A Hospital Odyssey
2010
First Published
3.75
Average Rating
173
Number of Pages
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's inner space and the strange habitats created by disease, including the chimeras people see when they're unwell. 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's basement. In her desperate search Maris meets and converses with Aneurin Bevan, founder of the NHS. Immensely readable, "A Hospital Odyssey" is a modern Dr Who meets Paradise Lost. The poem what is health? And what does it mean to care for someone who's ill? Gwyneth Lewis' dramatisation of A Hospital Odyssey was broadcast as Radio 4's Afternoon Drama on 26 June 2014.
Avg Rating
3.75
Number of Ratings
28
5 STARS
25%
4 STARS
36%
3 STARS
29%
2 STARS
11%
1 STARS
0%
goodreads
Author
Gwyneth Lewis
Author · 9 books
Gwyneth Lewis was Wales' National Poet from 2005-06, the first writer to be given the Welsh laureateship. She has published eight books of poetry in Welsh and English. Chaotic Angels (Bloodaxe Books, 2005) brings together the poems from her three English collections, Parables & Faxes, Zero Gravity and Keeping Mum. Her latest book is Sparrow Tree. Gwyneth wrote the six-foot-high words for the front of Cardiff's Wales Millennium Centre (which are located just in front of the space-time continuum, as seen on Dr Who and Torchwood.)
