body or with physical pain, that often leads to issues with one's psyche. It is hard to sometimes act or move when one is dealing with a great amount of physical pain, and that physical pain often can lead to feelings of loneliness and isolation.
feelings of being misunderstood. And so I think that poetry is certainly a place where you can deal with all of those things, both the physical, the actual physical pains that one might experience as well as the mental or psychological pains that one might experience.
Tim (06:52.792)
How do you think the healing process differs between writing poetry versus reading poetry? Because from my experience, I guess it was a two step process where I was finding poetry that helped me and then that led me to tap into myself and start to become a writer. And I know one of the people that I learned about in your class was Rafael Campo and how he would prescribe poetry.
to his patients. What do think the difference there is if you see any between the healing process between writing and reading?
Oliver De La Paz (07:33.693)
That's a great question. think one of the effects that reading poetry has on the human condition, even maybe the physiological effects that might have on a person. And they've done studies on this actually, that people who read poetry aloud can slow their heart rate. It's kind of incredible that they can slow their heart rate, that they can...
sort of modulate how their blood flows in their body. So in a way, it's kind of like akin to meditation, right? That there's a physiological response that comes from reciting or reading poetry aloud. Now, how does that differ from like what happens when you put it on the page? Well, I think that there are actions that are very, they're tied together, right? That I think the aspect of self -expression or
the moment that you are able to self express or express yourself through the medium of invites and opens a way for you to share with other people and then sharing with other people through this act of writing
you're seeking or you're opening opportunities for community building. And we are social people, we are social animals. And I think through this act of community building, we can find that act of sharing poetry as communal or as therapeutic, right? That by launching into the endeavor of writing, we are
stretching our wings and trying to find people out there who do the same thing. Now also, that doesn't mean that there isn't any use for just sort of the private diarist or the private writing. I think that sometimes it's important to do a self -assessment or a self -check. You know, I mean, our computers do it. Sometimes we run the scanner and sometimes we detect things that need help. And I think that doing a similar thing in our journals or our writing habits.
Oliver De La Paz (09:50.757)
We can do that as well. It's sort of like running a self check or a diagnostic. And I think that that's always healthy and useful.
Tim (09:58.83)
Couldn't agree with you more. I know we've strictly been talking in terms of healing and something that I'm always fascinated to hear people's thoughts on because I do think there is a difference between the two. What do you think the difference is between recovery and healing?
Oliver De La Paz (10:17.073)
Recovery and healing. Well, I think that they are both multifaceted. Let's just say that. One's healing can often, I often associate healing with the physical and physiological and recovery is more about the return to or reintegration to a community or a culture, right?
So on the one hand, I think you can be healed and yet not recovered yet. For example, you can feel better physiologically. You can feel like you can go outside, but maybe you're not yet ready to go to that party. Maybe you're not yet ready to be 100 % yourself. And I think that in terms of differentiating those things, that's how I'm viewing them, that healing is.
getting in tuned or attuned or in touch with one's physiological self or even psychological self and feeling that space as being whole or healed. And then the recovery part is that moment where you can extend beyond yourself and you can go outside of your own self, your own body and you can engage with other folks.
Tim (11:43.96)
How do you see poetry as being a bridge between patients' experiences and those observing those patients, whether it's the medical people that are helping those individuals or whether it be family and friends who are observing them?
Oliver De La Paz (12:02.432)
Yeah, I think that one of the things that I've learned and I've been collaborating with some medical professionals like the folks over at UMass Chan, which is the medical school here in Worcester. I think one of the things that I found in working with them is sometimes we all get trapped in our own little silos of language and our own little silos of experience.
So that sometimes the doctors forget that they're dealing with not a subject, but a person who is complicated. And I think that what will bridge say what a medical physician or a medical practitioner experiences in the day to day versus what a patient experiences in the day to day is narrative, right? I think that we all have our
own stories, that stories are really essential in trying to fill in those spaces where the medical community don't exactly have language. And in terms of the kinds of pain, say, a patient might be feeling as an outward expression of that pain, maybe telling the story might help or illustrate to the medical practitioners.
what is the source of this thing that this person is feeling. So I mean, think stories are really essential as a way to sort of bridge that gap that exists. It certainly exists. I was doing a seminar again with the pediatric unit over at UMass Chan. And some of the folks were just surprised by
The ways that I say would take like a form, there was a questionnaire about autism that I took and I sort of converted into poetry and the form itself is very cold. It's very medical and it's basically a form that you would respond to in yes or no responses. But I took that form and I converted it into a poem which complicated the responses so that
Oliver De La Paz (14:22.671)
It forces whomever is reading the thing to understand that, look, we're not just looking at a subject. We're looking at a person who is complicated. And we're also not just dealing with a person, but we're dealing with the periphery of that person, which includes family and loved ones. So when you confront, say, the medical community with the notion that there are stories out there that are much more complicated versus the yes or no questionnaire responses.
You get an interesting dynamic. I had a lot of doctors who approached me and said, I was really surprised and I learned a lot from this particular experience on how to deal with or how to bridge that communication gap, which truly exists.
