Senior Lecturer Shanan Ballam has published her poem, “the return,” in The Quarter(ly) Journal. Of this post-stroke poem, Shanan reflects, “‘the return’ is based on an image I saw in The Last Kingdom that resonated with me: a man being burned alive bursts out of a building swinging his sword, trying to fight off his assailants. The poem opens with that image and then turns abruptly to how I want to live: “severing the stroke/binding me in ropes.”

Shanan will be publishing a chapbook of poetry entitled First Poems After the Stroke with Finishing Line Press.