Introducing the make space project, a user-led initiative dedicate to thinking more critically and care-fully about self-harm. Make space is a user-led initiative creating spaces for more courageous, nuanced, and generous conversations about self-harm.
Lottie Hughes reflects on the public, the private – and Kim Kardashian – during the COVID-19 pandemic
Kate McAllister reflects on parallels between COVID-19 and the early twentieth century epidemic of Encephalitis Lethargica.
Kristin Hay discusses the moral panic around student populations after increased access to the contraceptive pill
Laura Grace Simpkins discusses visual disturbances and the metaphors we use to describe them.
Reading Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s novel Blu’s Hanging during lockdown, Julia Brown considers the significance of silence during a pandemic.
For Anne Whitehead, the NICU incubator raises questions of precarity and resilience, and illuminates care as a layered series of interactions involving human and non-human agency.
Artist Sofie Layton works with medical data to give physical form to personal narratives of maternal loss and bereavement. This post describes the process of creating Excavations, a performative work that explores a mother’s grief at having lost a young child to cancer.
This personal essay by Tamarin Norwood charts the months of late pregnancy following a terminal prenatal diagnosis, when an unexplained congenital condition led to oligohydramnios: the depletion of amniotic fluid necessary for foetal lung development.
Rebecca Simpson offers an alternative perspective on stillbirth and infant-loss, focussing on the writings of two eighteenth century midwives. This is one of a series of essays addressing miscarriage, prematurity, stillbirth and neonatal loss, published by The Polyphony to coincide with Baby Loss Awareness week, which runs 9-15 October every year.
