Poetry lets you 'see the person behind the disease' says dementia poet

While creative arts therapy is yet to be proven as an effective treatment for cognitive decline in people with dementia, it has proven benefits for the behavioural and emotional challenges associated with the condition.

A successful writer and researcher in the field of dementia, poet John Killick has a rich background in the creative arts and uses not just poetry but also humour and improvised drama to help people with dementia explore their creativity and enhance their emotional wellbeing.

Having taught for 30 years, Mr Killick took up writing full-time in 1989 and began working with people with dementia in the early 1990s as a writer in residence for a private national care company, travelling all over the UK, working with their clients.

Mr Killick explains: “The idea at first was that I would write their life histories, and this benefited staff as well as the individuals themselves.”

“The company was pleased with the results. At the end of the first year somebody in management mentioned 'dementia' and asked me if this would work with people with that condition.

“I had no idea, as I knew nothing about it – it was just a word to me. We are talking of 1992, and there was virtually no media attention to the subject. I said I'd give it a try and was sent to a home in North Yorkshire.

“At first I was terrified and almost gave up, but gradually I found what Tom Kitwood, the guru psychologist at Bradford University, maintained was true: You had to see the person behind the disease. I stayed in that care home for six months writing with and about the residents.”

‘I decided to devote the rest of my life to this work’

Realising early on that he was producing quite “remarkable” texts, Mr Killick sought permission to publish them, sparking the interest of both the press and Professor Mary Marshall at the Stirling Dementia Services Development Centre.

He says: “I joined her department part-time as well as continuing my care home work. When I left the care home company she found the money to employ me as Research Fellow in Communication Through the Arts, a post I held for six years.

“It was there that I met the psychologist Kate Allan, and we embarked on the book 'Communication and the Care of People with Dementia' eventually published by Open University Press, and still, I believe, the standard text on the subject.”

Spotting the potential the creative arts held for people with dementia, Mr Killick decided to devote the rest of his life to working with people with dementia and spreading awareness of the condition to the wider public.

Mr Killick believes that people living with dementia “lack stimulus and a language” to come to terms with their experiences but the arts provide this possibility.

‘Dementia leaves people’s emotional potential unscathed’

“I could see the benefit to the people I worked with, and that there was a job to be done in the wider world convincing people that someone with dementia was still 'there' and with valuable things to say, often in memorable language,” he explains.

“I'm not convinced that the arts assist cognition, but they certainly enhance feeling-states.

“I believe that dementia robs people of intellectual capacity but leaves their emotional potential unscathed. The arts appeal to that faculty and therefore must be used for expression and communication.”

When asked about his most memorable moment during his career working with people with dementia, Mr Killick recalls: “I was making a radio programme for my poetry work for the BBC and I approached Ian McQueen to work with me. Initially he refused.

“‘I hate poetry. I did that at school,’ he said. Well I persuaded him, and we had seven sessions together.

“At the beginning of the second one when I showed him a transcribed piece I had turned into verse he said, ‘I'm a bloody poet!’

“At the end of the last session I asked him what he thought of poetry now. ‘Essence of essences. It's what comes in and goes out. What matters to me is the me-ness of it,’ he said.”

‘People with dementia retain that creative spark’

Although best-known for his poetry, for Mr Killick, improvised drama is the most effective approach for people with dementia.

He says: “At Stirling I initiated work in all art-forms and found that people with dementia retained the creative spark. This resulted in another co-authored book, with Claire Craig of Sheffield Hallam University, 'Communication and Creativity in Persons With Dementia' published by Jessica Kingsley.

“I have experimented personally with a number of arts approaches, the most successful, I think, being improvised drama. It is my opinion that much of the money wasted on abortive medical research should be devoted to psychosocial projects.”

Mr Killick does not work solely with people living with dementia; he also provides training and advice for those who care for people with the condition.

He is currently in the fifth year of a Midlands-based project at the Courtyard Centre for the Arts in Hereford, working as a mentor for other artists and care staff.

“Each residency has two care staff participating alongside the residents, and each of the mentors runs a quarterly training session for care staff on their own,” explains Mr Killick.

“I'm about to start a major project in Wales concentrating on training care staff in creative approaches.

“Some of the projects I have been involved with involve family carers, particularly one-off activity sessions in day centres.”

The Courtyard project is due to end in March 2017 and, in addition to his project in Wales, Mr Killick is currently working on a project with younger people with dementia in West Yorkshire, running a reading group to encourage them to talk about and explore issues of relevance and interest to them.

To find out more about John Killick’s work, visit: http://www.dementiapositive.co.uk/