NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

An independent small press poetry review

NHI independent review
ONE IN FOUR
edited by Jane Thompson
National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (England & Wales)
21 De Montfort Street
Leicester
LE1 7GE
UK
ISBN 1 86201 310 1
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This page last updated: 10th December 2007. 		ONE IN FOUR

ONE IN FOUR is the second publication in the NIACE (National Association of Adult Continuing Education England and Wales) VOICES series, produced in partnership with Survivors' Poetry and part funded by the European Social Fund. It is an impressively produced anthology of poetry, short prose pieces and artwork by people affected by mental distress. Both prose and poetry are mostly factual descriptions of the writers' experiences of coping with mental distress or dealing with the mental healthcare system and make for powerful and disturbing reading. Martin Coleman in ADMISSION speaks for many of the writers featured here:

I have discovered a new hobby in reading and writing poetry. This has helped me to express some of my hidden demons and has given me a new outlook on life.
The factual pieces in this anthology are compelling, informative and insightful as well as uniformly well written. As Jane Thompson (Principal Research Officer of NIACE) discusses in the introduction, sharing personal stories of mental distress can help other people in the same situation and also can help change attitudes. However, it is the writers who take their work beyond the factual who had the greatest impact on this reviewer. Helen Hudspith offers three excellent poems and brings a bit of humour to the situation in her poem A CHANGE OF MEDICATION:
	in the realms of the insane
	forget 
	complex psychological theories.

	No
	a 
	sliding sartorial scale
	tells them
	everything they need to know.
Behind the humour though is a serious message about the assumptions made about what constitutes 'sanity' and 'normality'.

Jacqui Lewis offers two poems, in MY WORLD she writes beautifully and movingly of her experiences:

	Poor tangled brain
	Cannot decide unaided
	Blood would write
	The pain of not being whole
The publication contains excellent artwork, all of which is notable for its use of colour. The front cover illustration DISINTEGRATION by Andrew Hood very simply and powerfully conveys the sense of someone losing their grip on things. Anthony Milner's ABSTRACT, full of dislocated musical instruments, brings to mind a cacophony of sound, while Rachel Studley in VOICES creates a similar effect using overlaid pieces of text. Tom Giles MUSICIANS is a beautiful summery, slightly abstract painting of two musicians in a field with a skull in the middle of the picture, to remind us that death and suffering are everywhere. Kiki Walker's SILENT SCREAM is a compelling collage, reminiscent of Edvard Munch's THE SCREAM while Yvonne Mabbs Francis' two striking self portraits THE STAGES OF HOSPITALISATION and THE THIRD MONTH are slightly reminiscent of Frida Kahlo's work in their use of colour and surrealism. Mark Ockwell's brilliant BREAKDOWN is terrifying in the anguish it portrays.

ONE IN FOUR is essential reading. The factual pieces should dispel a lot of myths about mental health issues and the imaginative poetry and artwork has an enormous impact. As Jane Thompson says in the introduction:

It is very unlikely that you will remain unmoved.

reviewer: Juliet Wilson.