In Mr Outside, a son visits his reclusive father to help him pack for a care home. It is hard to help - the task of sifting through possessions becomes the task of putting together the story of a life. Writer Caleb Klaces will introduce and read from the forthcoming novel, which explores the narratives that people are driven to tell about one another, illness, and intimacy in crisis. He will be joined by consultant psychiatrist Ruth Cairns, to share clinical and creative perspectives on dementia and storytelling.

Caleb Klaces is the author of the novels Mr Outside and Fatherhood, and the poetry collections Away From Me and Bottled Air. He teaches creative writing at York Centre for Writing, York St John University.

Gareth Owen is a Professor of Psychological Medicine, Ethics and Law at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. His research has focused on decision-making capacity and related areas, spanning theoretical to practical issues as well as policy impact. He led the Wellcome Trust Mental Health and Justice Project and is now working within the Complex Life and Death Decisions Group. He has strong interests in concepts of psychiatry and is author of the monograph Psychiatry and Human Nature: Classic and Romantic Perspectives, Cambridge University Press.

Series Summary

‘"I must find new words": Dialogues on Poetry and Psychoanalysis’ 

So moved by her experience of being psychoanalysed by Freud, the modernist poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) declared, “I must find new words as the Professor found or coined new words to explain certain as yet unrecorded states of mind or being.” This Summer Series, through lectures and discussions with poets, scholars and analysts, considers various encounters between the cultures of poetry and psychoanalysis, their rich historical dialogues, methods of finding and new coinages. 

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