Abi Palmer - a sharp, original evocation of chronic pain, the strangeness of being in a body, and the incomprehension and sometimes cruelty of the able bodied

Abi Palmer, Sanatorium, Penned in the Margins,

2020. 

https://abipalmer.squarespace.com

A young woman spends a month taking the waters at a thermal water-based rehabilitation facility in Budapest.

On her return to London, she attempts to continue her recovery using an £80 inflatable blue bathtub. The tub becomes a metaphor for the intrusion of disability; a trip hazard in the middle of an unsuitable room, slowly deflating and in constant danger of falling apart.

Sanatorium moves through contrasting spaces — bathtub to thermal pool, land to water, day to night — interlacing memoir, poetry and meditations on the body to create a mesmerising, mercurial debut.

There is a dreamlike quality to Abi Palmer’s exquisite Sanatorium. In lucid, gorgeous prose, she tells the story of a body, of illness and of navigating the complicated wellness industry; but ultimately this is a book about what it means to be alive. A striking, experimental debut that will stay with me. - Sinéad Gleeson

Sanatorium is such an intricately structured book, combining memoir and poetry to hypnotic effect. Palmer creates a space entirely new and oddly familiar — embodied, startlingly direct and, by turns, claustrophobic and expansive. A prayer, a spell, a confession, a vision; the book morphs like the chronic pain it meticulously portrays with the clarity and confusion of an hallucination vs the confusion and clarity of life precisely observed with wit and intelligence. An urgent debut, alight with ideas — I loved every page. - Luke Kennard

I'm blown away... a sharp, original evocation of chronic pain, the strangeness of being in a body, and the incomprehension and sometimes cruelty of the able bodied. - Rebecca Tamás 

Also using a mix of memoir, image and poetry is artist Abi Palmer in her debut, Sanatorium (Penned in the Margins). An account of her stay at a rehabilitation spa in Budapest, she brings the actuality of her physical pain vividly to life, communicating its texture viscerally and without pity. - Rishi Dastidar

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/28/best-poetry-books-of-2020

The states of physical and metaphysical are so well drawn, they capture an essence of what it can be like to not be of this world while your body is firmly under the influence of gravity ... This is a beautifully constructed book full of important thoughts, lyrical poetry and prose, and stunning imagery that immerses the reader entirely.  - Louise Kenward, Spooniehacker

Memoir and poetry in a mesmerising debut. - David Nicholls

Abi Palmer didn’t know she was writing a book when she started Sanatorium. Having received a grant from Arts Council England to explore what it means to be a disabled artist, Palmer traveled to a thermal water-based rehabilitation facility in Budapest, which she refers to as an “institution-deluxe.” Documenting her journey, she kept video diaries to stave off the pain she experiences from the physical act of writing. Once home, Palmer continued her recovery using a one-hundred-dollar inflatable blue bathtub, which is essentially a character in its own right in the book. As Palmer explains, “The tub becomes a metaphor for the intrusion of disability: a trip-hazard, sat in the middle of an unsuitable room, slowly deflating, and in constant danger of falling apart.”

Palmer’s work regularly explores her experiences living with psoriatic arthritis and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and her debut book centers firmly on her body, as well as out-of-body experiences, and an ever changing understanding of what it means to be disabled. Alongside Sanatorium, which was published in April by Penned in the Margins, Palmer created Crip Casino, an interactive gambling arcade parodying the wellness industry and institutionalized spaces, which has been displayed at the Tate Modern, Wellcome Collection, and Somerset House.

As two writers with chronic illnesses, Abi and I spoke about her work from our respective beds, which is pretty romantic when you think of it. We discussed the creative process and disability, the creation process of the Sanatorium (which included the aforementioned video diaries, dictation, and other forms of writing), and launching the book during the COVID-19 pandemic as a disabled artist.

Read the interview here:

https://therumpus.net/2020/07/the-rumpus-interview-with-abi-palmer/

One of the most striking elements of Sanatorium is its emotional honesty. How easy or difficult do you find writing about your own experience?

That’s a good question. In general I’ve never really thought about the book in terms of emotional honesty. I’m a real over-sharer anyway, and I say whatever comes into my head. I find it really easy to describe elements of my actual physical body, because I have to talk about my body all the time. I’m so used to being explicit and frank about things other people might regard as private. My body is so often policed and watched – by doctors, by my care team, by the state. I already feel like there’s no privacy there, by the very nature of being a sick person, my body is constantly being observed and scrutinized.

One area I really struggled with was writing experiences of mysticism and out-of-body experience. I wanted to write about hallucination as a form of floating. But when it came to it, I did a lot of talking about the idea of having hallucinations, dancing around the concept, but I was really, really afraid of actually writing out a real hallucination sequence.

This was partly because the out-of-body experiences I have experienced are almost all ineffable – it’s impossible to put them into words. But more than that, they’re the most private thing I own. Where I could apply language to them, I was terrified of exposing a part of my subconscious that I hadn’t processed fully: what if I revealed something I didn’t mean to? I spent a lot of time engaging with other female and genderqueer mystics to make sense of how they described their own experiences. St Teresa of Avila, Johanna Hedva, Margery Kempe. It felt more and more like the lesson I was being offered was “surrender” – just lean in to it. All of it – the fluid, mushrooming, ghostly madness of it all. I think that was a good lesson for me.

But I definitely had a small moment of fear just before it was published when I felt like, “Oh, God, everyone is going to see me naked!”

read more here:

http://www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk/index.php/2020/10/what-if-i-revealed-something-i-didnt-mean-to-interview-with-abi-palmer/