The Ghost Hospital

8 May 2020

The Ghost Hospital

The GhostHospital cover

My pamphlet The Ghost Hospital — published by Maytree Press in 2019 — was shortlisted in the poetry pamphlet category of the Saboteur Awards 2020.

What I hope for these poems is that they create a voice for those who are not listened to. I am interested in exploring the human voice in extremis — those voices that go unheard, voices that are expected to stay silent, that keep things unspeakable. I am interested in the unsaid.

Thanks to Maria Isakova Bennett, Lewis Johnson and Zannah Kearns for the following reviews:

Maria’s Review

Lewis’s Review in Another North

Zannah’s review in Sphinx OPOIs

The Ward at Night

The women all want cigarettes.
Each of us has left the world,
electric light is low but never out.

The madhouse stripped of colour,
occupants drugged dull and duller
the mask of night is on my face.

The phone is full no breathing space
like messages, regrets
small change locked tight.

We line the corridors in disgrace.
The grave’s a fine and private place.
Like stations of the cross we wait, kowtow.

Blue’s a name for health and many songs.
All the people we used to know
illusions to us now.

Long gone exemplars of remembrance —
real, unreal, vision, dream — hidden in our shames;
for one, I made an imprint of her face

gathered in cloth, pressed after love;
rain falling on my shoe. A snowy dove.

Then, an attic prophet, I name my birds:
Baby, Periwinkle, Navy Knickers, Electric,
Pufnstuf, Cornflower, Catweazle, Cobalt,

Crystal Gayle, Sky Blue, Joni and Miles, Sleep-tight,
Mother’s Pride, Omo, Midnight.

from ‘The Ghost Hospital’ (Maytree Press, 2019) p.12

Poetry and Madness

Posted by:

paulinerowe2013

Poet and writer interested in community engagement, collaborative practice, mental health, and poetry and photography.

3 responses to “The Ghost Hospital”

Brenda

May 12, 2020 at 12:07 am

Pauline, I have struggled with my mental health since a very young age and The Ghost Hospital gives a rare voice to my experiences as an inpatient, in particular, an admission to the psychiatric wards of the old Newsham General, my time as a student nurse on my psychiatry placement and my current experiences as a patient of community psychiatric services – as a result, it feels as though some of the poems speak my name. In particular, Personality Disorder, The Ward At Night and Self Portrait also the bidding prayers of Residents. I believe that you do represent unheard voices and the voices that are expected to stay silent in your poetry and I want to request that you continue to do so. I found reading and re-reading The Ghost Hospital very moving and and sometimes disturbing, for example, the imagery throughout Treatment and it’s final sentences, ‘No one in the world can hear me now. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow.’ I remember feeling this very forcibly with an idea that only by pretending to be ‘other’ could I escape. I believe that you do represent unheard voices and voices that are expected to stay silent in your poetry and I want to request that you continue to do so. In addition, my MA thesis was on the spirituality of women and how it has been influenced by patriarchal language. I can see that your poetry deploys a language of dissonance in its representation of women and mental health, and for me, this is a good thing. Thank You.

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1. paulinerowe2013
  
  May 12, 2020 at 12:24 pm
  
  Thank you, Brenda for taking the time to share your thoughts and responses to my poetry. I am grateful to you and appreciate you taking time to do this.
  
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2. brianpwharton
  
  May 12, 2020 at 12:44 pm
  
  This is a very good review that speaks to readers at every level with its full measures of truth, honesty and understanding making me want to do my own close reading of the text.
  
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  Reply

About Me

I am a writer & poet based in Liverpool. My ninth poetry publication – Vestige (Maytree Press, 2023) is a collaboration with photographer, AJ. Wilkinson. A recipient of 2021 Saboteur Award & a MaxLiteracy Award I am a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Chester.

Burning Bright