By Frank Lee, Brainerd Press · October 25, 2019

The Alzheimer’s Poetry Project of Minnesota’s mission is “to facilitate and enhance the creativity and well-being of older Minnesotans, and to help amplify their voices and stories in our society.

Northern Lakes Senior Living residents with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia were encouraged recently to take a walk down memory lane with poetry.

“My father had Parkinson’s with dementia, and my mother had Alzheimer’s,” said Diane Jarvenpa, a poet, guitarist and singer-songwriter. “It’s a kind of thievery and for the family members, it’s hard for them as well.ay 10, 2025

The Alzheimer’s Poetry Project of Minnesota’s stated mission is “to facilitate and enhance the creativity and well-being of older Minnesotans, and to help amplify their voices and stories in our society.”

“It’s kind of a way to get to people if they’re able to make a connection. Certain things will spark, spur and prompt them into remembering things that sometimes they haven’t thought about for a long time,” said Jarvenpa, a Twin Cities artist with the poetry project.

Fourteen residents of the Baxter-based facility’s memory care apartments gathered Thursday, Oct. 24, to reminisce and create poetry with the third-generation Finnish American.

“It’s one way of getting to the power of language, and the power of communication and sharing … a lot of sharing,” said Jarvenpa, who also is known as Jarvi and known in Finland as the “Minnesota nightingale.”

In addition to playing the kantele, a Finnish folk harp, a number of her songs center on the Northern European nation with some even delivered in the native tongue of the country.

“Some people hate poetry,” said Jarvenpa, who has five books of poetry to her name. “But it’s all about sharing impressions and experiences … that gets them to talk and then everything gets written down.”

She wrote with a black marker on sheets of poster-sized paper, set up on an easel in a community room at Northern Lakes Senior Living, the things the memory care residents came up with through word association.

“What comes in autumn? Is this the time of year when we get together with family? What do we do when we get together?” Jarvenpa asked the group, which several members replied humorously but frankly, “You eat!”

Sandy Hudak is the activities director of Northern Lakes Senior Living and a registered music therapist who invited Jarvenpa to the facility.

“You never know what’s going to spark a memory, and the responses and reactions that you can get from people will be spot on sometimes and for those five minutes of lucidity and memory-making it’s worth it,” Hudak said.

Jarvenpa read poetry to the memory care apartment residents at Tuesday’s workshop and passed along objects they could feel or touch with their own hands to get the creative juices flowing.

“We come up with a prompt or theme for what we want to write all together,” said Jarvenpa, who has been the subject of two film documentaries, “Muistot” and “Kaipuu,” by the award-winning Finnish filmmaker Erkki Määtänen.

More than 94,000 people are living with Alzheimer’s disease in Minnesota, and more than 254,000 family and friends are providing care, according to the Alzheimer’s Association Minnesota-North Dakota Chapter.

“Diane was here in June to play and sing for us and then I heard she was part of the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project of Minnesota, and I knew that it was something that I really wanted to explore here,” Hudak said.

In 2010, Jarvenpa was the recipient of a grant from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage fund from the Minnesota State Arts Board to teach kantele in the town of Cokato. She has also received a writing fellowship grant and an artist initiative grant from the board.

The Alzheimer’s Poetry Project of Minnesota is an arm of the international Alzheimer’s Poetry Project, which has hosted programming in 28 states and internationally in Australia, Canada, England, Germany, Poland and South Korea, serving over 35,000 people living with dementia.