What is poetry doing in hospitals?

Abstract

This article addresses the issue of the presence of poetry in hospitals. It first highlights the unexpected points of convergence between these two normative systems. Then it attempts to show how the NHS has repeatedly made use of poetry and underlines the increasing presence, in hospitals, of the potential therapeutic value of poetry. The article then reverses its angle of analysis as it examines the presence of hospital in a selection of poems. The confrontation of “poetry in hospital” and “hospital in poetry” leads us to address the status of the poetic sign in hospital and the status of hospital as a poetic sign—a reciprocal mise en abyme which, in the end, does not appear as particularly strange.

Keywords

• poetry
• hospital
• NHS
• patient
• sign