{"id":214,"date":"2024-04-24T08:10:53","date_gmt":"2024-04-24T08:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gwynethlewis.com\/site\/?page_id=214"},"modified":"2025-04-28T11:13:39","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T11:13:39","slug":"a-hospital-odyssey","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/gwynethlewis.com\/site\/a-hospital-odyssey\/","title":{"rendered":"A Hospital Odyssey"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Gwyneth<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Selected as a 2010 Times<\/em> Book of the Year<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A Hospital Odyssey<\/em> is an outrageously imaginative voyage through illness and healing. Drawing on the most recent biomedical research into stem cells and cancer, the poem is a journey through the body\u2019s inner space and the strange habitats created by disease, including the chimeras people see when they\u2019re unwell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maris, whose husband, Hardy, has been diagnosed with cancer, is separated from him. Her mythical journey leads though a surreal landscape, peopled by true and false physicians, god-celebrities, rabid statues, diseases hunting healthy bodies and a microbes holding their annual ball. The Otherworld is located in the hospital\u2019s basement. In her desperate search Maris meets and converses with Aneurin Bevan, founder of the NHS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018Lewis\u2019 epic offers up a dash of Beowulf, Dante, the Crucifixion, the bees in the Book of Judges, even \u2018Orfeo ed Euridice\u2019 and \u2018The Magic Flute\u2019\u2026 The narrator\u2026 teases us in a literary hide-and-seek, Onegin-like, from behind the mask of her protagonist. What remains is a voice vibrant, lively and clear as a bell \u2013 not looking inward so much as in wonder at the world around her. And, pressed from her lines, a rare vintage of wisdom\u2019.<\/p>\nCynthia L. Haven, San Francisco Chronicle<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018Gwyneth Lewis\u2019s astonishing book-length poem\u2026 Lewis\u2019s unfettered imagination transforms weighty subject matter into a heady mix of dream vision, ripping yarn and love story. The hospital becomes a version of Dante\u2019s Inferno, where Maris witnesses the Microbes\u2019 Ball (\u201cImagine a disco painted by Bosch\u201d) and meets, among others, Helen of Troy and Aneurin Bevan, the founder of the NHS. Along the way there are also hard-won insights: \u201cWhen love\u2019s so weary it hopes for nothing\/ It\u2019s at its strongest, though it feels no power\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a performance that more than confirms Gwyneth Lewis\u2019s reputation as one of the most exhilaratingly gifted poets of her generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An epic for our time\u2026 What contemporary poet would dare take on the challenge of such an august and demanding form? As Lewis makes clear, in a work that constantly reflects on its own processes and proceeding, writing a (female) epic was for her not a result of choice but of sheer necessity, its creation a matter of life and death\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adventitious rhyming, such as this supple verse form allows, is the natural ally of Lewis\u2019s remarkably resourceful wit and her gift for metamorphic imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\u2026 is virtuoso writing whose end mercifully, is not self-display but the healthful mobilization of the will\u2019.<\/p>\nM Wynn Thomas, The Guardian<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018Only poetry could hope to handle fantasy of this order\u2026 What is most remarkable in a book of such exuberant invention is that the reader continues to believe in Maris\u2019s intense longing for her sick husband\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\nElaine Feinstein, Independent<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018Like all the best tales, this one ends happily. With her vivid medical, mythological and painterly imagery, absorbing ruminations on language and poetry, touching evocation of the power of a marriage \u2013 and with Helen\u2019s gift of an opal and black diamond ring glinting on her finger \u2013 Gwyneth Lewis has surpassed herself\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\nRuth Fainlight, Poetry Review<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018<\/em>As a quite extraordinary piece of machinery, which all great poems must surely be, it is more than the sum of its parts that turn and fire in an elaborate harmony; it\u2019s an engine well-adjusted to its environment and is as lean-burn as any engine can get; the torque is tightened, that is to say, to maximize performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Hospital Odyssey<\/em> marks new ground. In 2010, when our corporate sensibility continues to be brutalized by the destructive reality we inhabit, collections of occasional poems that strike wearyingly conventional targets have an increasing sense of their own solipsistic irrelevance. The job of poetry, implies this book, is never to be cursory; it must travel, as this poem does, from ring to inner ring of experiential truth. Any oeuvre of value tends to lead a poet in seriousness towards epic intention. Gwyneth Lewis has arrived in that place and produced her best book to date\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\nTim Liardet, New Welsh Review<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018A Hospital Odyssey<\/em> proves vividly original, engaging in its contemporary concerns, unpredictability and wit\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\nCarrie Etter, Poetry Wales<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018This is a fascinating, beautifully written poem that describes the epic journey of the soul through the support of one\u2019s spouse through cancer treatment. It is a journey of imagination and a highly recommended read\u2019.<\/p>\nProfessor Sir Martin Evans, Nobel Laureate 2008<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018A hugely inventive epic\u2026an extraordinary world in which matrons and consultants turn into creatures, diseases are personified, and microbes hold a manic ball\u2026 There is satire and burlesque, as well as extremes of feeling in this complex and ambitious story. The whole, written in five-line stanzas, is an extraordinary achievement and a wonderful illustration of how trauma can be transformed into a work of art which universalizes it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is an exciting work\u2026 written in the tradition of Dante but it is also very contemporary. Lewis makes imaginative use of research into cancer including areas such as stem cells and makes references to issues such as cleanliness in hospital and unnecessary administration\u2026 The language is both racy and poetic and every now and then the poet steps outside the story to address the reader directly. The poem is lit with humour, satire and burlesque. At the same time it is very humane. It is a brilliantly inventive piece of work\u2019.<\/p>\nArtemis<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018I love the verve of this collection, its acerbic wit, its form, and its light coat of learning. A Hospital Odyssey<\/em> is comic, lucid, full of lithe rhythms, a bravura switchback from the prosaic to the lyrical. It\u2019s a contemporary classic and must-read that I could quote forever. I\u2019ll settle for this, one of my favourite lines from the Microbes ball when \u201cC. difficile\/<\/em> strode down the catwalk in eau-de nil\u201d\u2019.<\/p>\nEnvoi<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018Odyssey<\/em> indeed\u2026This funny-serious \u2018treatment\u2019 of illness, bolstered by a specially-garnered knowledge is one way of dealing with the possibility of a loss otherwise unspeakable\u2019.<\/p>\nNigel Jarrett, Acumen<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Publisher: Bloodaxe books<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Selected as a 2010 Times Book of the Year A Hospital Odyssey is an outrageously imaginative voyage through illness and healing. Drawing on the most recent biomedical research into stem cells and cancer, the poem is a journey through the body\u2019s inner space and the strange habitats created by disease, including the chimeras people see… Read More »A Hospital Odyssey<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-214","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nA Hospital Odyssey - Gwyneth Lewis<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A Hospital Odyssey is an outrageously imaginative voyage through illness and healing. 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