Anders Juhl Rasmussen // In this article, my aim is to investigate how space and place have a special significance for the protagonist of The Faces, an autobiographical novel by Danish author Tove Ditlevsen published in 1968. The Faces describes a psychotic attack and subsequent recovery at a hospital. My argument is that Ditlevsen’s description…
Category: Arts and Creativity
Evening, Myocardial Infarction
Kate Bolton Bonnici // Of what can be felt: how the heart dwells At earth’s door, which is the gate of light Lowering leafèd veils in sequence. Slight Scent traces the familiar and the spell- Bound. What’s not dreamed? A hart swells Near to bursting at dusk’s blood birth: bright Sidereal dust, ventricle touched, twice-sight…
A Girl and a Neem Tree: Identity and the Belonging of Not Belonging
Nitya Rajeshuni // “[H Mart is] a beautiful, holy place. A cafeteria full of people from all over the world who have been displaced in a foreign country, each with a different history. Where did they come from and how far did they travel? Why are they all here? To find the galangal no American…
Blue Death
Dr Jac Saorsa, Artist-in-Residence// Reach me a gentian, give me a torch! let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of a flower down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness, even where Persephone goes… (extract from Bavarian Gentians, D.H. Lawrence) For Wassily Kandinsky, the…
“Making the Poem Physical”: A Talk With Kamil Guenatri, A Disabled Performance Artist
Pauline Picot // Kamil Guenatri is a performance artist. He first started working as a computer engineer before changing his course entirely at the age of 25, when he decided to practice performance art. Since 2010, he has been creating and presenting his work in France and abroad.
How to Subvert the Illness Narrative: An Interview with Writer David Ryan
Barbara Lock, MD // When I talked with writer and writing teacher David Ryan in mid-April 2021, more than a year into the pandemic, I was relieved to find his bright generosity intact. Ryan is my former writing professor. Class conversation was just as likely to hit on his heady days as drummer for The…
Narrative Medicine Spring Basic Virtual Workshop: A Brief Reflection
Amala Poli // On March 19th, I began attending a three-day Basic Narrative Medicine (NM) Workshop. Like much else in academia during the Covid-19 pandemic, the workshop was held virtually via Zoom sessions. Having attended panels and conferences in the last year on Zoom, I wondered about how this would translate the experience of being…
Psychoanalysis on a Massage Table: Familial Trauma in Samanta Schweblin’s “A Great Effort”
Nefise Kahraman // Freud’s therapy couch, covered with a carpet from Smyrna (today’s Izmir in Turkey), is as intriguing an object as the sculptures and paintings that make up the décor of his famous office. Each with their own story, these items are still on display in the Freud museum in London alongside his divan,…
Interview: Lisa Olstein on Pain Studies
Micah Bateman // Lisa Olstein, the author of four collections of poetry, recently released a prose meditation on chronic migraine, Pain Studies (Bellevue Literary Press, 2020). Thinking through migraine and with migraine, Olstein’s study threads in and out of autobiography, history, philosophy, literature, pop culture, and more—making piquant stops along the way at Joan of…
Inadequate Shielding
Kate Bolton Bonnici // Inside the room someone breathes through a machine until at some point they will be moved to a smaller room & there will be no breathing machine & breathing will end in some version or another. (You get that this is code for what you don’t know how to say.) Outside…
