This wise and touching exploration of the relationship between poetry and suicide offers new insights for those struggling with grief.

‘A nuanced and deeply insightful book.’ – Emilie Pine, author of Notes to Self
‘A bold and truly vital work.’ – Adam Farrer, author of Broken Biscuits
‘Essential reading.’ – Anne Whitehead, author of Relating Suicide

Following the loss of his twin sister, J. T. Welsch found himself drawn to the stories of poets who took their own lives. In The poetry of suicide, he interweaves these stories with the long history of suicide in his own family, searching for a new way of understanding these difficult deaths.

Beginning with Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be?’, he delves into the work of Sylvia Plath, Marina Tsvetaeva and others, asking what it can teach us about suicide’s messy reality. He also explores recent controversies involving suicide, including the response to the Netflix drama 13 Reasons Why and Logan Paul’s notorious visit to Aokigahara, Japan’s ‘suicide forest’.

Suicide is more like poetry than we realise, Welsch argues. Both are filled with ambiguities, contradictions and unknowable intentions. Both demand and resist interpretation. Recovering the personal dimension often lost in our sanitised public discourse, Welsch finds practical ways of confronting suicide’s poem-like difficulties.