Writing Pain
Lead Research Organisation:
Aberystwyth University
Department Name: English
Abstract
I'd use this project to explore this in a three-folded manner: work done in conjunction with the hospital, my own creative writing, and in an academic paper, with each element building on the findings of the others to create a cohesive and interdisciplinary answer.
At Bronllys Hospital, I'd like to work with both patients and practitioners. Firstly, I'd integrate a writing and reading group addressing pain alongside the existing workshops. I would lead discussions on the efficacy of a poem in expressing pain, presenting poems using various poetic devices and across time; potential poems could be Coleridge's sonnet 'Pain: Composed in Sickness' (1790), Mina Loy's 'Parturition' (1910) and Abi Palmer's 'Out of Body Experience' (2020). These poems would provide prompts for various poetry exercises we would work on as a group, and I'd encourage patients to use devices perceived by themselves as effective in communicating pain in their own poetry. Sharing and reciting would feature heavily in these workshops. Recent scholarship shows that shared reading has a positive impact on chronic pain relief ('Shared reading can help with chronic pain', Josie Billington, 2017) and I'd like to compile an anthology during my time in this programme to ensure patients can continue this experience of 'shared reading' after the workshops cease, seeing their poems in conversation with those of other patients. An anthology will also allow patients to see how their work and the 'speaker' of their poems has developed over time.
Scarry notes "the success of the physician's work will often depend on the acuity with which he or she can hear the fragmentary language of pain, coax it into clarity, and interpret it" (The Body in Pain); the role of the physician paralleling that of a literary critic. Building from this, I'd like to work with physicians in reference to the poems written by their patients and poems written by pain-sufferers through history. Teaching physicians different ways of reading poems can provide a useful skill-set in interpreting the pain of patients, becoming more dexterous at interpreting its nature.
During my time at the hospital, I'd use my experience in organising events and breadth of contacts in the literary world to organise readings for patients, involving their own poetry and other contemporary writing.
Alongside this, I plan to write a collection of poetry responding to these questions. While my work will be informed by my research, I believe a fruitful starting point would be to write poems in response to the widely used McGill Pain questionnaire. I would write a poem in response to each 'pain' adjective, assigning different formal elements to my work in response to different descriptions of pain.
Finally, I'd synthesise these findings and articulate this theory of poetic device and pain in an academic paper. This paper would firmly establish my interdisciplinary framework on the possibility of articulating pain through poetic form as a relieving tactic in pain management; thinkers who would prove to be influential would be, alongside those posited already, philosopher Gilles Deleuze, poet and theorist Adrienne Rich, osteopath Nick Potter and psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk."
At Bronllys Hospital, I'd like to work with both patients and practitioners. Firstly, I'd integrate a writing and reading group addressing pain alongside the existing workshops. I would lead discussions on the efficacy of a poem in expressing pain, presenting poems using various poetic devices and across time; potential poems could be Coleridge's sonnet 'Pain: Composed in Sickness' (1790), Mina Loy's 'Parturition' (1910) and Abi Palmer's 'Out of Body Experience' (2020). These poems would provide prompts for various poetry exercises we would work on as a group, and I'd encourage patients to use devices perceived by themselves as effective in communicating pain in their own poetry. Sharing and reciting would feature heavily in these workshops. Recent scholarship shows that shared reading has a positive impact on chronic pain relief ('Shared reading can help with chronic pain', Josie Billington, 2017) and I'd like to compile an anthology during my time in this programme to ensure patients can continue this experience of 'shared reading' after the workshops cease, seeing their poems in conversation with those of other patients. An anthology will also allow patients to see how their work and the 'speaker' of their poems has developed over time.
Scarry notes "the success of the physician's work will often depend on the acuity with which he or she can hear the fragmentary language of pain, coax it into clarity, and interpret it" (The Body in Pain); the role of the physician paralleling that of a literary critic. Building from this, I'd like to work with physicians in reference to the poems written by their patients and poems written by pain-sufferers through history. Teaching physicians different ways of reading poems can provide a useful skill-set in interpreting the pain of patients, becoming more dexterous at interpreting its nature.
During my time at the hospital, I'd use my experience in organising events and breadth of contacts in the literary world to organise readings for patients, involving their own poetry and other contemporary writing.
Alongside this, I plan to write a collection of poetry responding to these questions. While my work will be informed by my research, I believe a fruitful starting point would be to write poems in response to the widely used McGill Pain questionnaire. I would write a poem in response to each 'pain' adjective, assigning different formal elements to my work in response to different descriptions of pain.
Finally, I'd synthesise these findings and articulate this theory of poetic device and pain in an academic paper. This paper would firmly establish my interdisciplinary framework on the possibility of articulating pain through poetic form as a relieving tactic in pain management; thinkers who would prove to be influential would be, alongside those posited already, philosopher Gilles Deleuze, poet and theorist Adrienne Rich, osteopath Nick Potter and psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk."
People |
ORCID iD |
| Sarah Fletcher (Student) |