INTERVIEW by Leslie Lindsay: Muriel A Murch, Author of Harvesting History While Farming the Flats
Today, while perusing the riverwalk art festival in my town, I wandered into an artist’s booth filled with pieces inspired by nature. Barns and fields. Dirt roads, orchards. The artist was a self-taught electrician who decided he needed something ‘more,’ something other than being a nameless employee. He had a handful of business cards, each contained a glossy image of one of his many works. I was drawn to the one of a farmhouse and barn, a pastoral scene. Maybe that’s because I live outside Chicago, in a town that has grown into a burgeoning suburbia, but is dotted with the occasional farmhouse and barn. I regret I didn’t purchase his art, but my walls are full.
This is something I think Muriel A. Murch would appreciate, the merging of art with nature, complex with simple. Just because it’s ‘simple,’ though, does not mean it’s ‘easy.’ Weaving together Hollywood and agriculture, her upbringing in England, she chronicles food, family, farming, and friendship in such a way that feels not just full of life, but artful and poetic.
Organized in thirteen chapters with subheadings, plus a robust photo section at the end of the book, Harvesting History While Farming the Flats (Sybilline Digital First; March 2025), is a gorgeous, thoughtful book inside and out. A former nurse-midwife, Murch writes about her love of land, community, organic farming, the independent film scene, and so much more, it’s all juxtaposed by the sometimes troubling movement of urban development and Hollywood, which is anything but uncomplicated.
As I reach back to my own ancestral roots, I was so moved by Murch’s opening lines:
“Migration, moving away from one home to another, is sometimes voluntary, and sometimes forced. Quite often, we don’t know where home is until we are there.”
This was something I identified with. My ancestral family hails from the rolling hills of Kentucky, where they’ve farmed for well over two-hundred years. I feel a deep connection to the land, but also: beauty, hard work, and simplicity.
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Aggie & Walter Murch — Family, Farming & Filmmaking
Kitchen Sisters Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva have produced a beautiful love letter to and about Muriel and Walter Murch on their show. This podcast is based off of their interview in the summer of 2025 via City Lights Books and a tour the archives in Dr Worley’s “office” at Blackberry Farm. Have a listen and subscribe to their show to keep up-to-date with their incredible work.
Muriel “Aggie” Murch and her husband, Academy Award winning film editor and sound designer Walter Murch, have lived on Blackberry Farm in Bolinas for some five decades, along with their children, chickens, and horses. The two just celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.
They both have newly published books, and are out on the circuit telling their stories that stand at the intersection of the organic farming movement and the independent filmmaking movement of the 1970’s.
Director Francis Coppola, Walter’s longtime collaborator, describes his new book, Suddenly Something Clicked, as “a vast encyclopedia of cinema and everything that can be touched by it.”
Director Phillip Kaufman said this about Harvesting History While Farming the Flats: “Blackberry Farm is Aggie Murch’s Walden Pond. She made existence sustainable, rebuilt life over and over, helped spirits enter the world and gently helped them leave. She’s got the gift.”
We have known and admired the Murches for some four decades and asked if we might do a story to celebrate this moment of love and publishing and graciously they said yes.
Produced by The Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva, in collaboration with Nathan Dalton, Brandi Howell and Hannah Kaye. Mixed by Jim McKee.
Special Thanks to City Lights Bookstore and Peter Maravelis.
Funding for our stories comes from listener contributions to The Kitchen Sisters Productions, The Robert Sillins Family Foundation, The Every Page Foundation, The Susie Tompkins Buell Foundation, The Buenas Obras Fund, The TRA Fund, Barbara & Howard Wollner, Michael Pollan & Judith Belzer, Bonnie Raitt, and you.
Our deep thanks to our community for your spirit and for supporting the stories.
The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent podcasts that widen your world.
Writtten and read for you by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side.
Sally came back from across the street, “Granny Turriff has pulled up a chair and has her feet in the fridge.”
“Well that seems sensible. It is hot today.” replied her mother summing up the family consensus from their kitchen on the small street in the village where I grew up. The temperature must have reached the mid 70s at that time in the early 1950s. Granny Turriff was not my Granny, but she was one of the grannies who lived all around, in the house, or across the street at a time when families stayed close and watched out for each other. There was no air-conditioning then – maybe a breeze from an open back door would rise – stirring the still air – and putting your feet in the fridge was a pretty reasonable way for an elderly lady living alone to stay cool.
