Lucy Hurst's debut is a startlingly bold and innovative chapbook. These poems explore experiences of illness, medicine, and disability, through visceral phrasing and mordant humour. Modern Medicine embodies the weirdness and discomfort of bodily suffering.
'Brutally funny, experimental and fiercely original poetry that digs into chronic illness, disability, and the complicated pains of being alive in a body right now. Lucy Hurst is a dynamic, essential new voice in poetry.' - Rebecca Tamás, Lecturer, Poet and Author
Extract from Modern Medicine:
Leeches
the leech feeds by attaching its sucker onto the surface. the mouth
opens exposing teeth, and pierces into the patient's skin. blood is
drained to keep the body in balance.
if you touch a chess piece, you have to move it / pain brings
with it a shame & isolation unjustifiable by metaphor / words
become reductive / unsatisfactory / watch as the blood drains
from your arm, slowly / the body has an appetite for so
much more / guzzling, draining away / delicious in muscular
intuition / these sufferings don't make art: they sit in boxes,
like cats, demanding feeding / monitor the skin / confine to
regulation / this disgusting display of bodily logic / is not a
game of balance / but of skill
"There is a surreal frankness to Modern Medicine. It lays itself out on the table and forces you to become a spectator to the unbearable strangeness of medical intervention. With darkly intimate encounters between patient and doctor; tactile form; and a delicate interplay of vulnerability and power, Hurst offers an invaluable contribution to the long, inconvenient history of the female body in pain." - Abi Palmer, Writer and Activist
