Trigger Warning: This article addresses mental health.
This month on Holistic Horrors we take a brief look at the role of poetry in promoting well-being and connectiveness. Numerous studies suggest that this is the case. For example, in their 2018 study examining the value of writing poetry as a “means to help people living with chronic pain to explore and express their narratives in their own unique way”, researchers Hovey, Khayat, and Feig concluded that “to write cathartic poetry means bringing into presence our inner reflective thinking, emotions, and self-empathy to help ourselves and others who suffer alongside us.” (Hovey et al., 2018, n.p.) HWA Wellness Committee member Angela Yuriko Smith, the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Tortured Willows, is of the same mind. She says, “Writing is excellent therapy. It allows us to give voice to the unthinkable. We can tell our secret fears and desires to a trustworthy source that won’t judge us.”
In another study, Havard scholars Xiang and Yi conducted a series of virtual poetry workshops as a vehicle to help participants form meaningful social relationships. They claimed that participants consistently remarked on “the sense of belonging and community that the workshops provided, and how encouraged they were to speak and share their hopes and fears, their worries, and joys, and to feel a real connection to others, while learning and immersing themselves in poetry.” (Xiang & Yi, 2020, n.p.)
The authors went on to conclude that “reading poetry can provide solace and great hope to us, as it reaffirms our place in the world and, in those moments when we come across a poem or certain lines that strongly resonate with us, it is as if we are jolted with electricity at the sheer joy of knowing we can share a bond with someone who we may have never met.” (Xiang & Yi, 2020, n.p.)
Bram Stoker Award-winning poet and former HWA Poetry Showcase editor Stephanie M. Wytovich would agree, stating in a 2020 Litreactor article that “in poetry, specifically in horror, we’re able to reach out into darkness in hopes that understanding the shadows will shed light on our fears. It’s a way of taking what we’ve been told is our weakness and using it instead as a strength to create something beautiful, because in the end, when we write and allow ourselves to be open and honest, raw and susceptible, it creates a group of warriors and draws in other people who have also walked into the night and lived to tell the tale.”
Likewise, in the introduction to her debut collection, The Price of a Small Hot Fire, poet E.F. Schraeder writes, “Horror poetry, like other horror media, provides a path to explore what frightens us with a distance that affords safety. In the course of a few phrases and images, the horror poem invites readers through a variety of dangers and shattering losses, often with an unflinching clarity.”
So this month the HWA Wellness Committee is proud to bring you this selection of 14 exquisite dark poems—both original and reprints, including some award-nominated works—from nine exceptional poets, all of whom share their very personal perspectives on aspects of mental health. We hope these poems will inspire, inform, entertain, offer hope, and remind anyone who might be struggling right now that you are not alone.
A special thanks to our featured poets, L.E Daniels, Dave Jeffery, Celine Murray, Sumiko Saulson, Anton Cancre, Cindy O’Quinn, Angela Yuriko Smith, E.F. Schraeder, and Claire Fitzpatrick for sharing your poems with us.
“Night Terrors” by L. E. Daniels
Shadows stretch late-afternoon-long to deep-solid-dark—
A mirror for your dread.
Often, themes repeat: fly from sleep, see your body, a gray rumple—
Oh-my-god-am-I-dead?
You strike the wall like a bird trapped and wake panting, bed empty.
You glance down the hall at children asleep.
Your husband, the night owl awake, calls out: You’re OK. He’s used to this.
You’re not.
Maybe it’s smoke—a rolling black canopy overhead; DayGlo orange wicks up walls.
Flying, you wake racing down the hall
Set to carry children from a smokeless house, two at once.
You hear again,
You’re OK. He’s used to this.
You’re not.
Turn off the bedside lamp:
A pill knocks you down a hole saved for must-have nights,
But this medicated troll snaps at children over breakfast, and eventually, you fly anyway.
Pills journey into the cupboard, forgotten, until another must-have night.
You’re OK, you tell yourself. You’re used to this.
And you’re not.
Bodies: a gnarl of women like Guernica forever and ever, arms thrown open exclamations—
Among them, you try to breathe, heart full, your walls grow thinner—
That’s what makes you a good writer—
And in the kitchen, you hold onto the sink.
Your son taps you: Mom, you’re OK. He’s used to this.
You’re not.
Sometimes, sometimes there’s nothing—you never know when—
And sleep peels open like soft fruit. Rest takes you.
Dream snakes shy from your touch. Bodies stop asking to be seen and
You wake with the relief of birds at first light.
