Minds on the run?

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Minds on the run? metaphors of mobility in the
poetry of madness Professor Alan
Beattie Lancaster University UK presentation
for 1st International Health Humanities
Conference Madness and Literature
University of Nottingham August 6th-8th 2010
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Lines I am John Clare4 I am yet what
I am, none cares or knows My friends forsake me
like a memory lost I am the self-consumer of my
woes They rise and vanish in oblivions
host Like shadows in love-frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am and live like vapours
tossed Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams Where there
is neither sense of life or joys But the vast
shipwreck of my lifes esteems Even the dearest
that I love the best Are strange nay, rather,
stranger than the rest. I long for scenes where
man hath never trod, A place where woman never
smiled or wept, There to abide with my Creator,
God, And sleep as I in childhood sweetly
slept, Untroubling and untroubled where I
lie, The grass below - above, the vaulted sky.
what kind of movement strikes you most in this
poem? why?
life as an ocean voyage from the sweet sleep of
childhood to the shipwreck of esteem dreams to
a longed-for sleep of death
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Admission Emily Riall7 There is a large
expanse of dotted carpet stretched between us. If
I stare too hard at it the dots start moving.
Like beetles. My chair sags in the seat.
Someones stubbed a cigarette out on the
arm. She fills in the boxes on her page Age,
weight, height. Various other pointless bits of
information that no one will ever read again.
Unless I go missing (NSR9). I have already been
through my history but they will make me go over
it again. Apparently though everything is written
down no one can be bothered to read it. Im
shown to my room. Theres a window covered by a
curtain in the door. That night I shiver under my
hospital blankets listening to the other
patients shout down the corridor.
the runaway self?
waiting to escape? waiting to be released?
Glimmers of Light excerpts Frank Bangay1 Alone
in a city too big for comfort
too many people
too much loneliness

the spirit gets lost under the noise and clatter
you can become part of the crowd
and fade into
insignificance
or you can express your craziness
and get singled out. Sometimes I
want to escape from this competitive age but
there is no sanctuary
just a return to the psychiatric
ward. We pay a
high price in our search for enlightenment... Hidi
ng in the shadows we feel safe
the world outside seems full of
hostile images.. a voice keeps saying
there are
glimmers of hope
so keep on believing
one day your spirit will be
strong again one day your spirit will
start dancing aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
dancing
aaaa
dancing
We all need a cocoon to crawl into Anon7 We all
need a cocoon to crawl into And seal safely
behind us A womb, a mossy dark cavern A friend to
lovingly bind strips of Coloured cloth around
us To be cupped birdlike in caring hands And held
close to have warm breath Blown gently across our
skin Words of calm whispered quietly to us And,
when the time is come To be set free in an upward
gesture A scattering of dandelion seeds
Caught by the wind and rising in a
clear sky
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The Hand of God Harry Smart 4 The hand
of God comes to me with a bottle and the label
on the bottle says take two, Nitrazepam,
Temazepam, and sleep. Who says faith is difficult
today and who would not be grateful for it, who
profess no need? Only a fool. I take the medicine
God has handed out and, magically, I sense it
start to work the sedatives are swimming in my
veins, a shoal of favourite words beyond
control, a lustre, velvet, plush and shimmering,
a bump of cushioned nerves, all warm and
murmuring the world assumes a quiet pose, test
cricket on TV, the cosy hush of snooker rooms
and peaceful bars Temazepam, Nitrazepam they
hold me softly as an evening prayer when all
distress has broken down to worship, adoration,
and the soul can rise, the body spiral out of
sight below. The sky is black and beautiful
again Im in love Temazepam, Nitrazepam and
God motet, chorale, my precious opiates all, my
liberty, my faithful champions that lift me, oh
so gently, out of hell.
the runaway self?
OR is it Others who have made our
minds run away?
In the Asylum Linda Hart7 Excuse me for a
minute, My mind escapes me. It hasnt
accidentally wandered off or taken flight to a
foreign land, it resides here in the
asylum. Each patient patient has a regime of
poverty, isolation, despair and torture which
sticks through the veneer of charity clothes
like the awkward bones of a compound fracture.