London Temperatures for Saturday June 28th
This last week with the heat wave now official – three days of temperatures above 30 degrees celsius, the mid-80s Fahrenheit – I’m remembering Granny Turriff as I open our fridge door to reach for the freshly made jug of iced tea and the cool air swirls out towards me. The temperature rests in the mid 80s and is 10 degrees hotter that when Granny Turriff put her feet in the fridge. Low level fridges are long gone so no one will see this piece of eccentricity – when practical might be considered just beyond sensible – and such actions could be judged as inappropriate behavior. There are warnings of the ‘extra’ deaths that this heatwave will bring to the vulnerable; the very young, the elderly and the infirm. The news details the pressures this will put on the already stressed health service and we, the very young, the elderly and the infirm, are advised to stay at home, rest and drink plenty of water. It is almost our duty to do so. We will keep the curtains and blinds drawn down to keep out the sun. We will water our plants in the evening time and we will rest.
The heat wave crosses Europe and given these times an almost manageable concern – what is it that puts global warming into manageable while Palestinian families are bombed, Ukraine battles on struggling to reclaim land stolen by Russia and now the mad man in American makes Dr. Strangelove look sane?
War, once again there is war. War for The United States of America is almost as big an industry as the entire US agricultural section. With these blasts, like aggressive bowel evacuations, of another attack on a sovereign country – whether one likes the regime or not – I look around searching for a place of reason. There are the “No Kings” demonstrations around the United States and even in Europe and other countries. The leaders of Canada, Mark Carney and Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum cradle us in hope while the American Democratic party sits about pinging their phones and deleting emails. The American barrel of sanity looks pretty empty.
But this week, in a small organization, I found a firm steadfast remembrance of the horror of war.
Nurses, old, ofttimes retired are joined by young ones as they group together, state by state to form Nurses Honor Guards. The NHG now has over 300 chapters in all 50 states and continues to grow. Jeanie Bryner is a nurse, a friend, a poet and a power-house member of the Nurses Honor Guard of Eastern Ohio. When asked, the honor guards gathers to perform Nightingale Tribute services for nurses. Like in the military, it consists of the Final Call to Duty. The Nightingale Lamp is lit in the nurse’s honor and when a triangle is rung the nurse’s name is called out three times as a request to report to duty. With the last silence, after her name is called, the nurse is announced as retired and the lamp’s flame is extinguished. She is relieved from Duty.
Relieved from Duty Display from an Honor Guard.
Last week three chapters of the Nurses Honor Guard from Ohio took buses to Washington D.C. where they had been invited to place a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. And that makes some kind of sense. The little I know, but something, from the strength of the grass-rooted down to earth poetry of Jeanie Bryner – the poetry of rural people, the patients, the nurses who care for them from the heartland of America – these are people who know the loss of war. It is probable that at least half of those women nurses have suffered some deep loss from the wars fought within their lifetimes – never mind their fathers before them. I found the video of the wreath laying ceremony on line – of course I did – and like so many at that ceremony there were tears in my eyes watching these nurses, there for their fellow fallen sisters and brothers, lovers and fathers.
Ohio Chapter of the Nurses Honor Guard at Arlington Washington D.C.
In 1995 Ohio State University published the first of a series of Anthologies on Nursing. ‘Between the Heartbeats Poetry and Prose by Nurses’ was edited by Judy Schaefer and Cortney Davis. As many of us as could traveled to Washington DC. where The American Nurses association was holding its annual meeting. But the ANA refused us permission to present or read at the convention. Instead we found a bookstore that took us in. I don’t remember how many other people came to that reading but we were an enthusiastic and proud group of nurse writers. As we gathered after the reading, mostly meeting each other for the first time, there was one nurse I particularly remember. Above her slacks she wore a brown, checked, gingham, short sleeved shirt. She had read her poem about Vietnam. We asked her if she had visited the new Vietnam Memorial wall. “Oh no.” She replied. “It is too soon.” In our silence we understood we would never know the horror she had witnessed. While the Ohio nurses gathered at the tomb of the unknown solder we all hold the world closer, praying for peace and the seeming unceasing wars to end.
This has been A Letter from A. Broad. written and read for you by Muriel Murch.
