A ‘haystack of buttered toast’ as in Great Expectations, Graves’ eve of battle mince pies, rich full milk like Hardy’s Tess, Virginia Woolf’s hot tea and currant teacakes, the ‘stuff of life’ bubble and squeak from The Wind in the Willows – these were all experiences lost to Laura when she was ill. They were ones that her favourite authors wrote about with ‘giddy extended encomium’ but that anorexia wouldn’t allow her.

Until, slowly, the shackles of anorexia loosened, Laura’s strength was rebuilt, and she managed, like her mother told her, to eat enough to keep ‘body and soul together.’

A far more voracious reader than she ever was eater, it was words that proved to be Laura’s saviour. Anorexia manifested itself for Laura as an illusion of control. Reading was escape from the confines.

She both lost herself in them when the anorexic voices got too loud, and found her own voice in them as they strengthened her.

The book does describe the wonderous and marvellous meals that Laura and the characters in the novels devour. But it’s more about the experiences that those novels are part of that matter. About the friendships, evenings with family, holidays, long walks and relaxed evenings that food is such a part of, and a starved body and miserable mind can never have.

Laura is a detailed writer, and whilst not overtly triggering, some of the accounts of how her illness manifested itself could prove tricky to read. She’s honest. She still struggles and has to maintain her weight and food above that tricky spot where the voices – which she calls a ‘Jabberwock’ – take over her mind and body.

But the book is hopeful. It’s a reminder to keep on fighting. Because there’s a whole library of reasons to live.

Using words to soothe the emotions and alter thoughts is the root of bibliography – the use of literature to help people deal with psychological, social and emotional problems. The concept dates back to 300 BC when ancient civilizations placed inscriptions over library entrances that stated that within the building was healing for the soul. Aristotle considered literature to have healing benefits and reading fiction to be a way of treating illness and in Titus Andronicus William Shakespeare encourages the audience to ‘Come, and take choice of all my library, And so beguile thy sorrow … ’

Although stemming from ancient cultures, one of the first times it was applied to medical care in the UK was after World War I to help treat the emotional trauma suffered by returning soldiers, when engagement and occupation with books in psychiatric institutions was seen to be beneficial for the patients’ general sense of wellbeing. More recently it has been recommended by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) UK as a useful start in treating mild and moderate depression, anxiety and panic and some other mental health problems. In Ireland GPs suggest specific titles through the Power of Words scheme and on the other side of the world, Central West Libraries in New South Wales has developed a Books on Prescription scheme.

Different forms of bibliotherapy exist. Some is very much within the self-help genre, whereas other therapists ‘prescribe’ personal reading lists based on the type of literature a person favours, whereas others still offer guided group reading sessions, known as creative bibliotherapy. This is what Sharon Dunscombe, who runs Tales for Tea offers, via the practice of sharing great works of literature by reading them aloud, together. She describes this as a ‘deeply personal and social experience’ where the text and pleasure of reading is enough in itself, but can be enhanced by the experience of engaging with it in a group. Sharon believes that ‘It is my duty as a bibliotherapist to make connections; personal connections between the content of the books and the people I read to, thus promoting a therapeutic response.’

It was after running reading groups in a junior school whilst studying for her Level 3 NVQ that Sharon came to bibliotherapy. She discovered that the children responded very well to the stories being read to them by unconsciously relating their lives to the works she was reading. She describes herself as ‘a complete bibliophile and [I] have eaten books and words like bowls of warm nourishment from a very early age!’ Reading is not just something that children benefit from, and groups are starting up all over the country for people from all walks of life.

Rachel, author of Black Rainbow, a writer and bibliotherapist, who, amongst other workshops, works with prisoners at Wormwood Scrubs, knows first hand the value of using poetry and prose as an aid to psychological healing and wellbeing. When faced with depression, suicidal thoughts and hospitalisation, ‘an illness that left me inconsolable and tormented by pain and fear’ her mother began to read to her. The poems and passages she read became props for Rachel. ‘I clung to particular lines and phrases as if they were carefully constructed life rafts: a particular favourite was an excerpt from Corinthians: “My grace is sufficient for thee; my strength is made perfect in weakness” which I repeated to myself in the style of a mantra or prayer. As I began to recover, I grew to rely more and more on the healing power of consoling poetry and prose. As I gradually re-learnt how to focus my attention and read for myself, I sought out texts with a compassionate voice that helped me feel less alone; as well as pieces of writing that transformed my perspective.’