Tim (15:10.678)
Yeah. Couldn't agree more, especially from my own experiences with my back problems when I was talking with doctors or physical therapists. It's just, like you said, I think cold is a great way of saying that where it's can just be very black and white. And I'm curious to know if you would know this because I'm not sure when it gets into the med school space within the curriculum, is there any type of
Tim (15:38.85)
courses or teaching for this type of stuff.
Oliver De La Paz (15:41.553)
Yeah, I would say this, that I think there is a new movement in the medical profession that is called the medical humanities. And I think that you're seeing a lot more medical schools put an emphasis in having these kinds of courses. I know that UMass Chan here has courses like that. I know that
the school down in UC Riverside, or not UC Riverside, UC Irvine in California. They actually have a medical humanities program for med students. So I think there's an awareness. I think that there is the understanding that part of the development of a doctor is to also develop their bedside manner, to develop
how they see a patient, not just as a patient, but as a whole person. I think that there's a particular type of ethical imperative that the medical profession has to take these kinds of courses. Because again, doctors are not dealing with objects, they're dealing with complicated people, complicated beings. But yeah, I wanna say that there's...
There's a movement of these medical schools developing medical humanities programs. You mentioned one of the doctors that we had read in the course. He actually has a medical humanities program in his school.
Tim (17:31.822)
Do think there are any misconceptions about the role of literature and healing and within the medical space?
Oliver De La Paz (17:39.027)
I do. And I think that, again, as a pre -med or as a former pre -med, what I understood in my development as a burgeoning doctor, even though I decided not to go through with it, was that the coursework was very, very STEM -oriented. It was all very STEM. It was scientific. It was data -driven. It was not necessarily interested in
the aspects of how you read a human's emotions, but on how you read a human's blood pressure. And I think though that there's, I think that's changing. I honestly think that, you know, the type of training that doctors receive these days is a little bit more broad, I think. And I think that's necessary.
Tim (18:35.574)
I who it was specifically who was talking when we were in the course, but you had showed us a video and it had a profound impact on me because the man was talking about how I think it was with a cancer patient where, know, don't focus just on dealing with your pain, but allow yourself to feel your pain. And that had that completely unlocked me because I felt like within my own experiences, it always felt like I was just trying to
Oliver De La Paz (18:55.453)
Mm
Tim (19:04.888)
deal with that pain, trying to run away from it, trying to numb it in ways that I could rather than simply just allowing myself to stand still, be in the moment and feel what I was feeling. What do you think the difference is there between dealing with pain and feeling pain?
Oliver De La Paz (19:25.391)
Well, so I imagine that dealing with pain, if we phrase it in that way, is to sort of medicalize it, to understand it from a set of data points or data entry, to take it on not necessarily as a fact of the human condition, but a partition of the human condition, meaning I'm going to sort of isolate
and triangulate this particular factor that is happening in your life. Whereas I think the other, can't remember what phrase you used, but yeah, feeling pain. I think that the idea of feeling pain is whole self, right? It's an expression of the whole self versus say compartmentalization. To feel pain,
Tim (20:07.992)
Feeling pain.
Oliver De La Paz (20:23.027)
is to feel something deeply, is to understand it, not just through the data and the data sets, but also physiologically how the senses and the brain understand or feel what's happening. That includes the emotions of it. That includes the grief of it. That includes the joy of days when you're having remission.
that includes all of those complications. To feel pain and to feel one's health, I think, involves all of those things. The very, very complicated web that is human experience.
Tim (21:07.158)
for myself personally that your class and this topic wouldn't have had such a profound impact on me if I wasn't in pain in the moment experiencing all of this.
Oliver De La Paz (21:21.895)
Mm
Tim (21:25.838)
Do you think this type of work can't be appreciated to its fullest if somebody isn't in that sort of time in their life where they're dealing with pain?
Oliver De La Paz (21:36.261)
Yeah, well, I would say this, that I would say that that's complicated because I think everyone has experiences with pain, either their own personal pain or working in or living with someone who is experiencing pain. Right now, you know, in my own family, I am dealing with somebody who is, you know, losing themselves to Parkinson's.
And I myself am not experiencing that, but I am experiencing what it means to be ready for loss. Right. And I know that other people out there have on one hand, firsthand experienced Parkinson's, but on the other hand, I know that the whole web of people who are involved with somebody who is losing their life to Parkinson's,
experiences that in a particular way. So I don't think that, you know, one's experience with these particular type of topics is limited to or restricted by whether or not you have the thing, whether or not you are firsthand suffering. Think, you know, just imagine like all the people that were, were taking care of you when you were going through the back problems, right? Like your family.
they experience that pain in their own way. Whether it be that one day they just chose not to help you, or one day they were just tired of doing something for you. And that's a particular type of experience of pain and health that I think people will understand. That it is exhausting also to be a caretaker. It is exhausting to
be the person who is ill who has to ask for something from the caretaker. Again, and I keep using this idea of the web, but I think that when we encounter illness and when we counter health or people who are not in good health, we encounter a whole community of people who are affected. And I think that that was the bottom line of what I was trying to get at in
Oliver De La Paz (24:06.993)
the class, right? That, you know, the literature that we were reading, including, you know, that interesting story about the Spanish flu, we were seeing how these particular kinds of issues of health and illness affect a broad community and what that did to the community.