As dawn broke in years gone by, newspapers would be delivered by a bicycling schoolboy earning a few US dollars or English shillings. The papers were carefully gathered to be opened at breakfast, pages turned with American coffee or English tea – and toast. The news, the gossip, the sports – in green – before finally the cartoons and crossword puzzles were found on the final pages. Now those youngsters are out of a job as television and social media bring everything to us with a click of a button or a swipe of a forefinger. With a nine-year old grandson, I am having a refresher moment of comic book education. It is a good primer for what is playing out on the large and small screens in our hands.
The Cover of Leo Baxendale’s ‘A Very Funny Business’
The story lines are remarkably similar; a bully struts into the Oval Office with all his pals lined up behind him. A new boy comes in – quickly mocked for failing to be dressed the same as the bully and his pals. The new boy sits quietly, tries to reason with the bully and holds his own before leaving abruptly, as if chased from the room, but in reality he has left on his own terms. A few weeks later, the bully picks on another visitor. He too held his own with calm dignity. Now, weeks later, both of these men have achieved their aims. President Zelensky has demolished a third of the Russian bombers that were set to attack the Ukraine while, as South African President Cyril Ramaphosa left the White House, his smile reinforced for both black and white South Africans that his diplomacy skills are a strength the whole country is grateful for. This week the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, traveled to Washington DC to report back to the European Union. He too saw the symptoms of madness and stayed calm. As the rough-housing erupts in the White House we wait for the next installment to be drawn on the page.
While the comic book gets put aside – I find a gift tucked into my email inbox. A note from Barbara Bos who runs the Woman Writers, Women’s Books website would like a piece on the background of Harvesting History, While Farming the Flats and how I came to write it. This exercise is perfectly timed to answer a question that I pushed aside before it even had a chance to form. Did I answer her question? I’m not sure but this is some of what I wrote about that time in 2014.
Bees are busy in the Borage
It is midday. As many mornings as I can, I spend outside. Farm chores call out: ‘Over here, over here’ with raised wands of weeds, brambles and fences to care for. Fridays are sacrilegiously saved, even called ‘My Friday Farm days’. But I can only manage three morning hours before my body tells me to halt and I come back inside. Clean up, and enjoy a small snack before taking my place, sitting at the Bistro table, beside the French doors, in the main dining room.
The Farm Dining room is quiet now
This is a quiet room, saved now for big occasions with family or friends, but in this solitary time I take it for my own. The stillness calls me and I welcome it putting my pen to the page bringing immediate and long-past memories together, taking time to talk to the page.
Journal books are on the table. The little blue one – whose innards I change each year – records the past day, the day today, and the things still to do. Lists abound in that book while very occasionally an Idea or Question is also captured. When the three pages of warm-up notes are completed like piano scales, the little blue book is put aside. Two bigger journals, also with soft covers, have big spaces and faint lines. I can only open these when I am alone, for the pen may find memories of its own, spilling its ink over the pages onto the table, and I am frightened that I cannot scoop them back again. My pens also are important. Somedays I pick and choose, wanting something different, possibly a useful pen, even a pencil, or a beautiful one with free flowing ink, gliding across the page like a superb dancing partner. I have a fountain pen, a gift we bought from Rome one Christmas for my mother and which she used for the rest of her life. Sometimes when I write with it, I feel my mother’s encouragement – now flowing more freely through that pen. Each entry begins as a letter to you, whoever and wherever you are, or even a chat, as if we were sitting side by side in a cafe.
Between the Heartbeats. Poetry and Prose by Nurses, edited by Cortney Davis and Judy Schaffer
I start writing like this, knowing that much of it will not find its way into the final piece. I accept that scribbling is OK, good, it is the compost, heating up the heart, trusting the practice, the craft that hones thoughts into words until they become uniquely mine. There is no final version – until maybe it is published and given to you – a reader. Writing becomes us, as slowly, one gathers a body of work behind one. I remember the first time that I received a postcard back from a Submission, (with a capital S) It was for Mr Tims Morning and Cortney Davis wrote on a card, “Thank you for this excellent work.” She probably wrote that on cards for all the work she and Judy Shaffer collected for their first Anthology of Nurse writing Between the Heartbeats. I still have that note.