Experiments by Professor Philip Davis from the School of English at the University of Liverpool suggests that complex prose and poetry increases electrical activity in the brain. Rachel believes that ‘We can draw a relationship between reading poems and increased focus plus the ability to engage in something outside of oneself, thereby separating oneself from the ‘ego’: an important component of mental health. ‘ Reading is a personal endeavour using internal processes but featuring external voices, and therefore useful in focusing the reader on examining their ‘self’ and coming to terms with their emotions and challenging accepted but unhelpful thoughts, via prompts from others in a safe and contained environment.

Samuel Crothers, the man who coined the term bibliotherapy described its stages as Identification, Catharsis and Insight.  Essentially, the reader identifies with some aspect of the story, finds release in sharing with the character’s feelings, and gains insight into how to apply that to dealing with their own emotions.

There can be no doubt that literature transforms us and the process of reading is a very healing process, but the way in which it does so can vary significantly. Words can help people realise emotions, and the result can be that emotions deep inside are then able to be expressed and shared. Books can help to provide different perspectives and the suggestion of an alternative course of action. They may be inspiring, through the story or character. For some it is the actual doing, the practice of devoting half an hour a day to a regular activity, which can help provide a sense of solidity for some people, as a safe place unchanging and apart from difficulties faced in the world and a place of escapism. Others may simply respond to the rhythm of the words and the flow of sentences, finding themselves absorbed and in an almost meditative state.

The exact benefits may not be rigidly defined, and we may never be able to conduct laboratory experiments or collect reams of data to prove the case for bibliotherapy being of medical assistance, but it certainly is another tool in the world and an asset to support mental health. As Rachel writes in Black Rainbow – ‘Words were what I knew, what I had always relied on.’

At only 21 and having experienced as many of the trials of life as it seems possible to have, Beth is in prison, due to committing a crime that the world and she believes can never be forgiven. She is, in her own words, 100% TM bad. And through self punishment and ingrained thoughts will never let that go.

But her counsellor, Erika, has hope. No one is all bad she believes. Through writing about the good things that she has, Beth is coaxed to realising that she is not evil, nothing is black and white, and the past is not the future. Snapshots of Beth’s life come through diary entries, letters, care reports, social worker summaries and first person narratives. We know that there has been a mum, and a baby. We learn about relationships, failed ones. There’s a few friendships that span both circumstantial and real.

But it’s fragmented, just like her past, and it’s this method of writing that turns a sad tale into a deep and emotional one. Detail of her breakdown are in fractured prose. Intense introspection in angry stream of consciousness. The memory drives the plot and the reader is with Beth as she confronts her actions and feels her emotions. We’re with her as she builds a life. Describing a childhood friendship, Beth writes ‘Being human doesn’t just mean connecting to other humans; it means connecting the human you are now with the ones you used to be.’

Female relationships play a key role in the story, and the way that Beth speaks of her unborn daughter as her team mate, ‘us’ is tender and heartening. This baby is the first person she has believed will never let her go. An unexpected pregnancy isn’t something that Beth can walk away from – unlike the father – and neither is it something that she wants to. Yet an unmarried mother with no money isn’t always welcomed.  ‘I feel that as a society we are far harsher on ‘bad’ women than ‘bad’ men; I suppose that was another motivation in writing a character like Beth.’

Beth’s history of the care system, therapy and prison all influence her personality. Clearly she is not 100% bad, but like everyone, a product of her experiences. Claire loved the experience of writing a messy character. ‘It was her difficulty and complexity which kept me writing. Most characters I write are outsiders or oddballs in some way.’  Whether you believe that they are oddballs, byproducts of a structurally damaging society, or something more sinister, it’s true that prisoners don’t usually get a voice. If writing fiction has any duties, this might be one. As Claire says  ‘For me, fiction is about taking the reader somewhere they’ve not been before. This might be a psychological place, it might be a culture or society they’ve not thought about. Writing about someone in prison allowed me to delve into all kinds of new places.’

