In Louise Mather’s short yet sublime poetry, the body is in turns a miracle immaculately conceived and mirrored before its speaker and an open wound, bloody for all to see.
Five writers – Nasim Marie Jafry, Laura Elliott, Henry Anderson, JP Seabright and Louise Kenward – discuss what it’s like to write with M.E. and how chronic illness has forced them to discover new modes of understanding, new forms of expression, new realms of imagination (as edited by author Katy Wimhurst).
Hannah Hodgson’s latest collection of poetry, 163 Days, powerfully bridges the gap between body and mind, the lived experience of disability and the medical establishment’s version of it, writes our reviewer Clare Moore.
In her essay, author Katy Wimhurst explores how the experience of chronic illness challenges established (and often ableist) conventions of storytelling, opening up fiction – and indeed language itself – to new, imaginative possibilities.