How poetry helps us be mindful intellectual illness - PBS NewsHour

Poet Shira Erlichman. image by Bao Ngo

at the backside of the sea, simply off the coast of Maryland, long island metropolis subway cars have turn into a brand new habitat for coral and fish.

Poet Shira Erlichman changed into spellbound when she study about the assignment: to eliminate historical, broken-down subway automobiles with the aid of sinking them to the bottom of the ocean, proposing a brand new surface for coral reef to develop.

pictures documenting the technique appear to reveal pollution on a large scale, the outcomes of commercial excess. but eventually they are going to support the ecosystem survive. For Erlichman, the project turned into a way to focus on taking Lithium for intellectual affliction.

"I've been instructed 1,000,000 the reason why I should not take treatment. All of that stigma is terribly true," she said.

individuals who have mental sickness problem society's commonplace narrative about what is "natural" or fit, she said.

"[People] have this theory that there's anything that's herbal and unnatural," she referred to. "There's an international conception of purity. and that i locate that once americans who've intellectual sickness speak for themselves, we truly muddy that up. americans don't need to feel that their identities have anything to do with their brains misfiring."

Erlichman has addressed intellectual disease earlier than in tune and in visual artwork, she observed. When she first obtained ailing, "writing got here ultimate of the three avenues that i really like since it is so intimate, and it's so difficult," she said. "after I paint, it's now not painful, it's soothing. once I make song, it's so deeply immersive, it's not painful. however writing is a reflect and it asks loads of us."

Erlichman is at the moment engaged on a e-book of odes to Lithium. The poems complicate preconceptions round remedy through discussing the entire spectrum of her relationship with it, she observed.

"Poetry is the closest we can get to being insides somebody's head, and so with mental disease, that's an ideal avenue," she pointed out. "I suppose intimacy is what's lacking with most things which are stigmatized. We simplest have the caricatures. if you can create intimacy … then you definitely have this ticket to figuring out and empathy."​

that you may study one in every of Erlichman's poems, or hear her examine it, under.

Ode to Lithium #140: herbal

each subway motor vehicle might be left on the ocean ground, to be assimilated into the ecosystem.Over time, every surface can be coated in existence, growing a synthetic coral reef.— "mind-blowing pictures displaying NYC Subway vehicles Being Dumped Into the Ocean" ­– Viralforest

these days I don't need to take youso I imagine you a subway carpush youllllllllllover my edgeto rust at my sea floor.Ferment & flower, steel

vacationer. I've been thrownoff my axis lllllllllllllso-rrow's my monogamouslove. as soon as I shunned youwanting to be "herbal" ­-

tea tree milk, sproutedcashews, bark deodorant"natural." Stopped taking you& quickly become misplaced in snowstroking branches for hours for

hours walked jagged llllcirclesmuttering unexpected secrets and techniques revealedby ice wept.towards my will I swallow twobusted down caterpillars

can help you sink to the bottom."It's now not personal," I inform myself.Even the ocean needslllllllllleventhe seallllllllllneeds, the seaneeds, even the sea.

Shira Erlichman​ is a creator, musician, & visual artist. a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has been featured in BuzzFeed Reader, The Offing, BUST magazine, The Massachusetts evaluation, & iciness Tangerine evaluation, amongst others. She turned into awarded the Millay Colony Residency & a James Merrill Fellowship from the Vermont Studio middle. As a musician she's shared stages with TuNe-YaRdS, Mirah, & CocoRosie. Her album "delicate Creature" can be released in August 2016. She resides in Brooklyn.