Brooke Bastie uses poetic form to imaginatively illustrate the uncertainty, repetition, and compulsion that pervades her experience of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). From uncertainty curdles a certainty often unnoticed. What I mean is that in
Jane Hartshorn, who started a practice-based PhD in poetry in 2018, reflects on the tension between leaning into the chaos of chronic illness and attempting to accurately reflect it. In writing about my lived
In this blog for World Autism Acceptance Week, James McGrath, an autistic poet and academic, advocates the value of “stimming” and explores how it relates to poetry. I dedicate the lipogramatic poem below to
Reflecting on their pandemic life living in communal halls as a PhD student at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Cat Chong considers their practices involved in continually negotiating a chronic illness within the context of Singapore’s circuit breaker measures.
Joanna Ingham reflects on her experience of ovarian health and using poetry to explore illness, bodies, and grief. MRI Because I am asked so often if I have metal in my body, and I
Reflecting on her four-decade nursing career, Sue Spencer uses poetry to explore justice, values and change. I read an earlier version of this poem at an event I organised that “celebrated” 40 years since
This post, by Rachel Jane Liebert, is Part I of a series of responses to Complaint! by Sara Ahmed (2021: Duke University Press). For the other contributions, click here. “To complain is to admit
Leanne O’Sullivan’s poetry collection A Quarter of an Hour uses imagery of animals and the natural world to create a bridge between illness and health, showing how understanding and acceptance can be as indispensable in
Jeremy Kearney reviews knots, tangles, fankles (V. Press, 2021) by Alex Reed. In 1964 when R D Laing and Aaron Esterson published the findings of their research into families where young female members had
Gita Ralleigh reviews ‘Arrival at Elsewhere’, a book-length collaborative poem compiled from work written during the first few months of UK lockdown.
