The Languages of Emotional Injury

In April, seven journalists who have covered violence read their work and shared their stories with poets, mental-health professionals and other community representatives in an innovative week-long Seattle program called "The Languages of Emotional Injury." More than 1,300 journalists, students and Seattle residents listened as speakers probed for the words, images and insights that could convey the nature of trauma and its aftermath to readers.

Over the next several months, the Dart Center, which was a co-sponsor of the event, will share the ideas that audiences heard April 22-26.

In this segment, you can view and hear Marc Cooper, contributing editor of The Nation magazine, talk about a 9/11 event most of us know little about; Clarence Williams, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer for The Los Angeles Times, show that there is grace and beauty in troubling situations, and Ted Conover, a non-fiction magazine and book author, tell how an emotional injury began.

Other journalists in the program were Bruce Shapiro, contributing editor of The Nation; Mark West, freelance foreign correspondent based in Seattle, Debra McKinney, staff reporter for the The Anchorage Daily News, and Nina Bernstein, staff reporter for The New York Times.

Five leading poets who have touched on trauma in their work also were featured. They included Breyten Breytenbach from South Africa and Senegal, Daisy Zamora from Nicaragua and San Francisco, Semezdin Mehmedinovic, from Bosnia and Washington, D.C., Frances Driscoll and Jimmy Santiago Baca. Excerpts from their talks will be presented in the series as well as comments from other participants in the program.

The program offered a blueprint for future efforts at community conversation about "The Languages of Emotional Injury." Plans for the next "Languages" conference will be announced in the fall.

In addition to the Dart Center, major presenters were Counterbalance Poetry, a Seattle nonprofit, and Seattle University. Additional funding was received from the Washington Commission for the Humanities, the Breneman-Jaech Foundation of Seattle, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington, Ford Foundation-University of Washington Curriculum Transformation Project and the University Book Store, Seattle.

A VHS documentary on "The Languages of Emotional Injury" is available. If you are interested in it or have questions or comments about the conference, please contact us.