We are given elastoplast to staunch our
haemorrhaging distress, TV soaps to cleanse our
wanting souls and drugs to kill all passions,
and more drugs to kill the side-effects of the
drugs that kill all passions. And finally, we
are branded, not with a neat badge or logo
proclaiming our names, our identity, but with
Latin hieroglyphs gleaned from medical
textbooks. It helps to recognise what we are,
our species. Excuse me for a minute, My mind
escapes me.
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The Garden Anne Marr3 The tangled garden of
my dreams, I could bring to you. I could show
you, rain-beaded, A spiders web of hope,
Trapping early sun. A crazy path that curls
through bowers, Where spiky roses reach their
hungry hands, And tumbled ivy on the wall Spills
over the bruised moss. I could tell you my
desires, And wrap the flawed net of my
hopes Around us both. But you would run from the
wilderness, Wanting an ordered Italianate
space, Empty, and without me.
the runaway self?
OR is it Others who want to run away
from us?
We tell them about our country, But they do not
believe us. They say, This is not true, it is
all delusion. But remember they have never
visited our country. We say there are wonders
there, And horrors too. Heaven and Hell. But they
do not believe us. They say, This is all
delusion. We have very little industry or
commerce in our country. Only art, fantastic art,
insight and our own peculiar wisdom. They take
pity on us. They give us food and shelter. But
they expect us to obey the rules of their
country, Like some benevolent conqueror. They
want us to learn their industry and commerce,
But this is the death of some of us. We are far
happier producing fantastic art, Or simply
dreaming. They would like us to become Like the
residents of their country. Like them. But many
of us are not interested in playing their
games. We often escape back to our own country,
Where life is easier, less pressured, more
inviting. They try to coax us back, Full of good
intentions and well-meaning. But we are often far
happier in our home. There is another country.
Not far away. In fact it is very near.
Another Country John Exell6 There is another
country. Not far away. In fact it is very
near. Mental Health Professionals learn all they
can about this other country. Talk to people, its
observers and residents, but mostly its
observers. Read books and papers about
it, Attempt to learn its language, But its
borders are closed to most of them They cannot
visit it. They meet us at the border.
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Leaving Hospital Peter Street2 Five months
inside the shell of a Work-House/Asylum sixty
years to paint over the smell of cruelty and
innocent faces they jammed between the
bricks. I want to be an undercoat for a little
longer and tell dirty jokes to the nineteenth
century. Theyre forcing me out into Now. Into
an upside-down inside-out Gullivers world. Where
everythings changed
the streets, the cafes, the toilets.
To Carry the Child Stevie Smith5

To carry the child into adult life
Is good? I say it is not,
To
carry the child into adult life
Is to be handicapped.
The child in
adult life is defenceless
And if he is grown-up, knows it,
And the grown up looks at the
childish part And despises it.

The child, too, despises the clever grown-up,
The man-of-the-world, the frozen,
For the child has the tears
alive on his cheek And the man has
none of them. As
the child has colours, and the man sees no
Colours or anything,
Being easy only in things of
the mind, The child is
easy in feeling.
Easy in feeling, easily excessive
And in excess powerful,
For
instance, if you do not speak to the child
He will make trouble.
Oh it is not happy, it is
never happy, To carry
the child into adulthood,
Let the children lie down before full growth
And die in their infanthood
And be guilty of no
mans blood. But oh
the poor child, the poor child, what can he do,
Trapped in a
grown-up carapace,
But peer outside of his prison room
With the eye of an anarchist?
