Nancy Dunlop is a poet and essayist whose chapbook, Hospital Poems, was published by Indie Blu(e) in 2022. A finalist in the AWP Intro Journal Award and the 2023 Northwind Writing Award, Dunlop has been published in a number of print and digital journals, including Swank, Truck, Green Kill Broadsheet, The Little Magazine, Writing on the Edge, 13th Moon, Writers Resist: The Anthology, and Through the Looking Glass: Reflections on Madness and Chaos Within. Her work has also been heard on NPR. She received her Ph.D. in English from SUNY Albany, where she taught for 25 years. She resides in Upstate New York with one husband and two cats.
“Inpatient and outpatient psychiatric care exists within the hermetically sealed white space pressing in on the poems in Nancy Dunlop’s deeply moving chapbook, Hospital Poems. The impact? No extraneous words, no lines that edge out too far, no stanzas that speak a little too long. Any persona between you and the author is stripped away as well, no games, no antics, no masks, only the author speaking directly from somewhere close to the bone. After reading a few poems, you’ll realize you’ve been holding your breath, the poems are this taut.”
—Suzette Marie Bishop, Jaguar’s Book of the Dead
“Harrowing and comforting, this riveting collection is therapeutic by design. As both an inpatient and outpatient of mental hospitals, poet Nancy Dunlop becomes a keen observer: “What we did, mostly/ was watch each other.” One patient is “sad. Slumped and furtive.” One doctor is “like a job title . . . a perfect/ brochure.” In swift, visceral portraits, the poet gives glimpses of the agitated mind’s carnival as well as the medicated body’s shudder, quiver, spasm. Hospital Poems opens with agitation and an apparition as a newcomer enacts a seemingly endless loop. The book ends with patience: Two souls in a waiting room offer solace by their shared presence. We watch as each body “holds on for dear life.” Readers are entrusted with stories of those who “had already/ suffered, already knew/ how to be compassionate.” Dunlop’s humanity teaches us to build relationships. Her violent concision cultivates a clarity that helps us navigate trauma with empathy.”
-Lori Anderson Moseman, Okay?
To purchase Hospital Poems, click here.
Publication Date: August 25, 2022
ISBN-13: 978-1951724177
Indie Blu(e) Publishing 