From the insanity found in modern politics to the genuine tragedies of mental illness, this month we want your prose to help us find sense in the world
We live in a mad, mad world. If you don’t believe me, just watch the news tonight to see the full gamut of insanity on display. From low tragedy to high farce, politics, economics and celebrity culture all seem to be locked in a downward spiral of lunatic proportions. It’s enough to drive a poet to despair.
Mind you, this is no new thing. In the 18th century, a poet like Christopher Smart could be driven to the asylum by virtue of religious experiences that were at odds with the dictates of the rational fashion of the time. His contemporaries considered that, by virtue of their resistance to reason, the insane were a danger to society and should be held in isolation – so it was with Smart. During the six years he spent in mental health asylums, he wrote most of his very best poetry, including the wonderful Jubilate Agno, which sees the poet turn inwards for his inspiration, ignoring the bedlam of his surroundings and making poetry of Orphic power.
I have lived it, and I know too much.
My café-nerves are breaking me
With black, exhausting information.
Related: Poetry expresses what it is to be human – it’s therapy for the soul | Adam O’Riordan
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