Chronic Women anthology gives us all a voice

By Setareh Ebrahimi

Category: Poetry

Audience: Adults

Themes: Chronic health conditions, healthcare, diagnosis, survival, family, work

Disability representation: Different disabilities and health conditions represented throughout

Reviewer rating: ****

A refreshingly inclusive anthology of female identifying poets with rich life experiences who also have chronic health conditions.

Chronic Women is refreshingly inclusive. With English and Welsh copies of each poem, its pages are voices that write of different conditions – not just the physical, but also the psychological. The poems are all so different, yet what is common to all of them is an honesty, perhaps one that comes with having a chronic health condition. 

We would like to think that most people would know that individuals with a chronic health condition are intelligent and can have a rich life experience, yet there is sadly a huge amount of work to be done in this area. This anthology works towards that. 

Revealing collective experiences

Each poem is accompanied by a few sentences about the poet which tells us so much. Often they have similar stories; stories of many-year-long waiting times on the NHS or of being treated with no compassion. 

This anthology is timely. It has been released during a period in which more women are speaking up about how the healthcare system has failed them, how they have been dismissed or worse, labelled ‘crazy’. This current dismissal plays into a historical trend of the idea of ‘hysterical’ women, or ‘the mad woman in the attic’. 

Humour, emotion and hope

There is humour present in Chronic Women, albeit often dark, as seen in the poems ‘Hiding Injury’ and ‘Barbie Waits in NHS Wheelchair Services’, amongst others. 

This book is emotional, but not without hope. And it makes the very important point that not all illnesses are visible. 

“My differences – repetitive behaviours, differences with sensory processing and social communication – weren’t a sickness to be cured. Just another way of being in the world.” – Kandace Siobhan Walker

Although the poets in this collection, such as Mel Perry in ‘The Art of Hearing’, write of the limiting nature of their conditions, new spaces and possibilities are also imagined. The collection shows us that a condition is not always disability without break. It is also sometimes just experiencing the world differently, such as when Kandace Siobhan Walker writes of ‘escaping into a data centre’.  

Chronic Women shows that people with chronic health conditions aren’t just other, they are part of the fabric of life. They are mothers (as seen in ‘After Birth’ by Emma Smith-Barton), children, colleagues, and friends. 

Find out more about Chronic Women and buy the book from Literature Wales.