‘The Weariness, the Fever and the Fret’: Writing Illness, Health and John Keats
In honour of Keats200, the bicentenary celebration of the poet John Keats’s life, works, and legacy, poet Amy Mackelden has set us a new challenge. She offers writing prompts and poems that explore illness, and use our bodies as inspiration.
The challenge: write a poem inspired by John Keats, illness poetry, and the pandemic
John Keats was born in London in 1795, and in his short life made a huge impact on English poetry. He was a brilliant writer of odes, sonnets and long romances. Unlike many of the other celebrated poets of this period, he did not have a formal literary education and was even scorned for his Cockney roots. After training in the medical profession, Keats contracted tuberculosis and died at the young age of 25.