Apprehensions Sylvia Plath4 There is this
white wall, above which the sky creates
itself Infinite, green, utterly
untouchable. Angels swim in it, and the stars, in
indifference also. They are my medium. The sun
dissolves on this wall, bleeding its lights. A
grey wall now, clawed and bloody. Is there no way
out of the mind? Steps at my back spiral into a
well. There are no trees or birds in this
world, There is only a sourness. This red wall
winces continually A red fist, opening and
closing, Two grey, papery bags This is what I
am made of, this, and a terror Of being wheeled
off under crosses and a rain of pieties. On a
black wall, unidentifiable birds Swivel their
heads and cry. There is no talk of immortality
among these! Cold blanks approach us They move
in a hurry.
a runaway world?

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runaway words?

Noon Walk on the Asylum Lawn Anne Sexton4 The
summer sun ray shifts through a suspicious tree.
though I walk through the valley of the
shadow It sucks the air and looks around for me.
The grass speaks. I hear green chanting all
day. I will fear no evil, fear no evil The blades
extend and reach my way. The sky breaks. It
sags and breathes upon my face. in the presence
of mine enemies, mine enemies The world is full
of enemies. There is no safe place.
Lessness (excerpt) Samuel Beckett Ruins
true refuge long last towards which so many false
time out of mind. All sides endlessness earth sky
as one no sound no stir. Grey face two pale blue
little body heart beating only up right. Blacked
out fallen open four walls over backwards true
refuge issueless. Scattered ruins same grey as
the sand ash grey true refuge. Four square all
light sheer white blank planes all gone from
mind. Never was but grey air timeless no sound
figment the passing light. No sound no stir ash
grey sky mirrored earth mirrored sky. Never but
this changelessness dream the passing hour. He
will curse God again as in the blessed days face
to the open sky the passing deluge. Little body
grey face features slit and little holes two pale
blue. Blank mind. Figment light never was but
grey air timeless no sound. Blank planes touch
close sheer white all gone from mind. Little body
ash grey locked rigid heart beating face to
endlessness. On him will rain again as in the
blessed days of blue the passing cloud. Four
square true refuge long last four walls over
backwards no sound. Grey sky no cloud no sound no
stir earth ash grey sand. Little body same grey
as the earth sky ruins only upright. Ash grey all
sides earth sky as one all sides endlessness. He
will stir in the sand there will be stir in the
sky the air the sand. Never but in dream the
happy dream only one time to serve. Little body
little block heart beating ash grey only upright.
Earth sky as one all sides endlessness little
body only upright. In the sand no hold one step
more in the endlessness he will make it. No sound
not a breath same grey all sides earth sky body
ruins. Slow black with ruin true refuge four
walls over backwards no sound. Legs a single
block arms fast to sides little body face to
endlessness. Never but in vanished dream the
passing hour long short. Only upright little body
grey smooth no relief a few holes. One step in
the ruins in the sand on his back in the
endlessness he will make it. Never but dream the
days and nights made of dreams of other nights
better days. He will live again the, space of a
step it will be day and night planes sheer white
eye calm long last all gone from again over him
the endlessness..
A Lesson Kevin McCann2 The teacher paces out
The afternoon. Note
this. Note that. Learn by heart
For Monday. One child
Pounced on explains Seagulls talk to me. A
controlled burst of laughter from the class Oh
yes and what do they say? Its in seagull,
The child replies Then
adding patiently And its no good in English
doesnt rhyme. More laughter
But less this time.
Counting the Mad Donald Justice4 This one was
put in a jacket, This one was sent home, This
one was given bread and meat But would eat none,
And this one cried No No No No All day
long. This one looked at the window As though it
were a wall, This one saw things that were not
there, This one things that were, And this one
cried No No No No All day long. This one thought
himself a bird, This one a dog And this one
thought himself a man, An ordinary man, And
cried and cried No No No No All day long.
Foundations Leopold Staff5 When I built upon the
sand The house fell down. When I built upon a
rock The house fell down. This time I shall
start With chimney smoke
ha ha Karen Davies4 ha ha hee hee help help me
me
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How might study of these poems metaphor clusters be illuminated by literary-linguistic theory? How might study of these poems metaphor clusters be illuminated by literary-linguistic theory? How might study of these poems metaphor clusters be illuminated by literary-linguistic theory? How might study of these poems metaphor clusters be illuminated by literary-linguistic theory? How might study of these poems metaphor clusters be illuminated by literary-linguistic theory?
