‘It was pelvic pain and it started slowly in November 2003, two
weeks after a fall. I slipped on the marble bathroom floor of a Warsaw hotel
and bounced off the sharp edge of the bath, breaking three ribs on the lower
left side. The pain was intermittent at first. It was also familiar. . . .’
In How Does It Hurt?, acclaimed poet and biographer
Stephanie de Montalk tells the story of the chronic pain that has invaded her
life for more than ten years. She considers how her early experiences have been
cast into fresh relief by what she has endured, then goes back in time to
investigate the lives and works of three writers who also lived with and wrote
about pain: ‘the consolator’, English social theorist Harriet Martineau
(1802–1876), ‘the vendor of happiness’, French novelist Alphonse Daudet
(1840–1897), and ‘the imago’, Polish poet Aleksander Wat (1900–1967). Through
these explorations De Montalk confronts the paradox of writing about suffering:
where we can turn when the pain is beyond words?
A unique blend of memoir, imaginative biography and poetry, How
Does It Hurt? is a groundbreaking contribution to the understanding of
chronic pain, and a spellbinding literary achievement.
About the author
Born in 1945, Stephanie de Montalk has worked as a nurse and a
documentary film maker. She has published four collections of poetry, a
biography of her cousin, Unquiet World: The Life of Count Geoffrey Potocki
de Montalk, and a novel, The Fountain of Tears, and recently
completed her PhD in creative writing at Victoria University.
Hardback 210 x 138mm, 360 pages - Victoria University Press - $40.00
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