An Essay on the Space Outside Pain Where the Poem Takes Place

The essay considers how poetry communicates persistent pain to an audience of non-sufferers. It proposes poetry builds empathy by identifying universal aspects of pain that are shared, overcoming resistance to recognising commonality with chronic pain sufferers in popular memory and public policy. It explores how the act of writing externalises pain, diminishing its hold over the sufferer, breaking their isolation. Scarry’s characterisation of pain as an intentional state without an intentional object is challenged, refuting that chronic pain has intention, and that symbolic objects like poetry are driven by conscious intention, rather than language and desire.