Faced with some of life’s most painful moments poetry can reassure us that we are not alone – others have suffered too. But a great poem also allows us to make sense of feelings that might otherwise be a searing amorphous mass somewhere deep inside us. Great poetry makes us understand the only half-understood; in that understanding comes relief, and it can feel very physical. This is art acting as a medicine.
The Times Higher Education‘s Belinda Jack on the rise of the medical humanities.