On Clare’s website she lists books she’s loved and books that make her. Authors include Emma Unsworth, Sylvia Plath,  Kate Tempest and Zadie Smith.  With all of these writers, ‘it’s the voice which really grabs me – a voice which is unafraid to delve into all areas of life and which has a certain zest, or swagger. ‘ Beth is vulnerable and broken, but her strong voice keeps the momentum of the novel alive, even when her hope wains.

As well as her experience of working in secondary schools and its insight into the impact of family background, Clare spent a great deal of time researching prisons, the care system and trauma, and as well as speaking with researchers visited a women’s prison, ‘which was enormously eye-opening and helpful.’ It’s not an easy book to research and write, but Clare is lucky that her home city of Leeds scene is hugely supportive of writers and artists. ‘I can’t even imagine who I would be if I didn’t read or write; both activities have hugely improved my knack for listening and noticing and asking questions – all of which make for an enriched life.’ And a deep story. A story of hope.

‘You might think I’m retarded for hoping such a thing in the light, or rather the dark, of everything that’s happened.’ she writes. There’s always light and dark, always a past and a future, always action and inertia. There’s always people. There’s always life. It’s messy and chaotic and broken and confusing yet beautiful. Filled with bad things – but a lot of good.

Published in hardback by Viking on 1st June 2017, priced £12.99.

Hollie McNish is a couple of minutes late to the Folkestone Quarterhouse stage. She keeps peering through the curtains throughout the hour long show. Like she’s not quite fully focused on the audience.

Which of course she’s not. Because she’s a mum. And since she unexpectedly became pregnant at the age of 26, her life has changed. Becoming a mother (her daughter, now 6, sits backstage watching Harry Potter) has been the best, hardest, most tumultuous, bizarre, emotional experience of her life, and is the subject of Nobody Told Me, a book of poetry and parenthood. It’s a collection of extracts from the diaries she kept from learning she was pregnant to her daughter’s third birthday, written in a mix of prose and poetry.

The reading is part of the Quarterhouse’s International Women’s Day Festival, and listening to McNish it’s clear that feminism and raising awareness of these issues is still needed. The book and show connect her own experience of motherhood with the political, society, race, relationships, commercialism and gender. Whilst occasionally admonishing herself for not being practical enough in delivering change, she knows that ‘creativity really is one of the best parts of humanity. It often brings out the structural and political issues I think and makes them easy to engage with in so many different ways. I’ve definitely felt before like I’m not being practical enough by doing poetry – my last job was working in planning and youth work. But actually, it is. It doesn’t have to be, but it can be. Hearing midwives say they’ve snuck my poems into hospital wards is probably the current highlight!’

You can see why they do. McNish is startlingly honest. Her writing and reading is conversational and real. Gritty and explicit. And this openness is needed in a world where pressures on new mothers are unrealistic and stressful and the practical aspects of such a dramatic life change aren’t discussed and the difficult elements side-stepped. She tells us about poo, sick and bleeding. About how alone she felt. The anxiety that comes from not knowing what you should be doing. How you’ll feel like a kid yourself, but have to get on with it. How she would find herself breastfeeding on toilets because after waiting ‘eight weeks to get the confidence to go into town / Now, the comments around me cut like a knife / As I rush into toilet cubicles / feeling nothing like nice.’

She admits feeling guilty because she doesn’t want sex again when her baby and boyfriend paw at her and ‘I just wish sometimes no one needed me / and I don’t want to feel guilty and tired all the time / I just want a body that’s mine.’ As celebrities pop back into shape in a few weeks her ‘stomach bulges like a water balloon / Her hollowed-out body lies like a carcass consumed.’ And she catalogues the scathing looks resulting from a toddler tantrum that comes out of nowhere, being judged on how fit she is to be a mother on that one moment and feeling like a ‘wretched human’ as a result.

But there’s also the beauty of what a child can teach you, and one of the first pieces she reads is about her year-old daughter looking in the full length mirror she has just reinstalled in the house, too disgusted by her own body to use it. Her daughter is in awe ‘hands clapping in applause to it / naked, bold and proud / her mouth open wide and round like / wow / my body is amazing.’

