What is it like to be the young child of someone who lives in her own fluctuating reality? What is it like to grow up surrounded by mania and depression, as well as the strongest bonds of love? Nina. Bannett’s autobiographical collection of poems takes the reader through a painful cycle of separations and reunions. In these 26 poems, Nina R. Bannett depicts an unbreakable mother-daughter relationship tested by anxiety, illness and ultimately, death.
Lithium Witness is a book of poetry that, from the inside out, addresses the themes of mental illness, mother-daughter relationships, and the woman as artist. In Lithium Witness, Nina Bannett explores her relationship with her late mother, and the decades-long struggle with bipolar disorder (also known as manic depression) that defined their lives. Lithium Witness shows not only the difficulties of a daughter distressed by her mother’s mental illness, but also the complicated ways in which coping is possible. Lithium Witness seeks to deepen readers’ understanding of the effects of bipolar disorder on family dynamics.
~ Finishing Line Press
Tender innocence collides with the harsh reality of mental illness in Lithium Witness, Nina Bannett's collection of poetry chronicling her mother's descent into madness. Powerful, painful, and ultimately filled with grace, these poems treat each moment with a compassion that warms, a patience that endures, and a love that transcends.
~ Boston Literary Magazine
Bannett’s witnessing voice is sure, unsentimental, by turns tender, puzzled, aghast, sardonic, empathic, resigned. Always, though, it is love that resounds through the lifetimes chronicled here…
–Kate Falvey, Poet
Press release
Full review from Boston Literary Magazine here.
Purchase Lithium Witness at Amazon.com, and through Finishing Line Press.
