Table Of Content‘Communicating Pain is a situated first- person narrative of author Stephanie de
Montalk’s quest for ways to manage, live with, and articulate extreme chronic
pain, undergirded by the authority of experience as a patient and a nurse. Engag-
ing historical and literary others who have trod similar paths, this brilliant cross-
genre work interweaves narrative with poetry with history. The book contributes
both to the expressive history of disability/chronic illness and also to the cultural
analysis of the aesthetics that emerges from distinctive lives lived with pain. It is
a wonderful reminder that some of the most notable and innovative intellectual
and artistic figures were people with disabilities – and that the history of creativ-
ity and the history of living with suffering are inextricably intertwined. Boasting
an impressive base of practical and scholarly knowledge, Communicating Pain is
a gorgeously written, poetic book that makes reading about pain surprisingly
pleasurable.’
Professor Martha Stoddard Holmes, California State University, USA
‘Stephanie de Montalk, writing under a hostile and capricious force, not just
about pain but in pain, through pain, has produced a work already recognised
by health professionals as ground- breaking and riveting and beautiful. Her book
is political, fierce, open, buzzing with ideas about how the body treats the mind
and vice versa. It’s an unflinching account, terrifying and bleak in its tracing of
nerve pain’s unpredictable torture methods. If the defeating of a narrative
pattern –its lack of a progress – is one of chronic pain’s cruel manoeuvres, this
book is itself a triumph of patterning. It does two things at the same time: it
practices an extraordinary embrace, making us come closer and closer, while at
the same time reminding us of the arm’s length of suffering. We feel the pull of
the writer’s terrible plight, but we also experience the necessarily harsh cor-
rective of de Montalk’s exclusivity, since it is, according to this powerfully
argued text, only the fellow sufferer who can connect finally. Everyone else is
just a literary tourist. Books like this one remind us we should never get used to
anything.’
Professor Damien Wilkins, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
‘Communicating Pain is a wonderfully powerful, important, and beautiful piece
of work which makes a major contribution to the understanding of the subject of
pain. The success of the project lies in the fact that Stephanie de Montalk illumi-
nates the ugly problem of pain, from so many angles, using so many light
sources, with such beauty.’
Professor Michael Hanne, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Communicating Pain
Combining critical research with memoir, essay, poetry and creative biography,
this insightful volume sensitively explores the lived experience of chronic pain.
Confronting the language of pain and the paradox of writing about personal
pain, Communicating Pain is a personal response to the avoidance, dismissal and
isolation experienced by the author after developing intractable pelvic pain in
2003. The volume focuses on pain’s infamous resistance to verbal expression,
the sense of exile experienced by sufferers and the under- recognised distinction
between acute and chronic pain. In doing so, it creates a platform upon which
scholarly, imaginative and emotional quotients round out pain as the sum of
physical actualities, mental challenges and psychosocial interactions. Addition-
ally, this work creates a dialogue between medicine and literature. Considering
the works of writers such as Harriet Martineau, Alphonse Daudet and Ale-
ksander Wat, it enables a multi-g enre narrative heightened by poetry, fictional
storytelling and life-w riting.
Coupled with academic rigour, this compelling monograph constitutes a per-
suasive and unique exploration of pain and the communication of suffering. It
will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as Medical
Humanities, Autobiography Studies and Sociology of Health and Illness.
Stephanie de Montalk worked as a nurse and documentary film maker before
becoming a writer in 1996. She is the author of four collections of poems, a lit-
erary novel, a memoir-b iography and the award- winning memoir- study of pain:
How Does It Hurt?; adapted from her PhD thesis in Creative Writing. Since an
accident in 2003, she has been constrained by pain.
Routledge Advances in the Medical Humanities
Collaborative Arts- based Research for Social Justice
Victoria Foster
Person- centred Health Care
Balancing the Welfare of Clinicians and Patients
Stephen Buetow
Digital Storytelling in Health and Social Policy
Listening to Marginalized Voices
Nicole Matthews and Naomi Sunderland
Bodies and Suffering
Emotions and Relations of Care
Ana Dragojlovic and Alex Broom
Thinking with Metaphors in Medicine
The State of the Art
Alan Bleakley
Medicine, Health and Being Human
Edited by Lesa Scholl
Meaning- making Methods for Coping with Serious Illness
Fereshteh Ahmadi and Nader Ahmadi
A Visual History of HIV/AIDS
Exploring the Face of AIDS Film Archive
Edited by Elisabet Björklund and Mariah Larsson
Communicating Pain
Exploring Suffering through Language, Literature and Creative Writing
Stephanie de Montalk
www.routledge.com/Routledge-A dvances-in-D isability-Studies/book-s eries/RADS
Communicating Pain
Exploring Suffering through Language,
Literature and Creative Writing
Stephanie de Montalk
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Stephanie de Montalk
The right of Stephanie de Montalk to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-i n-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-138-61105-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-46545-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
For John,
Til a’ the seas gang dry
Photo credit: Sabrina Hyde
Contents
Acknowledgements x
1 The shirt of Nessos: an essay on the experience of writing
about pain 1
2 Going nursing: an autobiographical prelude 15
3 At the end of the mind, the body: a memoir, 2003–2004 26
4 But at the end of the body, the mind: a memoir,
2004–2009 68
5 The vendor of happiness: an interview with French
novelist Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897) 114
6 The consolator: an introduction to English social theorist
Harriet Martineau (1802–1876) 131
7 Observatory: a narrative poem set in Harriet Martineau’s
sick- room 142
8 An imago: a contemplation of Polish poet and intellectual
Aleksander Wat (1900–1967) 156
9 How does it hurt? An epilogue 188
10 White train: a narrative poem 198
Appendix of images 203
Notes 212
Bibliography 236
Index 246
