What turns a person into a mental patient? How does a person land in a mental hospital over and over again? Poet Nancy Dunlop cannot answer those questions and yet she has written a phenomenal book called "Hospital Poems," poems about what it's like to find yourself in the company of troubled folks in psych wards.
The book is attracting wide attention, earning praise from poets and mental health practitioners alike.
"Hospital poems is a sensitive, brave and thoughtful look at the experiences of in-patient psychiatric care," notes Massachusetts psychotherapist Joan Burkhard. "The observation of the difficult experience of being 'in treatment' and away from the familiar was a touching read. I highly recommend!"
Poet Lori Anderson Moseman writes of Hospital Poems: "This is a brilliant book. A must-read. It will save lives."
Indeed, the book offers individuals suffering with suicidal tendencies a kind of emotional stone pillar upon which to lean. The book provides hope to all of those millions of people suffering from depression and anxiety.
Dunlop meets some fascinating people during her repeated hospital stays. There is the ivory woman who says that her husband — dark as chocolate— was shot. The ivory woman tells her story over and over again, each time in the same order.
There’s a “lurchy woman” whose meds make her into a “marionette” — Dunlop doesn’t learn her name but realizes that she too is prisoner of the sometimes brutal effects of psych drugs.
One young patient she calls the Kid is a brash know it all, taking direction from no one. As it happens, he loves poetry and Nancy — a college literature teacher — finds a way to put the brakes on him so that he finally sits down and listens.
In each of these keenly observed poems, Dunlop portrays a person in a unique struggle to survive a mental crisis or the soulless hospital environment. But these are anything but depressing tales. Rather, “Hospital poems” is a short but deftly sketched set of portraits of people who shine with the light of humanity.
Nancy Dunlop may not be able to explain how a person turns into a mental patient but she knows exactly how to turn that mental patient back into a person.
Nancy Dunlop, who writes both poetry and essays, resides in Upstate New York. A finalist in the AWP Intro Journal Awards, she has been published in a number of print and digital journals, including Swank, alterra, Truck, Green Kill Broadsheet, The Little Magazine, Writing on the Edge and 13th Moon. Her essays have also been broadcast on NPR. She earned her Ph.D. at UAlbany, SUNY, specializing in Creative Writing and Poetics. And she happily taught there, as well as at other institutions, for 25 years.
The book is published by INDIE BLUE PUBLISHING, a progressive, feminist micro-press, committed to producing honest and thought-provoking works.
To purchase "Hospital Poems," go to Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Hos
The book can also be purchased through Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, IndieBound, and other major online book retailers.
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