The Mad Poet's Tea Party
eBook - ePub

The Mad Poet's Tea Party

  1. 67 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Mad Poet's Tea Party

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About This Book

but I am madnessand madness is meit holds you captivelike a hapless bunnycaught in the headlights.In this moving collection of poems, award-winning writer Sandy Jeffs shares her journey through madness over four decades, drawing inspiration from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and the motley gathering of characters at the Mad Hatter's tea party. Both delightful and insightful, playful and serious, witty and whimsical, The Mad Poet's Tea Party provides a devastating commentary on how our society treats those with mental illness from the perspective of someone who has experienced all its interventions. It captures in poetic form the enigmas and contradiction in madness.

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Yes, you can access The Mad Poet's Tea Party by Sandy Jeffs in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Poetry. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Year
2015
ISBN
9781742199467
Edition
1
Subtopic
Poetry

Acrostic #1

For Heidi

The S Factor

Sometimes
craziness creates a
heightened
illumination of the
zeitgeist
originality its
privilege
humour its
revenge
every outsider
nonconformist work of art is an
ingenious
act of lunacy.

Seeing the Insane

The mad purify us
with their sacrifice
Elizabeth Campbell
They stand at eternity’s gate
gifted by the gods with a divine madness—
Crazy Jane, Crazy Ann, Mad Kate
a rake in a madhouse
lunatics dancing at a ball
Charcot’s madwomen of SalpĂȘtriĂšre
fools on a ship
Tom O’Bedlam
a knight errant attacking windmills
Tasso imagining Gerusalemme Conquistata
Lear fantastically dressed in wild flowers
drowned Ophelia
Mad Naomi of Kaddish
DĂŒrer’s Melancholia
the madwoman in the attic
the March Hare and Mad Hatter
Mad Meg at the Gates of Hell
a bewildered face in Goya’s Madhouse
an inmate in the men’s ward at Arles.
They are the fascination of Art
a curiosity of history
a gift to the world
a mirror to our sanity.

Waging War

A mind is a theatre of war
tanks rumble across the synapses
the light horse brigade charges through the frontal lobes
mustard gas poisons serotonin and dopamine
artillery barrages neurotransmitters.
The armies of reason and insanity face off
dispatches from the psych wards report fierce fighting
the casualties are mounting
no prisoners taken.
What will the war memorials say?
They gave their sanity
we honour them.
This is not the war to end all wars.
A mind wages perpetual war—
against itself.

Alice in Larundel Land*

Alice
fell
down
a
rabbit hole
& landed in
topsy-turvy Larundel Land
locked up
captive to lunacy
& a passing parade of
Mad Hatters & March Hares
eccentrics &
musos & artists & a poet or two
& ordinary folk
with the
d
e
e
p
e
s
t
sorrows
& in-con-ceiv-able lunacy
sharing delusions
like needles
voices babbling in the background
ECT before breakfast
stelazine for lunch
prothiaden for dinner
melleril at suppertime
& to bed with a hallucination & a moggi
—a place full of hunger—
hunger for
—kindness,
—friendship,
—love
a curious, (secluded) world
its dark side
kept well hidden
shadow-haunted inmates longing for peace
with themselves
no one knowing the wars that raged within
or the deep pain wedged between
(spirit & flesh)
destroying lives—
friends & family picking up the pieces.
Larundel Land’s
red brick walls now rubble
windows s-h-a-t-t-e-r-e-d
graffiti telling another story
a playground for vandals & urban explorers
once peaceful gardens
dis-mem-ber-ed
sombre ghosts roam the precinct
calling us to remember them—
we will remember you
sitting in smoky rooms
crying alone
laughing with deranged angels
—mud...

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half title
  3. Title
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. Acknowledgements
  7. Contents
  8. The Madwoman in this Poem
  9. Sensing Madness
  10. Congratulations
  11. Medicated
  12. Cold Chemical Comfort
  13. Marinade
  14. Unquiet Mind
  15. Of Shifting Images & Auras
  16. Acrostic #1
  17. Seeing the Insane
  18. Waging War
  19. Alice in Larundel Land
  20. The Dark Hours
  21. Dangling
  22. Ceaseless Night
  23. The Witching Hour
  24. The Burrow
  25. Mental Rape
  26. Occupy My Mind
  27. Caring for My Mind
  28. Therapy: Prices Update
  29. Passover
  30. To Melancholia
  31. Into the Dark Wood
  32. The Mad Poet’s Tea Party
  33. Acrostic #2
  34. Seroquelled
  35. Super Madwoman
  36. I Peeped
  37. How?
  38. Solitude
  39. Awakening
  40. Spirals
  41. McMadness
  42. I Called You Mad
  43. There’s Something Dead in My House
  44. When They Came to Get You
  45. I am Not the Same Person
  46. Surgery of the Soul
  47. Threadbare
  48. Calculating the Cost
  49. Suicide
  50. Staying Alive
  51. To Be or Not To Be
  52. Beggar
  53. Housemate
  54. Downsizing
  55. The Social Worker
  56. Where is the Rage?
  57. The Sanity App
  58. Done to Death
  59. A Life