3 groups of survivors poems 3 clusters of movement metaphor language as social semiotic systemic functional linguistics (Halliday) language as social semiotic systemic functional linguistics (Halliday) cognitive grammar (Langacker)
3 groups of survivors poems 3 clusters of movement metaphor 3 (meta)functions 3 elements 3 principles
I am Glimmers of light Admission, cocoon Hand of God In the Asylum The Garden Another Country the runaway self? lifecourse, patient journey, escape, lines of flight ups--downs, ins--outs, to--fro of troubled lives minds are stolen, souls are rejected. or released (Who is speaking, to whom, how?) sets up own first-person position, voice and role marks or indicates interaction, relationships, polarity Tenor (Inter)personal subject? self? Perspective establishes a point of view
Apprehensions Leaving Hospital To carry the child a runaway world? everything is changing, uninvited visitors appear, unwanted events arrive (What world is being referred to?) - observes, identifies, categorises goings-on in the outer world Field Ideational object? world? Specificity recognises external norms and schemata
Noon Walk.. Counting.. Ha Ha Foundations A Lesson Ping runaway words? repetition, quotation, reduction, modification (eg babble, chant, spell) by language devices that entrain, unsettle, entrap (What kind/mode of text is this?) - conveys meaning through the way language is dis/organised, eg cohesion? consistency? continuity? contrast? disruption? allusion? dilapidation of discourse? Mode (Inter)textual medium? lexical play? Prominence foregrounds processes stylistic surface textual form structure
(Carter Simpson 1989 Halliday 1978, 33 62 117 142-5 222-30 Halliday Martin 1993, 28-35 McHale 1992 Stockwell 2003, 25) (Carter Simpson 1989 Halliday 1978, 33 62 117 142-5 222-30 Halliday Martin 1993, 28-35 McHale 1992 Stockwell 2003, 25) (Carter Simpson 1989 Halliday 1978, 33 62 117 142-5 222-30 Halliday Martin 1993, 28-35 McHale 1992 Stockwell 2003, 25) (Carter Simpson 1989 Halliday 1978, 33 62 117 142-5 222-30 Halliday Martin 1993, 28-35 McHale 1992 Stockwell 2003, 25) (Carter Simpson 1989 Halliday 1978, 33 62 117 142-5 222-30 Halliday Martin 1993, 28-35 McHale 1992 Stockwell 2003, 25)
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How might study of these poems metaphors link with new thinking about mobilities in social research? How might study of these poems metaphors link with new thinking about mobilities in social research? How might study of these poems metaphors link with new thinking about mobilities in social research? How might study of these poems metaphors link with new thinking about mobilities in social research?
3 groups of survivors poems 3 clusters of movement metaphor echoes, resonances, parallel developments in mobilities theory and research reference source
I am Glimmers of light Admission, cocoon Hand of God In the Asylum The Garden Another Country the runaway self? lifecourse, patient journey, escape, lines of flight ups--downs, ins--outs, to--fro of troubled lives minds are stolen, souls are rejected. or released clinical practice as ontological choreography? resistance/escape as ontological disobedience? protest moves as ontological détournements? liquid self liquid love, liquid life, liquid times? - the post-identitarian (neo-nomadic) fluid self Cussins Woolgar Melucci Bauman DAndrea
Apprehensions Leaving Hospital To carry the child a runaway world? everything is changing, uninvited visitors appear, unwanted events arrive beyond societies contingent, motile socialities new mode of being/feeling impermanent, ludic the new sociological paradigm of flow the neo-nomadic lifestyles of community care Urry Thrift Shields Parr
Noon Walk.. Counting.. Ha Ha Foundations A Lesson Ping runaway words? repetition, quotation, reduction, modification (eg babble, chants, spells) by language devices that infest, entrain, entrap life identity as a palimpsest, patchwork text writing experiments in motionless voyaging fluid mindscapes ? fictocriticism as genre? heterotopia scrambled, mixed-genre, residual metaphoricity mobility, flow (and vice-versa) - p-m poems as plurivocal maps of a p-m world Bauman Deleuze Doel Law/Mol Kerr/Ne Hetherington YiannopolouMcHale
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What might study of these poems metaphor clusters contribute to rethinking mental health practice? What might study of these poems metaphor clusters contribute to rethinking mental health practice? What might study of these poems metaphor clusters contribute to rethinking mental health practice? What might study of these poems metaphor clusters contribute to rethinking mental health practice?
