Abstract/Summary

This thesis contains two elements: a new collection of poetry entitled Sublime Lungs and a critical thesis entitled Poets on Breath. The poetry collection comprises new poems on the subject of the author’s asthma and other lung diseases, and breath and breathing across a wide variety of geographies, cultures and chronologies. In the context of contemporary health humanities, the thesis looks at the topic of breath in the critical work of Charles Olson and as practised by poets writing in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries, namely the poetry and other writings of two asthmatic poets, Elizabeth Bishop and Elaine Feinstein, and the medical writings in the poetry, plays and novels of chest clinician, Dannie Abse. The thesis opens with an historical survey and consideration of the principles of health humanities. It ends with a chapter on the author’s poetry collection and the consolations in its writing.