Poetry and Chronic Pain

Wordsworth once defined poetry as “emotion recollected in tranquility.”

I like the idea of re-collecting feelings once they’ve passed, like gathering spent blossoms. It’s a bit gothic.

For me, writing on chronic pain is easier when I’m not actually experiencing it. When I’m in its grip, I’m cranky and selfish..

A research group in Lancaster, U.K. is soliciting poetry and personal narratives on chronic pain to better understand pain from those who experience it. The poem below was published there in 2018, and originally published in the print magazine Poet Lore.