3 groups of survivors poems 3 clusters of movement metaphor lessons for non-oppressive mental health work reference source
I am Glimmers of light Admission, cocoon Hand of God In the Asylum The Garden Another Country the runaway self? lifecourse, patient journey, escape, lines of flight ups--downs, ins--outs, to--fro of troubled lives minds are stolen, souls are rejected. or released adapt the Tidal model guide clients from storm /shipwreck/drowning to new course of recovery adopt postpsychiatry principles not monologue but multivoiced, ambiguous, contradictory, fluid insist on collaborative conversations, make sure theres an empath on the team encourage and support moving on, from medication to speaking bitterness to replotting lifecourse to mutual aid to social activism Barker Bracken Thomas Newnes/Holmes Beresford Campbell Holland
Apprehensions Leaving Hospital To carry the child a runaway world? everything is changing, uninvited visitors appear, unwanted events arrive chart the epigenetic landscapes of alienation re-cast revalue casualties as cartographers, and misfits as framebreakers May Krieger Parr Hacking Deleuze
Noon Walk.. Counting.. Ha Ha Foundations A Lesson Ping runaway words? repetition, quotation, reduction, modification (eg babble, chants, spells) by language devices that entrain, unsettle, entrap ban toxic texts, embrace critical narratives retell every story as a history of the body - encourage writing at the edge, at the skin try experimental poetry, writing jouissance, artifice and revolution in language open up sensescapes, shut up and dance? Hornstein Read Kozel Wolff Ahmad Perloff Forrest-Thompson Kristeva, McHale Aldridge Warren
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back to the beginning a point of departure, a
way of going on
a
way of seeing

Survivors poems are unique first-hand
accounts of madness experience. They are stories
that need to be heard1, rich in movement
metaphors2. They (often) break both a personal
silence3 and a cultural taboo3. They convey
news not answers to the question whats wrong
with you?, aabut bulletins on what happened to
you? where, when how did your aaexperience of
madness originate? and how did you survive or
recover? They contest mainstream medicine,
orthodox psychiatry MH practice.
They may have important lessons - for all of us
- about surviving.

• We desperately need to get a glimpse of how
  our fellow men and women
• crack up, in a time and at a place (after
  Hacking, Mad Travellers 1998)
• 2. look only at movements (Deleuze 1988, 1992)
• 3. every poem breaks a silence that had to be
  overcome (Rich 1995)

a
way of doing
1 negotiate selections of survivors
poems (with interested parties). 2 follow
the metaphors (of movement), through open-ended
questions. 3 gather collate comments
analytical, appreciative, critical, evaluative. 4
propose agenda of themes/issues that connect with
interested parties. 5 explore
questions for debate and action with interested
parties.
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towards a mobile poetic for non-oppressive mental
health practice
contexts of reception reading?
fluid and contingent socialities/ontologies in
sociology
critical maps- how to survive in turbulent
times?
metaphors of movement in survivors poetry
runaway world
a mobile poetic for non-oppressive
mental health practice?
runaway words
runaway self
creative texts - how to oppose/resist/subvert
forced choreographies of liquid capitalism?
(lit-)language as social semiotic
contexts of production writing?
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a mobile poetic for MHP ?? 1 how to survive in
liquid times, amid global/local turbulence?
