Certifiable Truths: Stories of Love and Madness

'.eros, like art involves risk, the risk of pregnancy, the risk of disease - or commitment, the greatest risk of all. And like art, it will bring you to the point of madness. Art is simply a more conscious dredging, a dive towards the treasure of the deep.Most of us return with our handful of pearls, but some dive down too far. So we watch, and we stare, and we come up for air, but there are those who will drown before our eyes.' SARA DOWSE 'And then there's the couch - have you ever seen the couch? Chaise-longue type thing draped with a huge Persian rug about which Harriet has never stopped talking. I confess it is very handsome and truly inviting.' CARMEL BIRD 'She remembers hearing a shriek, hearing it, as if it were someone else's, not her own. Under the punishing weight of those men, she is far from her body, far from this livingroom, far from this hour during which neighbours are sitting down to their dinners or giving babies their baths or turning on the evening news, one announcer or another beginning the daily recitation of calamities in the world and here at home.' JOYCE KORNBLATT Here is a collection, diverse in its understanding, that moves between the skilful and ingenuous ragged horror of the loss of one's 'right' mind, to more writerly examinations where all the ingenuity of the writer has been utilised. There is little of the self-help book here, nothing of the 'cure' on offer. Some of the writers have experienced madness themseleves, others have imaginatively engaged with the experience, its effects, history or institutions; some of these stories celebrate madness, delighting in the insights and surprises it has to offer. CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE: CARMEL BIRD, DAN BUCKLEY, LUKE DAVIES, ANN DOMBROSKI, SARA DOWSE, SUSAN JOHNSON, MIREILLE JUCHAU, JOYCE KORNBLATT, GRAHAM LITTLE, JANE MESSER, SALLY MORRISON, KATHY PROKHOVNIK, TIM RICHARDS AND AMY WITTING.