I’m Deborah Bayer, writer and workshop facilitator.
I began writing poems because I had to. I learned that writing was a good way of processing the complicated emotions around caring for marginalized HIV patients. It was a good way of processing the complicated emotions around working in a patriarchal system, a hierarchical system, a capitalistic system that treated patient encounters as commodities, when I thought of them as gifts of love and creativity.
And poems were short! They could be written in short periods of time, moments stolen from a life that was deeply out of work-life balance. Without knowing it, I emulated William Carlos Williams, also a New Jersey poet, who famously wrote poems in his prescription pad.
Fifteen years ago, I began writing prose in addition to poetry. My memoir-in-progress is about my medical career as seen through a spiritual lens. I know from experience that writing can be therapeutic. It’s helped me heal from the trauma of medical training, from the trauma of practicing medicine as a woman, from the trauma of being treated for breast cancer. Creativity is part of the spiritual support I have received in my medical career.
I have honed my craft in Peter Murphy’s workshops (Now Murphy Writing of Stockton University), and I have had the great fortune to study under Kathleen Graber, Cynthia Arrieu-King, Stephen Dunn, and Mark Doty. I spent my early years in Brazil and two years as an enlisted woman in the US Army (1972-1974). Now I live in the Pine Barrens outside of Atlantic City, NJ with my husband.
Publication History
- My first poetry collection, a chapbook titled Rope Made of Bandages, was published by Finishing Line Press in March 2023.
- My poems have appeared in the following journals: Bellevue Literary Review, Peregrine, Trampoline, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, SPANK the CARP, U.S. 1 Worksheets, Juked, The Healing Muse, Levee Magazine, The Stillwater Review, Cider Press Review, Shot Glass Journal, and Serving House Journal.
- And I’ve been published in the following anthologies:
- Moonstone Arts Center 2022 Featured Poets Anthology, 2023.
- Still You: Poems of Illness and Healing, Wolf Ridge Press, 2019.
- More Challenges for the Delusional, Diode editions, 2018.
- I had an essay published online in Doximity’s OpMed section, titled “The Stress I Felt on My First Day of Residency Was From Feeling Alone in My Responsibility,” July 30, 2019.
Where I’ve Been Featured:
Workshops and Writing Groups
I facilitate writing groups via Zoom. These groups blend the Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) methodology with the Narrative Medicine workshop format. I was certified as an AWA facilitator in 2017, and I took online classes at Columbia University in their Narrative Medicine program. I combine these two approaches in my facilitation. The supportive approach of the AWA method lends itself to healing from all kinds of trauma.
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