Poems from the Madhouse invites readers into the paradoxical world of insanity: the confusion and clarity, the courage and fear, the bleak despair and the black comedy. Only a poet could make us hear the thundering whisper of insanity, the endless circling of the revolving door, the sheer practicality of whatever gets you through the night. Here are portraits of other people in wards filled...

Not since Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton has anyone written so candidly about madness. Sandy Jeffs' poetry has a stark dignity, capable of conveying "shudders of intense fear". Yet in the midst of her rigours, she can access a voice both wild and funny. Sandy Jeffs' leavening sense of humour peoples her darkness with the sirens of the supermarket, a tinsel paradise and high-tech technicolour...