You’re OK. You’re used to this.
You’re not. But you will be.
Published in the Horror Writers Association Wellness Committee’s publication, Of Horror and Hope, July 2022. Finalist in the Australian Shadows Award for Poetry.
A New Englander living in Australia for 25 years, Lauren Elise Daniels is an awarded poet, editor, and author. Her novel Serpent’s Wake: A Tale for the Bitten is a Notable Work with the Horror Writers Association’s Mental Health Initiative.
“To all my neighbours” by Celine Murray
To all my neighbours,
If you hear me screaming
Don’t call the police,
I’m just alive
“Maybe paint by numbers will fix me” by Celine Murray
When you’re frozen on the tracks
Between the trolley problem of laundry
And dishes
And dusting
And sleep
And paint by numbers
When mania chases you around the house
And won’t be calmed by your relaxing instrumentals playlist
And you need to make turnovers or the apples will rot
And what do we need from the supermarket?
Text me if you think of anything else
And what if the paint drips on your jeans
And the brush goes stiff
While you unload the laundry
What if your tea goes cold again
And you haven’t sewn that button back on
Or watered the plants
Or activated your library card
Stop! Stop!
Could I just have a minute?
To finish crafting the belief
That I might ever get anything fucking done?
Celine Murray is a queer, disabled, multicultural writer from Aotearoa with a background in short stories and poetry. She has a passion for death and the monstrous and also for tea and embroidery.
“A Candle in the Abyss” by Angela Yuriko Smith
I stand at the edge
of the abyss—dark, cold, lost
with a single flame
to illuminate
the midnight chaos ahead.
Quivering candle
to drive away dark…
it will never be enough
to defeat the night.
I toss my pale light
into the pit where it falls
a wavering star
the ghost of a sun
plummeting past sad faces
I only now see.
Momentary shine
proves I am not all alone
on this precipice.
In absolute dark
a small spark makes a difference.
I strike a new match.
Published in Kraken Fever by Angela Yuriko Smith and Kyra Starr, Yuriko Publishing 2021, p.61.
Angela Yuriko Smith is a third-generation Shimanchu/Ryukyuan-American, award-winning poet, author, and publisher with 20+ years of newspaper experience. Publisher of Space & Time magazine (est. 1966), two-time Bram Stoker Awards® Winner, and an HWA Mentor of the Year, she shares Authortunities, a free weekly calendar of author opportunities at authortunities.substack.com.
“Ship of Fools” by Dave Jeffery
Thought: thick, turgid—
A world of treacle
Through which we wade
The walls, sometimes gossamer
More often: Perspex,
Yet we are ever within them,
Incarceration incarnates—
Pinel’s prisoners, now fettered
Within the dungeon of Moral Treatment.
The crime? Defined—
by those who want nothing to do with us,
Yet decide our worth,
Using ignorance as both
Weapon and guide.
We are considered libertine,
So denied liberty,
Afraid this Ship of Fools should run aground,
Corrupting pseudo-reason
With pseudo-folly.
Once a hapless tar,
Jack set adrift,
Now the land-locked leper,
Throwing dark shapes
In dim doorways,
And plastic bags and garbage,
Become company and home,
Something for
The passers-by to by-pass,
Lest they question,
How all this began.
It is not action,
But reaction,
Honing the ignorance
Of so many, towards so few.
And there is a dawning sadness that:
Any parity, any semblance of unity
Bonding outcast to socialite,
Finds form in fear.
Published in the Horror Writers Association Wellness Committee’s publication, Of Horror and Hope, July 2022, from Finding Jericho by Dave Jeffery, Demain Publishing, 2020.
Dave Jeffery is the author of 18 novels, two collections, and numerous short stories and poems. Before retiring to write full-time, Jeffery worked in the NHS for 35 years specialising in the field of mental health nursing and risk management. He holds a BSc (Hons) in Mental Health Studies and a Master of Science Degree in Health Studies and is the current HWA Wellness Committee co-chair.
