Joanna White
Mt. Pleasant, MI
Nonfiction
Joanna White, a Michigan music professor, an orchestral/chamber musician, and a writer, performs internationally and has poetry or creative nonfiction in the “Poetry and Medicine” column of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA,) The Examined Life Journal, West Texas Poetry Review, The MacGuffin, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Ars Medica, Healing Muse, Naugatuck River Review, the American Journal of Nursing, Dunes Review, Intima, The Shore, and Cherry Tree, among others. Her poetry collection, Drumskin and Bones, will be published next year by Salmon Poetry in Ireland. White has presented at many universities, at The Examined Life and the Western Michigan Medical Humanities Conferences, been a panelist at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, and she has performed at the National Flute Association Conferences and International Clarinet Association Festivals. Her presentations often combine poetry, creative nonfiction, visual arts, and flute performance. Professor of Flute at Central Michigan University, White can be heard on “Poet as Muse” and other recordings on the Centaur Records, White Pine Music, and Blue Griffin labels.
At Ragdale, Joanna White’s topic will be musician’s focal dystonia, an often career-ending task-specific neurological disorder that can strike suddenly or creep in gradually to produce a new unfamiliarity with highly trained motions. A trigger of some kind scrambles brain signals and wires in the changes, making it exceedingly difficult or even impossible to perform or to do what was once natural. Others who deal with focal dystonia include those with “writer’s cramp” and athletes such as baseball players and gymnasts, who are as highly skilled at task-specific motions as musicians. Performance injury carries a stigma, so there are few who are able or willing to share their stories, and it is even rarer to find perspective from someone who has figured out how to re-train his/her brain to avoid the dystonic motions which inhibit successful performance because few come through dystonia playing as well or better than they did before. Having recovered from it and having written scientifically about dystonia for journals of the National Flute Association and the British Flute Society, White will now write what it feels like both to lose a voice and to endure the long process of changing one’s brain pathways to regain it. In addition to this lyric exploration, White’s project includes the creation of performances that convey her experience.
Her websites are joannawhitepoet.com and joannawhiteflute.com.