- 67 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
The Mad Poet's Tea Party
About this book
but I am madness and madness is me it holds you captive like a hapless bunny caught 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
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
with their sacrifice
They stand at eternityās gate
gifted by the gods with a divine madnessā
Crazy Jane, Crazy Ann, Mad Kate
a rake in a madhouse
lunatics dancing at a ball
Charcotās madwomen of SalpĆŖtriĆØre
fools on a ship
Tom OāBedlam
a knight errant attacking windmills
Tasso imagining Gerusalemme Conquistata
Lear fantastically dressed in wild flowers
drowned Ophelia
Mad Naomi of Kaddish
DĆ¼rerās Melancholia
the madwoman in the attic
the March Hare and Mad Hatter
Mad Meg at the Gates of Hell
a bewildered face in Goyaās Madhouse
an inmate in the menās 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 warā
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
āa place full of hungerā
hunger for
ākindness,
āfriendship,
ālove
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 livesā
friends & family picking up the pieces.
Larundel Landās
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 themā
we will remember you
sitting in smoky rooms
crying alone
laughing with deranged angels
āmud...
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half title
- Title
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- The Madwoman in this Poem
- Sensing Madness
- Congratulations
- Medicated
- Cold Chemical Comfort
- Marinade
- Unquiet Mind
- Of Shifting Images & Auras
- Acrostic #1
- Seeing the Insane
- Waging War
- Alice in Larundel Land
- The Dark Hours
- Dangling
- Ceaseless Night
- The Witching Hour
- The Burrow
- Mental Rape
- Occupy My Mind
- Caring for My Mind
- Therapy: Prices Update
- Passover
- To Melancholia
- Into the Dark Wood
- The Mad Poetās Tea Party
- Acrostic #2
- Seroquelled
- Super Madwoman
- I Peeped
- How?
- Solitude
- Awakening
- Spirals
- McMadness
- I Called You Mad
- Thereās Something Dead in My House
- When They Came to Get You
- I am Not the Same Person
- Surgery of the Soul
- Threadbare
- Calculating the Cost
- Suicide
- Staying Alive
- To Be or Not To Be
- Beggar
- Housemate
- Downsizing
- The Social Worker
- Where is the Rage?
- The Sanity App
- Done to Death
- A Life