“I Will Not Stall Time” by Claire Fitzpatrick
I am solitude
I live within a dream
The shape of happiness
As firm as wildfire trees
I am tired
Of sleeping in this lonely room
Cocooned within this lonely air
Stifled by silence
I am a deserted city
Of dwindling hope
Within this homeless house
Breathing stale air
I am bending truths
Disguised as pathways
Opaque boundaries
A hundred thousand sighs
I am drowned
I crave warm fingerprints
Tracing the ventricles
Of my heart
Happiness sends
Droplets
Down my throat
Yet I remain parched
It’s spring
Yet I am drenched in
Eternal winter
Frozen to the bone
I’ve reached the zenith
Sick of pulling teeth
Slicing through apple
Rotten to the core
I’ve reached the pinnacle
And I will not stall time
Even though I love you
More than you deserve
I will save the spark
The once drenched match
Will strike
Again
Claire Fitzpatrick is an award-winning speculative fiction author and editor. She’s the current president of the Australasian Horror Writers Association and has two kids, six chickens, and a surprisingly flourishing vegetable garden.
“Regarding Nina Simon’s Bad Reputation” by Sumiko Saulson
How it pained me to see my mother
In all her grace and glory
Baited to make her angry
So she could fit into expectation
As long and lithe as Josephine Baker
As tall and muscular as Grace Jones
How you would fetishize her anger
A proud black goddess magnificent
Black and magnificent was her nickname
Her bearing and conduct intimidatingly same
With a long black cape and a lovely choker
More gothic than any novel by Bram Stoker
Statuesque and dark-skinned like Roxie Roker
She fought to stay whole and so no
Body broke her…
But her fight to stay whole had a price to it
A people saying she was not nice to it
Like Nina Simone, she stood moody, alone
Her mood having no artifice or device to it
My mother bemoaned her choice
A white man married two kids and divorce
My white father stealing her black voice
Black and magnificent was her nickname
She who called herself Krishna
Was one and the same
How hard it is to walk this land
A paler ghost of she…
Who holds her invisible hand
And tries to make her way through,
Win or lose…
And finds herself shod in Mama’s shoes
How thick and wide and fat I am, me
Cast inside your roles of Mammy
Escape we’d love to but, now, can we?
I am too old and fat to run away
From the roles in which you have me enslaved
My mom was Krishna, I am Ska
But to your ass I look like Ma
A caricature in an Octavia Spencer movie
A nutcase like Stephen King’s Mr. Toomey
I thought I was a horror writer
But it seems
I will only ever be
A sassy black woman meme
Your racism sewed up tight
Tattered at the seams
It holds up your privilege white
Makes black folks wrong
And you always right
Nina Simone is dead
but her bad reputation lives on
Bad for being a domestic violence victim
Who held her head up too long
Looked too strong
And showed too much personal pain
In her song
A woman done wrong
But like my Mama
She was Black
So you never see pain
Just drama
“Surviving” by Sumiko Saulson
Surviving others has a certain weight to it
A palpable heaviness
As though your clothing, tear-dampened
Is bearing down on you with its cloying sway
Pulling you into the floor
When you walk forward, and that grief
Compounded by grief,
Drags at your feet,
Ghosts grabbing your ankles
While you push on through
From the Bram Stoker Award Nominated The Rat King: A Book of Dark Poetry
Third Place Science Fiction Poetry Association Dwarf Star Award Winner (tie)
“Turbulent Waters” by Sumiko Saulson
Still waters don’t always run deep
Nor are the anxious automatically shallow
But the intense and uptight
Skiddish and nervous
Have fair weather tendencies
Rarely seen among those
With steel nerves and reserves of patience
Those who crack with every panic attack
Lack
From the Bram Stoker Award Nominated The Rat King: A Book of Dark Poetry
Sumiko Saulson is a Bram Stoker Award-nominated poet for their 2022 collection The Rat King: A Book of Dark Poetry (Dooky Zines), and an award-winning author of Afrosurrealist and multicultural sci-fi and horror whose latest novel Happiness and Other Diseases is available on Mocha Memoirs Press.
“In The Beginning There Was Bipolar” by Cindy O’Quinn
More often than not she was angry, other times she was low and blue.
I tried to catch her on those in-between days,
on those days she was my sister.
I wished for more days like that,
not the days when she was beyond the black.
Tread lightly until mood was known,
steer clear of the vile tongue and claws that scratch.
It was temporary, I knew she would come back.
Flesh and blood shared, but not mind,
her mind ticked to another mind clock.
Behind the door that didn’t lock,
held my back against it and feet to the wall,
it was all that would separate.
Soon she would enter,
and stand in darkness so dark, not even the shadows came in.
Threats were promises,
and the bruises were real.
Altered state tamed the demons that resided inside.
Rings of smoke circled above,
vultures waited for their slice of life’s pie.
Diagnosis was a lonely road and many years away.
Self-medicate to ease the pain,
keep the beast at bay and prepare to wait.
