The YouTube clip below is a recording of a reading I made last week for the University of Exeter Guild about my poetry practice and mental health. I am very grateful to Hannah Rudd for inviting me to speak in this series, other talks in which you can find here. I hope you find it useful.
I am a lecturer, poet and writing tutor. I work in teacher and medical education at the University of Exeter. My anthology Lifesaving Poems was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2015. In 2012 I published Riddance (Worple Press), a collection of poems, and Love for Now (Impress Books), a memoir, about my experience of cancer. My most recent books are Deck Shoes (Impress Books, 2019), a book of prose memoir and criticism, and The Afterlife (Worple Press, 2019). In 2023 I will publish The Wind and the Rain, my sixth collection of poems, with Blue Diode Press. My current research project, with Sue Dymoke from Nottingham Trent University and funded by the Foyle Foundation, is Young Poets' Stories: https://youngpoetsstories.com/. This blog is archived by the British Library.
View all posts by Anthony Wilson
4 Comments
I appreciated your thoughts on writing as relates to mental health and your generosity in speaking from your own personal experience as a patient. I’ve often wished that all medical schools had as required coursework some type of creative writing exposure, to amplify compassion and empathy and, as you suggest, to improve care. I particularly enjoyed your attention to notebooks!! I find your featured illustration delightful and I appreciate hearing about how you use them in your own writing practice. I’d like to recommend (if you haven’t already read it) World Enough & Time by Christian McEwen, who writes extensively and beautifully about many aspects of the writing process including fellow poets and writers who rely heavily on notebooks. I’m only halfway through McEwen’s work and already dreading coming to the end. She writes in a voice that is in many ways kindred spirit (at least to my reader’s ear) with your Lifesaving Poems. I think you might like it. Thank you again for this one, Anthony.
HI Mary Ellen. It’s great to hear from you. Thank you for your encouraging words. It is so helpful for me to see what I have been doing through someone else’s eyes. I do indeed know Christian’s book. It is wonderful. We met serveral years ago and bonded immediately over the notebook thing. She is a wonderful person. Wishing you all the best, and with many thanks again, Anthony
Anthony Wilson 
I appreciated your thoughts on writing as relates to mental health and your generosity in speaking from your own personal experience as a patient. I’ve often wished that all medical schools had as required coursework some type of creative writing exposure, to amplify compassion and empathy and, as you suggest, to improve care. I particularly enjoyed your attention to notebooks!! I find your featured illustration delightful and I appreciate hearing about how you use them in your own writing practice. I’d like to recommend (if you haven’t already read it) World Enough & Time by Christian McEwen, who writes extensively and beautifully about many aspects of the writing process including fellow poets and writers who rely heavily on notebooks. I’m only halfway through McEwen’s work and already dreading coming to the end. She writes in a voice that is in many ways kindred spirit (at least to my reader’s ear) with your Lifesaving Poems. I think you might like it. Thank you again for this one, Anthony.
LikeLiked by 2 people
HI Mary Ellen. It’s great to hear from you. Thank you for your encouraging words. It is so helpful for me to see what I have been doing through someone else’s eyes. I do indeed know Christian’s book. It is wonderful. We met serveral years ago and bonded immediately over the notebook thing. She is a wonderful person. Wishing you all the best, and with many thanks again, Anthony
LikeLiked by 2 people
How wonderful that you and Christian got the chance to connect, for both of you!
LikeLiked by 2 people
An angel
LikeLiked by 2 people