Spoken word has recently become fashionable, and rightly so. A new generation of poets including McNish, Kate Tempest and other contemporaries are on the national curriculum and McNish herself runs a company focusing on poetry in education. The entry of 11 April where she writes how she ‘wrapped my lips around my baby’s nose and sucked the snot from it’ is taught in schools (‘probably as contraception,’ she deadpans).

Perhaps young people connect with her. Dressed in laidback trainers, hoops, shirt over t-shirt, bright eyes and blonde hair in a ponytail McNish doesn’t look to be in her thirties. She’s friendly, warming the audience with her vulnerability, and invites us all to have a birthday drink with her in the bar. She has always written, ‘all my days, love it.’ But ‘Nobody Told Me’ was meant to be just another diary, like her teenage ones, a way of articulating herself and dealing with the emotion of pregnancy and motherhood, not a book. After an evening of entertainment and wisdom, I’m so glad that she was persuaded, that ‘Nobody Told Me’ is out there in the world and Hollie McNish’s bold voice is being heard by men, women, old and young.

Hollie McNish’s play Offside, which she co-wrote with Sabrina Mahfouz, comes to the Marlowe Studio, Canterbury  on 10 & 11 April 2017.

At least not according to the prolific and talented Dame Margaret Drabble. And, as author of nineteen novels, twice editor of the Oxford Companion of English Literature, married to Michael Holroyd and younger sister of AS Byatt, she knows a thing or two about reading.

So too do her inquisitors, Susan Elderkin and Ella Berthoud, bibliotherapists and here at Folkestone Book Festival to ask Margaret about her reading history, influences, and prescribe some literary cures for any ailments she may be having.

Rather a practical lady, she seems to not have too many worries that might need curing, even with the duo’s hefty and brilliant compendium, The Novel Cure, sitting and waiting to be consulted. She clearly has a real love and affinity for literature, and as a young person fell in love with classics like The Marmalade Cat series by Kathleen Hale and was absorbed in the worlds of local Yorkshire authors the Brontes, but struggles to remember many more. She wishes she had kept a journal of the books she’d read, but now scribbles voraciously in the margins, and loves to go back and read the annotations, ‘a commentary on one’s life.’ Having always been a ‘big reader’ Margaret says that she only became a ‘circumstantial writer.’ Writing was a convenient career to have around children. Following the adage to ‘write what you know’ her novels are similar to Doris Lessing’s, one of her heroines, in that they are about the subject matter of women’s lives, or as Lessing said of The Needle’s Eye, ‘shabby houses and small children.’

It’s rather lucky that Drabble was so good at the career that she so understatedly describes her entry into. Her latest book, The Dark Flood Rises, is about dealing with ageing, and features a cast of characters who all approach it in different ways. We have Francesca, who keeps busy and tries to delay its occurrence through running, Claude, with a blasé attitude and lazy way of life, and Sir Bennett Carpenter, who continues to sustain a life of ego and wealth. There’s bits of Margaret in all of the characters, and a humorous conclusion – but the conclusion doesn’t mean that she has cracked the whole age, life and death thing. Although she has no worries about death – ‘I worry more about life’ – she does still have the same struggles and torments existence. Her biggest and most consistent issue is ‘what to have for dinner tomorrow’ and not getting bored at parties.

For the latter issue, Susan and Ella suggest that she reads Room by Emma Donoghue, which will at least make her appreciate human and physical world interaction. As a parallel to the theme of ageing and making peace with life, they suggest Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. However, Margaret has made her peace. Even with the Trump debacle. She won’t be writing about that anytime soon.

‘I write from the point of view of eternity, not the next terrible ten years.’

On which note our window into a bibliotherapy session and the inside world of Margaret Drabble ends, and the audience sighs – but at least we’ve always got our books to cure us.

Using words to soothe the emotions and alter thoughts is the root of bibliography – the use of literature to help people deal with psychological, social and emotional problems. The concept dates back to 300 BC when ancient civilizations placed inscriptions over library entrances that stated that within the building was healing for the soul. Aristotle considered literature to have healing benefits and reading fiction to be a way of treating illness and in Titus Andronicus William Shakespeare encourages the audience to ‘Come, and take choice of all my library, And so beguile thy sorrow … ’

Although stemming from ancient cultures, one of the first times it was applied to medical care in the UK was after World War I to help treat the emotional trauma suffered by returning soldiers, when engagement and occupation with books in psychiatric institutions was seen to be beneficial for the patients’ general sense of wellbeing. More recently it has been recommended by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) UK as a useful start in treating mild and moderate depression, anxiety and panic and some other mental health problems. In Ireland GPs suggest specific titles through the Power of Words scheme and on the other side of the world, Central West Libraries in New South Wales has developed a Books on Prescription scheme.

