When Psychiatry Meets Mythology
Loshini Rajentharan explains why mythological vignettes help her reflect on her work with psychiatric patients.
About the project
In Practice’, The Polyphony’s creative practice research project, showcases multi-modal creative engagement with the lived experience of chronic illness, disability, caregiving and health from a range of creative practitioners within and beyond academic research.
Founded by Aly Fixter and Grace Brimacombe-Rand, they wanted to bring their own creative practice and academic engagement with creative texts to the medical humanities digital community and foster new connections.
If you are a creative person who explores their lived experience of health or the body through writing, art, photography or any creative methods, please get in touch to share your work with The Polyphony’s audience.
The Illumination: From Mirror to Bridge
Favour Rubyson Kharnaior uses poetry to reflect on the relationship between medicine and spirituality and considers how spiritual approaches to healing can work in harmony with conventional medicine.
The Intersections Between Memoir Writing and Histories of Alcoholism
Jennifer Wallis reflects on her personal experience of an alcoholic parent and how her expertise as a historian has shaped her understanding of alcoholism.
‘Mrs Average of the UK’ Makes Something of Her Menopause
Arlene Jackson’s reflective cyanotype prints allow the sun’s rays to transform a body dehumanised by sexist medical disbelief into ‘something extraordinary’.
If You Go Down to the Woods Today…
Kate Marks and Tracey Falcon’s polyvocal creative text, with artwork and audio, explores spinal cord injury and movement within the human and non-human environment.
Cartographies of Disability through Creative Practice
In our next creative piece for the ‘In Practice’ project, Greg Hohman explores disability, geography and mobility through his digital cartography titled Travels of a Disabled Person Who Does Not Drive in ‘America’s Finest City (2003-2025).
Transforming Fragments: Three Poems
In our next piece of lived experience creative work from the ‘In Practice’ project, poet and researcher Grace Marsh shares three poems.
From Pandemic Stress to Nature Connection
A quiet practice of attention, belonging, and rest in urban parks from Yewande Okuleye.
Poetry on the origins of ME, CFS and Fibromyalgia
Sally Cross explores her research on medical uncertainty in the context of fibromyalgia and ME/CFS in this collection of experimental poetry.
Refractions of a Relapse Through Ekphrasis
Arlene Jackson reflects on a photomontage created by the artist Ashley Cook, in light of her chronic illness relapse.