Tom Pow's powerful new collection of poetry explores the imaginative legacy of a nineteenth-century lunatic asylum, the Crichton, drawing on the richly-documented history of the site. This remarkable book includes the sequence `Resistances' gathered from female patients' notes, but Pow brings many others within his compass: Nebuchadnezzar, Tom Thumb, Peter Pan, Charcot (Master of Salpetriere, the female asylum in Paris, `that great emporium of human misery'), all make an appearance, as do Freud and the Wolf Man. The Crichton Lunatic Asylum was at the forefront of the great nineteenth century European-wide `trade in lunacy' - a period when old assurances were crumbling and our modern sense of the permeability of identity was being formed.
- ISBN10 6612095172
- ISBN13 9786612095177
- Publish Date 14 February 2008
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 11 March 2010
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Salt
- Format eBook
- Pages 96
- Language English