A new anthology, Admissions: Voices within Mental Health, was recently released as part of Mental Health Week 2022 (2-8 October) in a partnership with Red Room Poetry. Edited by David Stavanger, Radhiah Chowdury and Mohammad Awad, it promises to broaden the parameters around mental health discourse by focusing on contributors with lived experience, in all their diversity and complexity. (The editors reiterate that ‘Everything within these pages is someone’s truth’.)
There’s also an emphasis on inclusivity in terms of both contributors and style. To this end, of the 103 entries, there are both well-recognised names (including pieces by Christine Anu, Grace Tame, Evelyn Araluen, Ali Cobby Eckermann, and Anna Spargo-Ryan and Omar Sakr) as well as 30 emerging writers.