Eating Yellow

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The mental health unit I was admitted to forms part of Wonford House, which first opened its doors on 7th July 1869 as a 'hospital for the insane'. No doubt, much has changed since then but the daunting facade of that big Victorian manor has not. The first time I saw it was in the back of an ambulance thinking what a good start to a horror movie it would make.

My ward was Delderfield and inside its walls, behind its locked blue doors, were some of the most extraordinary people I've ever met. One of them (a fellow patient) told me a story about Vincent Van Gogh, an urban legend that tells how the artist believed that eating his yellow oil paint would help him become happier. I didn't know whether the story was true, but I did know what it meant to want to change your inner state so much that you'd try anything.

What follows are the poems I started writing on the ward.

This book is a collection of 20 poems and 17 photographs, written and captured from inside a psychiatric ward. Eating Yellow is being published in support of Central London Samaritans, to whom a donation of GBP1 will be made for every copy sold.