Now, two books later, it happened again, Steve Wax had read some of my essays published in ‘The West Marin Review’, then, in a huge cinematic reunion sought me out to say, “I read your essays and they are beautiful”. And so the harvesting began again.
The isolation imposed by Covid and age, helped me turn inward in earnest as I carried those farm journals to London and old memories began to sit beside the farm memories from – well – memory. Only when the essays laid themselves alongside of each other, jostling back through the-time-before, like the loose and falling pages of old photo albums, which must – one day – all be digitized. But until that time I would write about – that – those – times, remembering them in words and stories. Sometimes the words rise like yeast-laden dough, as the memories crowded on the page become kneaded together with imagination.
What does it take to do that? Perseverance, putting the words on the page, taking them up again, moving them around before pushing them back down. There is a reason why in bread recipes we are instructed to knead the dough for 10 minutes until it is soft and silky under our hands. That is how we want our words to be, soft and silky, gliding along the page and into your imagination.
This has been A Letter From A. Broad written and read for you by Muriel Murch
The Spring beets laying out on the farmer’s market stalls look lush and inviting. Beetroot has now been elevated to a super good-for-you vegetable. The baby greens are pretty under the bite sized sections of dark crimson roots tossed in with paint-white feta cheese in a salad.
But what happened to Borscht, good old beetroot soup? It appears lost from all but Hungarian restaurant menus. Classic borscht recipes came from Eastern Europe, Russia, Ukraine, and Poland, with various additions of potatoes and cabbages.
But for today’s cookbooks we are urged towards green watercress and sorrel soups to brighten our spring lunches with creamy yellow hubbard and butternut squash soups to warm us in the autumn evenings.
My borscht recipe was probably birthed from Gourmet Cook Book Volume Two an early, possibly desperate, Christmas gift from my husband. But it has been long since tweaked and fiddled with and now I claim this one as my own.
While here in London, as I edit another ‘final’ version of Farming the Flats, I have come to a page that says, insert Beet recipe here. Oh. OK. Back down to the Turkish greengrocer with Monty I go. But as summer gives way to autumn, the dark beets sit cowering beside the bold orange winter squash who are bursting with fresh grown pride. The beets, like the carrots beside them, have had their greens chopped away. The spring greens that were so bright and brave are fading in this late summer harvest.
Harvest on the kitchen counter
I pluck:
4 beets
2 carrots
1 onion
from the boxes and bring them home where I already have
Bay leaves, sage, thyme and chives from the garden.
Olive oil, salt, pepper, caraway and cumin from the cupboard
Chicken or vegetable stock from the freezer.
Now it is simple soup making.
Parboil the beets in their skins then lift the beets into a bowl to cool.
Strain and save the beet water. Some recipes call for throwing out the beets or the water which is ridiculous. The water only needs straining to remove any left over farm soil and grit.
While the beets are cooling heat the olive oil in a big saucepan,
Add the chopped onion to sweat slowly as you peel and slice the carrots.
(You will notice this recipe is 2 beets to 1 carrot).
When the onion is a sweet yellow add the chopped carrots and then
the caraway and cumin to taste. I’m heavy on both of these.
Stir for a while until the carrots are glistening.
Any wine in the fridge? A glug glug can go in now.
Stir some more and then add the thyme, bay leaves (At least 2) and sprig of sage.
Salt and pepper now as you like it.
When you feel the flavors have been properly introduced then pour in the stock.
Bring to a simmer and cook until the carrots are soft.
Time to slip the skins off of the beetroots, give them a rough chop and add to the mix.
Do you need to add more liquid? If so you have the beet water on hand.
When this is all cooked up nicely, twenty minutes or so, turn off the heat.
Put on the saucepan lid and go and do something else for at least an hour.
Only then come back and fish out the bay leaves, thyme stalk and sprig of sage.
Put the saucepan somewhere low, in the sink maybe, and blend the soup until there are no lumps.
How does it feel? How does it taste?
I like a firmish consistency and to be able to taste the caraway with a hint of cumin
Adjust the liquid with more beet water and flavor with seasoning.
The soup is ready now but will be better still after sitting a little longer.
Because borscht is Russian and Eastern European most recipes call for potatoes rather than carrots and a topping of thick Greek Yogurt.
But since I cooked this in London I used a dollop of fresh Devonshire cream before sprinkling on the chopped chives from the garden.