Survivors, as mad travellers (actual /or
imaginary), may indeed be casualties in the sense
that they are traumatized by their unbearably
intimate proximity to the runaway world (Deleuze
2006 Glass 1989), BUT their liquid lives and
runaway selves may uniquely position them to be
cartographers of newly emerging spaces of flows
(Castells 2000) and of the messiness of the
human predicament (Bauman 1993).
Liquid modernity casts all of us as outsiders,
outcasts, strangers, others it encourages
reflexive experimentation in our
self-constitution - a manic individualism it
accelerates the liquefaction of identity into
privatised, episodic fabrications performed under
constant erasure, drifting along schizoid,
fragmentary twisted trajectories. This world is
as much about contested meanings as about
material complexity and the liquid mode of
experience courts vulnerability, insecurity,
ambivalence, confusion, and loss of orientation.
Liquid life is a series of new beginnings that
demand swift and painless endings, resulting in a
constant state of uncertainty and uprootedness
(after Bauman 2005).
Perhaps one can define particular times, and the
individual people who live through them, by their
exits - by what they think of themselves as
having to escape from and confront, in order to
live the lives they want (Phillips 2001).
survivors lives testimonies have already
pioneered creative ways of
opposing/resisting the forced choreographies of
liquid capitalism of thriving among
disappearing boundaries, dissolving networks,
liquid institutions of living on the quicksands
of radical contingency (Bauman 2007)
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a mobile poetic for MHP ?? 2 how to
create/embody fluidity - in words, and beyond?
The language (of Becketts Lessness) is
reminiscent of a person in a state of shock, or
fit of madness - the babbling of a deranged
person. This piece radically foregrounds the
linguistic medium. The construction of
sentences is so awkward that it seriously
impairs our own process of reading, and the text
thus draws our attention to the sentence
structure itself. The narrative voice has
reduced language to repetitious echoings in a
syntaxless chain of words and phrases. This
deliberate nonfluency, in combination with the
repetitive structure of the text and the
proliferation of a conspicuous lexicon of
reduction and erasure generates a style in which
the words draw attention to themselves more as
signifiers than as signifieds. The language is
free-floating in Derridean fashion. This strategy
of constructing and simultaneously deconstructing
utterance is reminiscent of Robbe-Grillet's
mouvement paradoxal (précis after Alber 2002)
Lessness works on the nerves rather than the
intellect on many counts it fulfils Becketts
ideal of accommodating the chaos of
consciousness in linguistic form (Dearlove 1982
Drew Haahr 2002)
To make a major language speak in a minor way is
to make it stutter, stammer or even wail, to
transform it into something less striated, to
destabilise deterritorialise the conventions of
the major voice, to inhabit the system and
subvert it from within (Deleuze)
modernist writing, particularly the
stream-of-consciousness novel, foregrounds
epistemological questions, ie questions about
(amodal) knowing and consciousness whereas
postmodernist writing foregrounds ontological
questions, ie questions about modes of existence,
of being (McHale 1987)
Cognitive linguistics takes up an experientialist
and anti-objectivist position, viewing the
relationship between the world on one hand, and
language--thought on the other, as
phenomenological embodiment this rejects
Cartesian dualism and reunites mind--body,
seeing language--thought - conceptualisation
itself - as embodied. Embodied experience finds
expression functionally in metaphorical
structures (Stockwell 2000)
sore MH is the effect of movement metaphors not
just catachretic didactic, but also
constitutive?
Brown B, Crawford P (2000) Snatching pleasure
from the jaws of pain a dialectical meditation
on experience of embodiment. - illness
experience chronotopes of accentuated
being/transfiguration/aesthetic production
- dressing/dosing/tendin
g a complex conversational dance
choreographies of care?
recovery as journey ? as a dance..?
Identities are constructed through a focus on the
body, which projects cultural values wellbeing
is a collage/ assemblage of exercise practices,
dietary practices etc that are at once physical,
personal social - material and aesthetic. The
body is the stage on which we enact our dramas
it has its own logic of kairos1 or chora2