She was my sister,
and in the beginning there was always bipolar.
“Hollow” by Cindy O’Quinn
I have a hollow feeling inside,
not just a hunger,
that the sadness keeps alive,
but the hollow is now inside
my thoughts as well.
There is something missing
from the shadows of my mind.
The goodness that once
surely dwelt within
has sought company elsewhere.
From the graveyard of my soul
waits respite from the dark.
Be ever present,
the sounds of the night,
and lift me again from Death’s dark row.
“–the invisible woman–” by Cindy O’Quinn
i never would have imagined,
not this day and age
that a person could disappear
–just fade away–
but it can and it did,
it happened to me
just that way
–just gone away–
people stopped noticing
but that was okay
those nearest remained
–until that day–
the day eyes stared through me,
conversation veered around me,
and I became the invisible woman
–why stay–
could they remember – anyway
it was easier to go
just continue to fade
–invisible–
i’ll keep being her
the invisible woman they made,
and simply walk away…
“Reflection” by Cindy O’Quinn
I looked into the mirror
out of habit – not vanity
I wondered who I would see.
A woman with familiar eyes
was there,
staring back at me.
There were lines in the mirror
as well as her face.
My eyes could see
past the reflection,
before the decades,
at the person that used to be me.
I touched the reflection
and was completely replaced.
Cindy’s four poems first published in Return to Graveyard Dust by Cindy O’Quinn, released in 2017 from Goose River Press.
Cindy O’Quinn is an Elgin, Rhysling, and Dwarf Star-nominated poet, and a four-time Bram Stoker Award-nominated writer. She lives in the woods of northern Maine.
“500 POUNDS” by Anton Cancre
He said
that he once put 500 pounds
on his shoulders, squatted down
almost to the point
that his ass touched the ground,
then got back up.
I didn’t
tell him that on most days,
I go to bed at night and get up
in the morning,
knowing full well that an entire day
lies ahead of me.
Instead,
I smiled. Nodded my head
and constricted a few facial muscles
to show I was
properly astonished and said
that was awesome.
Anton Cancre’s mother wasn’t really pregnant with them when she went to see The Exorcist, but they tell people that anyways because it sounds cool. Their poetry collections, Meaningless Cycles in a Vicious Glass Prison and This Story Doesn’t End the Way We Want All The Time as well as their nonfiction book about Silent Hill, Nightmares of Blood and Flesh, are available from Dragon’s Roost Press. They’re also a luddite who still has a blogspot website (antoncancre.blogspot.com). Any/All.
“How to Avoid Feeling” by E.F. Schraeder
Once I jumped deep into a safe, dark well,
hid in a shadowy cavern, shivering.
I quieted myself with labels and diagnoses
that made sense of the pulsing panic, chaos, dots of light.
I climbed and scraped a path with bleak, bloody hands
like a terrible shadow, risking the stony climb to flee.
I vanished, barefoot, into the listening heart of trees,
waiting for roots to console the softness of my feet.
I have consumed and denied more or less than I need,
lit fires, burned my crumpled intentions like spells.
chain smoked my lungs into charcoal,
sliced into muscle with weights and blades,
poured myself into colorful bottles.
plunged fists into crumbling walls,
put life on pause to confirm
there was nothing so terrible as myself.
Alone, I sucked in air thick with sticky silences, moving
like a click beetle convinced I could right myself with twists.
Published in The Price of a Small Hot Fire by E.F Schraeder, Raw Dog Screaming Press, July 2023. p. 24. Reprinted with kind permission from the publisher.
E.F. Schraeder writes about not quite real worlds. A Rhysling-nominated poet, Schraeder’s work has appeared in journals and anthologies and their full length publications include The Price of a Small Hot Fire (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2023), What Happened Was Impossible (Ghoulish Books, 2023), and other works.
Works Cited
Hovey, R.B., Khayat, V.C, & Eugene Feig, E (2018). Cathartic Poetry: Healing Through Narrative, The Permanente Journal Vol. 22, No. 3. https://www.thepermanentejournal.org/doi/10.7812/TPP/17-196
Wytovich Stephanie M., Conjuring Strength Through Poetry: Battling the Slasher Movie in Your Head, Litreactor, October 22, 2020
Xiang, D.H., Yi, A.M. A Look Back and a Path Forward: Poetry’s Healing Power during the Pandemic. J Med Humanit 41, 603–608 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-020-09657-z
The HWA Mental Health Charter: https://horror.org/mental-health-initiative-charter/