A Hospital Odyssey is an outrageously imaginative voyage through illness and healing. Drawing on the most recent biomedical research into stem cells and cancer, the poem is a journey through the body's inner space and the strange habitats created by disease, including the chimeras people see when they're unwell.

Dyma gyfrol o farddoniaeth sy'n dilyn taith anhygoel dyn o salwch i iachâd, o afiechyd i adferiad iechyd. Un gerdd hir sydd yma, ac mae'r bardd yn manteisio ar yr ymchwil biofeddygol diweddaraf.

Following a startling crash into severe depression and a long slow recovery chronicled in Sunbathing in the Rain (one of the wisest, and least heavy, books I have read about depression), Gwyneth Lewis and her husband Leighton set off on a sailing trip to North Africa. During the voyage – another story candidly told in Two in a Boat – Leighton was diagnosed as having cancer.

‘What do you say when someone you love
is dying and there’s nothing you can do
to stop it happening, and you’re alive
and well, nowhere near through
adoring them, and you can’t follow?’
A Hospital Odyssey, Book 5

Leighton’s illness and Lewis’s fear of losing him to death form the factual core of the imaginative tour de force that is A Hospital Odyssey. As the title indicates, this is an epic poem that references the classics of Homer, Virgil, Dante (and possibly even the ancient Sumerian epic of the descent of Inanna?), whilst being thoroughly contemporary. There is a choice of doors to pass through, each implying unknown consequences. There is the descent down through various levels. There are totem guides and helpers, wily guardians and monsters to pass. There are direct communications with the reader and comments on the art and obsession of writing. Lewis is walking in the steps of a great tradition, but always in her own unique way, with her particular feel for the quirkily comic and downright surreal.

I am in awe of Lewis’s skill in sustaining such tight rhyme, rhythm and structure without the slightest glitch in meaning, language or style, in a poem that extends to some 150 pages. But what else would you expect of one of our finest living poets? My hope now is that A Hospital Odyssey will be brought out on audio, so that, in the tradition of epic poetry, I can sit back and listen.

Suzy Ceulan Hughes

It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgment should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.

Gellir defnyddio'r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.