Does mental illness beget great poetry? These 4 poets exposed the sickness of a society that sought to contain them

By George Mouratidis, Fellow, Literary Studies, The University of Melbourne

This article contains references to suicide.

The publication last year of Steven M. Weine’s Best Minds: How Allen Ginsberg Made Revolutionary Poetry from Madness has reinvigorated enduring questions about the relationship between mental health and creativity. As the title suggests, these questions are at once literary and sociopolitical.

Does mental illness beget great poetry? Many poets – celebrated and obscure, from antiquity to the present – have, to varying degrees, navigated…

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