Lumen

Tiffany Atkinson was born in Berlin in 1972 to an army family, and lived in Wales after moving to Cardiff to take a PhD in Critical Theory. After teaching at Aberystwyth University for some years, she is now Professor in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She won the Cardiff Academi International Poetry Competition in 2001. Her first collection, Kink and Particle (Seren, 2006), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, won the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was shortlisted for the Glen Dimplex New Writers Award. Catulla et al (Bloodaxe Books, 2011), her second collection, was shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year) in 2012 and was a TLS Book of the Year. Her third collection, So Many Moving Parts (Bloodaxe Books, 2014), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and won the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year) in 2015. She is the editor of a theoretical textbook, The Body: A Reader (2003), and has strong research interests in the medical humanities, especially the history of anatomy and representations of the body. Her fourth collection, Lumen (Bloodaxe Books, 2021), includes a sequence exploring representations of pain, illness and recovery – work that won the 2014 Medicine Unboxed Prize – and is Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She is currently working on a series of critical essays about ‘the poetics of embarrassment’.

Tiffany Atkinson’s fourth collection, Lumen, is delightfully innovative and thought-provoking in at times troubling, moving, intense and also exhilarating ways.... Lumen is one of those collections that is infinitely re-readable, sparking new connections and revealing new delights every time.

• I Dolorimeter: 19 readings11 /ˌdɒləˈrɪmɪtə/12 Table 8.1: What makes patients anxious about gastroscopy14 Heroin works15 Found poem I17 Accident & Emergency19 Song of a pain20 McGill Pain Questionnaire (annotated) please tick21 Mr Broad’s morphine23 Neuropathy25 SOCRATES27 Found poem II28 A Biblical pain & an aside on bedside manner30 Pranidhana31 A line from the doctor (annotated)32 Clean windows34 A bad cold35 Signs of the body: longitudinal sample at tea break36 Last38 The smokers outside Bronglais hospitalII41 You can’t go there50 The heart it’s true looks jaunty51 Walking with Virginia52 In this class53 Mantras54 The department of small arts55 Consent56 Dear Sam57 It is a very gracious hotel58 Workshop59 Panels60 There is no sexual relation61 Hymn62 Dog speaks63 Categories of experience c. 201664 The poem Kolkata65 Wire-seller, Lal-Bazar66 Kalighat67 Yoga68 Parable69 Postscript70 21 points for a feminist essay on film72 Burgeon73 Neighbour74 Experiment76 Eggshell79 Notes