ST. ANDREWS, B(onnie). A. 1950-

PERSONAL: Born July 18, 1950, in NY; child of Wally (a builder) and Anne (a designer) St. Andrews. Ethnicity: "French." Education: St. Lawrence University, B.A.; Syracuse University, Ph.D., 1980. Hobbies and other interests: The islands, currents, and events related to the St. Lawrence River.

ADDRESSES: Home—Syracuse, NY. Office—Center for Bioethics and Humanities, State University of New York—Upstate Medical University, 725 Irving Ave., Suite 406, Syracuse, NY 13210; fax: 315-464-5407. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: State University of New York—Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, professor, 1992-97, distinguished professor at Center for Bioethics and Humanities, 1997—. Kids-in-Art Program, founder; gives poetry readings.

MEMBER: Poetry Society of America, Poets and Writers, Associated Writing Programs, American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, Aurora for the Blind.

AWARDS, HONORS: Pushcart Prize nomination, 2002, for "Phenol"; grants from Merck Corp., Brown University, Canadian Embassy, and Yaddo Corp.

WRITINGS:

Forbidden Fruit: A Scholarly Study of the Relationship between Women and Knowledge in Doris Lessing, Selma Lagerlöf, Kate Chopin, Margaret Atwood, Whitston Press (Troy, NY), 1986.

Stealing the Light (poetry chapbook), University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa, AL), 19912.

The Healing Muse (poetry chapbook), Silverman Review Press (Syracuse, NY), 1999.

Contributor of poetry to anthologies, including Nantucket: A Collection, White Fish Press, 2001; contributor to journals, including New Yorker, Paris Review, Gettysburg Review, Carolina Quarterly, Commonweal, Journal of General Internal Medicine, Midnight Mind, Journal of Genetic Counseling, Pharos, and Journal of the American Medical Association. Editor, Healing Muse (journal).

WORK IN PROGRESS: The Last Farmhouse of Feeling, a poetry chapbook; Pen among Scalpels, a chapbook of medical poetry.

SIDELIGHTS: B. A. St. Andrews told CA: "Entering a medical university with a new-minted terminal degree in one hand and a sheaf of poems in the other, I was transported to a world of open-heart surgeries, 'do not resuscitates,' desiccated cats, neonatal intensive care units, electron microscopes, and magnetic-resonance imagers. I had found my strange way home to a place I'd never been before, leaving the illuminating questions of the liberal arts and entering the dubious certainties of medical sciences.

"Far from being separate, art and science, I discovered, are Siamese twins joined at the heart. They are two hands clapping. They are the recto and verso pages of one long and balanced book. My medical poems now appear in [medical journals and literary journals].

"My poetry moved from images of Nature to those of technology, from lacy tracery to tendon, sinew, musculature, and bone growing like jade inside a mountain. Working with physicians, nurses, clinicians, technologists, therapists, patients, children with oncology opened the arteries of my creative life and saved rather than imperiled it.

"I began therapeutic poetry and art workshops for the hospitalized children; I started a journal of literature and graphic art for my diverse colleagues who participate in the world of healing. I invited closet writers to share their narratives of the courage and challenge each day provides in this medical university and its hospital.

"In my non-medical poems, I continue to explore mythic archetypes, the sea's profundity, the ineffable Beauty within the quotidian and commonplace. Through my medical poems and stories, I have tried to shed light on what Willa Cather correctly called 'the dark science'; of medicine. I hope my works praise the courage and compassion of patients and practitioners, of families and intimate strangers within the world of the Healers. And I hope I have helped to place the Arts back in the heart of that world."