Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner
Wild Geese Mental Health
Eugene, Oregon, United States
Ayelet Amittay is a poet and psychiatric nurse practitioner who cares for perinatal clients in her private practice in Eugene, Oregon. She graduated in 2010 from the Yale School of Nursing, where she trained at the Yale Child Study Center. She also received a Master's of Fine Arts in poetry from the University of Michigan. Ayelet completed the Perinatal Mental Health Certification through Postpartum Support International and teaches classes in perinatal mental health for the Touchstone Institute. She has published a book of poetry, The Eating Knife (Fernwood Press), and a chapbook, Therapy Room (Harvard Square Press). Her poems appear in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Pleiades, Rattle, and other publications. She twice won the Yale School of Nursing creative writing award and has also received awards and scholarships from the American Jewish Historical Society, Yetzirah: a Hearth for Jewish Poetry, the Elie Wiesel Prize, and the 2024 Internation 3-Day Chapbook Competition. You can find her at www.wildgeesementalhealth.com and @ayeletpoet on social media.
Given the requirement that this bio be 250 words long, I am including my poem "copay" to illustrate the intersection between psychiatry and poetry, published in JAMA 2024:
Copay
I surrender this portion. I pay it
the way I imagine the ancient Greeks
paid their tithes to stone all-seeing
Zeus: half a body
of cow, half my daily lot,
anointed in oil, smoldering or
charred. Will you remember me
by the increments of what I owed
you? I will remember you
by the way you taught me to recognize
the sun behind my dark life:
butter light, kelp light, spinner
and canary light. Cloud-
hide-metal light. I can close
my eyes and your office lamp
is shedding its petals into your lap,
as if a hundred sunflowers
bowed their heads to your hands.
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Friday, March 27, 2026
6:00 PM - 7:00 PM US Pacific Time