Maudsley Lectures in Psychoanalysis | Metaphor as a Bridge to Reality: Facing Our Tendency to Deny - Susy Lansman, Síofra McSherry, Tom McLaughlin and Nadira Wallace

Metaphor as a bridge to reality: facing our tendency to deny

Psychoanalyst and poet Susanne Lansman will be in conversation with poets Tom McLaughlin, Síofra McSherry and Nadira Wallace. We will consider the ways that a poet’s use of metaphor can give the reader an experience of awareness denial, offers the reparative need to imagine whilst fostering the capacity to face our distortions of reality. 

When a poet reaches for a metaphor, or a metaphor reaches for the poet, language is being used to convey a truth about an experience or observation that is hard to capture in words. We grapple towards a feeling, and the process of creating a metaphor reveals how the mind wants to see and not see at the same time. This way of thinking could be considered as what Thomas Ogden calls ‘dream thinking’ which is: ‘is our most encompassing, penetrating, and creative form of thinking.’ (Ogden 2010) The presentation will examine how poetry uses metaphor to invite the reader to observe and consider two realities; and reflect on the clinical experience of giving words to unconscious phantasy for analyst and patient in the consulting room. The reader of a poem is entreated to inhabit the relationship between knowing and not knowing what is real, enacting a waking dream or dream thinking in the reader and creates a space for engagement with the experience of pre-verbal trauma and what cannot be faced. The event will involve a presentation about metaphor with poetry readings, discussion, and a Q&A with the audience.

Susanne Lansman is a fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society and has a PhD on the poetry of Charles Simic and the enactment of trauma from Royal Holloway. Her poetry has appeared in The Rialto, The Interpreter’s House, Vaine Magazine, Ink Sweat & Tears, Poetry Salzburg Review, Under the Radar, and Tears in the Fence. It has been long-listed for Juritz Prize and Rialto Pamphlet Competition in 2019 and the Bridport Prize in 2024.

Tom McLaughlin is a Derry-born poet who grew up on both sides of the Irish border . His debut pamphlet, Open Houses, was published by Marble Press in 2021 and his full-length collection is forthcoming with Arachne Press. He completed an MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway and is now completing a PhD on queer domesticity at Surrey University. His poems have recently appeared in anthologies by Broken Sleep and Arachne Press. You can find out more at his website: tommclaughlin.uk

Dr Nadira Clare Wallace lives in London. They completed a PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London on TS Eliot and Hart Crane. Nadira’s criticism has been published in the peer-reviewed journal, Textual Practice, and poems if theirs have appeared in Poetry Birmingham and Shearsman magazine. Shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award, Sidekicks for Clouds (Guillemot Press, 2024) is Nadira’s first pamphlet.

Síofra McSherry is an Irish poet. Her debut collection Midnight Masses came out in 2014 from Broken Sleep Books. Her pamphlet Requiem was the Poetry Book Society Spring 2020 Pamphlet Choice. Her criticism and poetry has been featured in Poetry London, Poetry Wales, this is tomorrow, and the TLS. Síofra graduated with a first in English from Christ Church, Oxford University, and she holds a PhD from the Freie Universität Berlin