Tim (24:35.15)
of my favorite Ted talks is from Ethan Hawke. It's called, give yourself permission to be creative. I can't remember if you were the one who introduced me to that in the class or not, but yeah, I mean that had a profound impact on me as well. And you know, he talks about how you really, you don't realize that you need art until something bad or painful happens in your life. And he says, art isn't luxury. It's actually sustenance.
Oliver De La Paz (24:44.603)
I might have, I don't know.
Tim (25:04.376)
for you has art always felt like sustenance?
Oliver De La Paz (25:09.371)
It has. think that growing up, and I grew up in a remote place in Eastern Oregon where there wasn't much of a community. So my own respite and my own way of coping with loneliness and the grief of not having community was going into art and first reading, reading a lot, and then sort of delving into that self -assessment mode, right?
which was the writing mode where I would sort of keep a diary. would keep sort of a sheaf of writings that were often complaint, but often expressions of sadness and sorrow. And so writing for me has always been a way for me to, again, think about where I am.
to sort of triangulate who I am, to take inventory in what I'm doing. It's a way to sort of ground me. It's a way to sort of do a status check, if you will. And I think that more people need to do that.
Tim (26:28.632)
Some of my best writing and my most profound thoughts have stemmed from the time that I was in serious physical pain and
Something that I grapple with because I'm not in that extreme amount of physical pain anymore. Something that I grapple with is that
Oliver De La Paz (26:43.965)
That's great.
Tim (26:48.782)
I feel like pain becomes almost like a part of my creative or writing process where, okay, I need that extreme condition to be able to have my best type of writing or have my best thoughts. And somebody else that I had on my podcast, it's this guy named Ian Manuel, who was in solitary confinement for 18 years. And he credits him being able to
stay sane and inspired in that environment with writing poetry and now he's a free man and I asked him I said now that you're a free man with your creative process and your writing process
because you're not in that solitary environment anymore, how do you deal with that? And he had said something really interesting where he feels like sometimes he has to self sabotage himself or he has to put himself into that isolated environment to kind of recreate that creative process. And I'm curious to know your perspective. I mean, how, I guess just for me personally, but also just people in general, how do you make sure that you don't need
Oliver De La Paz (27:46.109)
Yeah.
Tim (28:03.822)
pain or these negative things to sort of inspire you or like from a creative position.
Oliver De La Paz (28:13.959)
Right, I I think that I don't think it's useful to write in peril, if that makes sense, right? Like, I don't think good art comes from when you are in peril or you are imperiling yourself. But I think that good writing comes from the reflection of moments where you were in peril. Like, I think, again, to stress, when I'm writing, I'm reflecting upon times that were hard.
Tim (28:19.79)
Yeah.
Oliver De La Paz (28:41.671)
That doesn't mean that I'm returning myself to them. That means that I am with distance looking back on that moment of my life and trying to assess from my personal purview, what have I learned and what can I share? And who is my community that has gone through this? Right? that doesn't mean that I'm thrust in the heart of whatever pain caused that. It just means that I'm
again doing that self -check and trying to realize what happened, what did I learn from that, and what wisdom can I impart to others, right? Or what kind of community can benefit from hearing this story, right? And I think that, you know, there's that, often there's the saying that like, to be a poet is to deal in suffering.
I don't necessarily believe that is 100 % true. I do believe that oftentimes poets access those moments so that they can return to the physiological reactions that they will write on a page in lines so that when a reader encounters that, they can immediately recognize that.
through the sensory details that the poet has reinvigorated on the page. But that's not like re -imperiling themselves. That's taking a moment, assessing what had happened, taking inventory in that and through craft and skill, reproducing it so that they are activating the senses of whomever reader is taking that on.
So I mean, I don't necessarily believe in suffering for art. I believe, I'm, you know, look, man, I'm like, I'm doing okay. I'm doing okay. I play my PS5 every once in a while. I have a good time. So, you know, I just think that honestly, poets are able to tap into this as a way to sort of reach out for community.
Oliver De La Paz (31:06.653)
But I sort of draw the line at like, you know, harming oneself for that. I don't think it's necessary.
Tim (31:16.404)
way of looking at that it's not so much the suffering for art but it's the reflection of past suffering for it.
Oliver De La Paz (31:21.575)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Tim (31:25.816)
of our work and people go to connect with you and your work.
Oliver De La Paz (31:30.461)
Sure, so you can look on my website. It's www .oliverdelapoz .com and you can see my work on there. And I have stuff here and there and you can probably find it on Google if you Google me. I hate being the guy that says Google me, but you know what? Go ahead and Google me. You can find stuff.
Tim (31:54.579)
I really appreciate you for coming on the show.
Oliver De La Paz (31:57.565)
Tim, thank you so much.
