Reading & Writing Poetry of Illness

Join us for an 7-week writing course to produce new poetry on the theme of illness.

In 1926, Virginia Woolf wrote ‘considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings…it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.’

Others extol the virtues and the necessity of literature when faced with illness. Rachel Robertson argues that the question, ‘What it means to be ill?’ is a ‘a complex conundrum’ and one ‘not answerable solely through medical language’, believing the illness experience must be understood using ‘other tools including and especially literature’.

This course will explore how the lived experience of illness might be inscribed in the lyric poem. Contemporary Irish, British, American and Australian poems of illness will be considered in terms of theme, form and disclosure.

Stephanie will also draw on her own PhD research which demonstrated that poetry’s stylistic range and formal properties make it a medium well suited to expressing the experience of chronic illness.

Whether one has first-hand experience or has witnessed and supported others with illness, these experiences can be expressed and transformed in poetry. Stephanie will offer personal and theoretical perspectives on the illness experience and present a range of stimulating prompts and exercises to mine the experience and generate new writing.

Topics include whether to express the illness experience directly or obliquely; issues of disclosure, voice and the poetic ‘I’; common themes and effective poetic forms.

The course will provide a stimulating, supportive environment to explore and express the complex and multi-layered nature of the illness experience.

All levels of experience are welcome, though this course is mostly suited for those at an Intermediate level.

About the tutor

Stephanie Conn is a multi-prize winning poet and experienced creative writing facilitator.

Her collections include Copeland’s Daughter (Smith/ Doorstep, 2016) chosen by Billy Collins as winner of the Poetry Business Competition; The Woman on the Other Side (Doire Press, 2016) which was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award for Best First Collection; Island (Doire Press, 2018) and off-kilter (Doire Press, 2022) exploring the lived experience of chronic illness, researched and written as part of a PhD on Poetry and Illness.

Stephanie was the 2023 Poetry Ireland resident poet at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, and a 2024 recipient of the Arts Council of N.I. Major Award and the Royal Society of Literature’s Literature Matters Award.