And the little glass of wine? Well I didn’t put all of it in the soup, just a glug, not two.
Today is May 6th, the beginning of Nurses Week in North America which ends on May 12th, the birthday of Florence Nightingale, and, since 1974, is celebrated as International Nurses Day.
1963 Prize giving @ Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford
Though I will not be buying any Hallmark cards for my nursing chums, I am thinking of my comrades and sisters who are my fellow nurses. Those friends we made, bonded in student years with the sharing of patients as we changed ward rotations; the remembrance of patients who were dear, beloved, or cantankerous, those we recall as much by attitude and character as by disease, those births celebrated and deaths honored. Then there were the working years before reentry to university bringing new adult companions, both student and teacher. Now, in this final quarter of life, I have found a sisterhood of nurse writers and poets. Some still work at the bedside of, or in the clinics with, patients – others teach, and all of us remain nurses within our communities and families. We write of the past, distant and immediate, bringing disease and care into the present.
Nurse Poets reading in Charleston 2016, Veneta Mason, Cortney Davis, Muriel Murch and Jeanne Bryner
We are lucky to have found each other and are grateful for the collectors among us: Cortney, Judy and now Jeanne who gather up our words, harvest them to reseed the bare virgin soil of tender young hearts. We write from different geographies of the Americans and the world. Jeannie Bryner from Ohio, Cortney Davis from Connecticut, Venenta Masson from Washington DC, Judy Schaefer from Pensilvania, Madeleine Mysko from Maryland, Patsy Harman from West Virginia.
Before I left California, I took from my bookcase the written work of my nursing friends. It is an impressive display of non-academic writing from professional women and men, and grows each year.
Within my bookcase
In 2018 Kent State University will publish another anthology of nurse writing, ‘This Blessed Field.’ Within this anthology are stories from young nurses, our stories, sharing our innocence with the new nurses of today helping to guide and comfort those following in our footsteps with the light we shine for them.
Each year on May 12th a church service is held in Westminster Abbey in London and at St. Margaret’s Church at East Willow in Hampshire. Wikipedia tells me that during the service, a symbolic lamp is taken from the Nurses’ Chapel in the Abbey and handed from one nurse to another, thence to the Dean, who places it on the High Altar to signifies the passing of knowledge from one nurse to another.
I will be in London that day and will go to the Abbey.
Beatrice presenting her book at the Feria del Libro in Buenos Aires
Taking a night train tonight from London to Glasgow. A new adventure for The Bell Lap and I as we go to the Royal College of Nursing Congress and Exhibition 2016. Wisepress is featuring The Bell Lap at 11.20 am through noon on Tuesday June 21 (stand number A9). I have no idea what to expect – a big convention hall and masses and masses of people wandering about. Hopefully some folks will have tired feet and want to sit down and listen to a story or two. Thinking of Beatrice when she presented her book on the A-line subway in Buenos Aires in 2014.
It was 1995 when Between the Heartbeats Poetry and Prose for Nurses was first published by the University of Iowa State Press. Conceived and edited by Cortney Davis and Judy Schaefer, this was the first Anthology of Creative Writing by Nurses, gathered from around the world.
Between the Heartbeats writers at Chapters Book Store, Washington DC, 1995
For many nurses it was the first time our medical writing had been accepted for publication. That summer as many of us who could, maybe twenty out of fifty contributors, came to Chapters Book Store in Washington DC for our first ever reading. This coincided – not unintentionally – with the annual general convention of the American Nurses Association. The evening was exciting, scary and thrilling. Scary because we were reading our own work and thrilling because we were hearing the words and work of other nurses. All of us facing the same direction, our voices so different and yet so deeply in tune with each another. There was an audience, listening, applauding and asking questions. One man spoke up, “Wow, this is amazing. Can’t wait for when you present this to the ANA”. We were all silent before Cortney, in her calmest most diplomatic way, (her speciality) replied, “Actually we won’t be at the convention. They don’t want us and won’t let us present the book there.” Among the audience were nurses who would be at the convention. We were all stunned, silenced and sobered that those nurses for whom we wrote did not deem our words necessary or supportive of their work.
As nurse writers we came together for that weekend forming a tight union of sorts, loosely knit, tendrils of thought, vision, each of us seeing and transforming through words, our patients in the wards, clinics and communities we serve. Since those early years we have continued to write, sending each other our books, reviewing and commenting for each other, hosting nurses writers on the radio and spoke of our work to audiences wherever we could.