Different forms of bibliotherapy exist. Some is very much within the self-help genre, whereas other therapists ‘prescribe’ personal reading lists based on the type of literature a person favours, whereas others still offer guided group reading sessions, known as creative bibliotherapy. This is what Sharon Dunscombe, who runs Tales for Tea offers, via the practice of sharing great works of literature by reading them aloud, together. She describes this as a ‘deeply personal and social experience’ where the text and pleasure of reading is enough in itself, but can be enhanced by the experience of engaging with it in a group. Sharon believes that ‘It is my duty as a bibliotherapist to make connections; personal connections between the content of the books and the people I read to, thus promoting a therapeutic response.’

It was after running reading groups in a junior school whilst studying for her Level 3 NVQ that Sharon came to bibliotherapy. She discovered that the children responded very well to the stories being read to them by unconsciously relating their lives to the works she was reading. She describes herself as ‘a complete bibliophile and [I] have eaten books and words like bowls of warm nourishment from a very early age!’ Reading is not just something that children benefit from, and groups are starting up all over the country for people from all walks of life.

Rachel, author of Black Rainbow, a writer and bibliotherapist, who, amongst other workshops, works with prisoners at Wormwood Scrubs, knows first hand the value of using poetry and prose as an aid to psychological healing and wellbeing. When faced with depression, suicidal thoughts and hospitalisation, ‘an illness that left me inconsolable and tormented by pain and fear’ her mother began to read to her. The poems and passages she read became props for Rachel. ‘I clung to particular lines and phrases as if they were carefully constructed life rafts: a particular favourite was an excerpt from Corinthians: “My grace is sufficient for thee; my strength is made perfect in weakness” which I repeated to myself in the style of a mantra or prayer. As I began to recover, I grew to rely more and more on the healing power of consoling poetry and prose. As I gradually re-learnt how to focus my attention and read for myself, I sought out texts with a compassionate voice that helped me feel less alone; as well as pieces of writing that transformed my perspective.’

Experiments by Professor Philip Davis from the School of English at the University of Liverpool suggests that complex prose and poetry increases electrical activity in the brain. Rachel believes that ‘We can draw a relationship between reading poems and increased focus plus the ability to engage in something outside of oneself, thereby separating oneself from the ‘ego’: an important component of mental health. ‘ Reading is a personal endeavour using internal processes but featuring external voices, and therefore useful in focusing the reader on examining their ‘self’ and coming to terms with their emotions and challenging accepted but unhelpful thoughts, via prompts from others in a safe and contained environment.

Samuel Crothers, the man who coined the term bibliotherapy described its stages as Identification, Catharsis and Insight.  Essentially, the reader identifies with some aspect of the story, finds release in sharing with the character’s feelings, and gains insight into how to apply that to dealing with their own emotions.

There can be no doubt that literature transforms us and the process of reading is a very healing process, but the way in which it does so can vary significantly. Words can help people realise emotions, and the result can be that emotions deep inside are then able to be expressed and shared. Books can help to provide different perspectives and the suggestion of an alternative course of action. They may be inspiring, through the story or character. For some it is the actual doing, the practice of devoting half an hour a day to a regular activity, which can help provide a sense of solidity for some people, as a safe place unchanging and apart from difficulties faced in the world and a place of escapism. Others may simply respond to the rhythm of the words and the flow of sentences, finding themselves absorbed and in an almost meditative state.

The exact benefits may not be rigidly defined, and we may never be able to conduct laboratory experiments or collect reams of data to prove the case for bibliotherapy being of medical assistance, but it certainly is another tool in the world and an asset to support mental health. As Rachel writes in Black Rainbow – ‘Words were what I knew, what I had always relied on.’

Opener and bull running story teller, Bill Hillman’s set is dense and colourful with words, but less easily eloquent than other speakers, which is not to take anything away from the quality of his prose.

ImALondoner.com » Book Slam, Bethnal Green.