"The Health of Poetry"

Gwyneth Lewis, 2008–2009 Mildred Londa Weisman Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute, Inaugural National Poet of Wales in 2005–2006

Experience the complete proceedings on-line: streaming video of the lecture is now available.
Video (1:24 minutes)

Dylan Thomas described being a poet as walking over broken glass on your eyeballs. In terms of mental health statistics, we work in a dangerous occupation. Far from being fragile creatures, however, poets are unusually robust because the art allows us to face ambiguity, the non-linearity of time, and the difficulty of accurate articulation: the traditional realm of depression. Whatever the state of our health, writing gives us a second, robust body.

Gwyneth Lewis will give a premier of "A Hospital Odyssey," an epic poem that describes a voyage into ill health and pitches poetry as a force against it.

A book sale and signing will follow the presentation.

The Julia S. Phelps Annual Lecture in Art and the Humanities was established to honor the memory of Julia S. Phelps, longtime instructor in the Radcliffe Seminars, and is supported by the generous contributions of her family, friends, and colleagues.

This lecture is free and open to the public.