Coming together was always a chancy affair but we get our moments. Two years ago The Medical University of North Carolina held its first “Narrative Bridge Conference”. Five of us, Jeanne Bryner, Cortney Davis, Veneta Masson, Judy Schaefer and myself, made it there for the long weekend;. We were billed as “The Nurse Poets” and that is what we have become. Through the years more books of poetry, prose, creative non-fiction and novels have been written and published and within the ‘about the author’ description the word “Nurse” always leads. This is who we are, this is where we speak from, whenever and wherever we can.
It was Lisa Kerr from the MUSC school of nursing who again called us together this year. Lisa wrote asking if we could come, not only to speak to the faculty and students of the nursing school but that there could be an opportunity to perform as The Nurse Poets in the annual Piccolo Spoleto Arts Festival at the Dock Street Theatre. New books had been published, among them, Jeanne Bryner’s poetry Smoke, Cortney Davis’ When the Nurse Becomes a Patient, which won an American Journal of Nursing Book Award for 2015 and my 2016 The Bell Lap Stories for Compassionate Nursing Care were all hot off the press and we were eager to share our work. I was ending a roll-out with The Bell Lap, coming down from New York and a launch at the National Arts Club with the great cartoonist, and tonight – host – Roz Chast whose book about the final years of her parent’s lives Can’t we Talk about Something More Pleasant, remains a best seller.
A little help with the night before prep.
It was – is – fun to be on the other side of the microphone. This was a first for Roz who is more used to being questioned about her work, and almost a first for me, being more used to asking those questions. With her questions and comments, memories surprised me and in the quickness of the moment words did not always take the long route – through my brain – as they rushed from my heart to my mouth. Maybe it was not the smartest thing to recall ‘my first leg,’ after Roz’s question about my failed operating room experiences. And so we learn. Beloved friends were there and I was more than grateful to see nurses in the audience, plus a doctor or two. Paul Gross and Dianne Guernsey who co-edit Pulse Magazine “Voices from the Heart of Medicine” came in on the train, Cousin Tom rode the bus from Cap Cod and nurse colleague Gerry Colburn traveled in from New Hampshire.
A Hug from Tony and Peter After it is all over.
It was a great evening and gave me the needed boost and courage to fly down to Charleston and join the band – not yet a rock band – The Nurse Poets.
Four of us had made it and it was grand to be together. Jeanne had driven for two days from Ohio. Cortney flew from Connecticut, Veneta from Washington DC and I from London, via New York. At breakfast we celebrated with coffee and grits. We quickly shared our stories, families, the agonies of book promotions and knowing as all women of a certain age do, that we will continue to balance these lives until illness, infirmity or death claim us.
At noon, under Lisa’s guidance, we spoke at MUSC nursing school for more faculty than students but how eager they all were, how they knew the importance of story, the lives led before and beyond the illness of the patient. Then an afternoon break before being driven past the Emanuel Church where flowers are still laid out daily in remembrance of last years tragedy to an early supper of fine southern food. (Where oh where do I get the real recipe for Green Fried Tomatoes?)
Then we walked to the Dock Street Theater where the audience was already gathering for our evening performance. The theatre is nestled in a small courtyard, intimate and perfect for poetry readings. The seats filled quickly and chairs were added along-side the cloisters until there was standing room only. We sat, warm but not hot, under the evening sky. Our time was tight, and so were we. Introductions by Barbara, the organizer of the festival. then Lisa, organizer of us and then, following each other in alphabetical order, we were on. Each of us brought our full-to-overflowing hearts to the mics and poured out our words. Jeanne watching family, Cortney and Veneta their clinics, and I from the wards and communities before returning to nursing school with an excerpt from The Bell Lap.
The audience rose to applaud these words that came from our hearts and our memories. Why did they love us so? We were good 🙂 yes but was it just the words, or was it the knowledge that with these words they know we have seen them, as people before patients. We have marked and held them in our hearts and returned them to themselves, thus received and healed, if not cured. Giving this audience an understanding that as these words have come from the wards to them they may also return to the new young nurses of today.
Jeanne, Miriam (The next generation), Veneta and Muriel enjoy the reception for The Nurse Poets.
Muriel Murch 