Creative and Aesthetic Ways of Grief
"All Things Reimagined"
Dorthe Refslund Christensen editor Mórna O’Connor editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
Publishing:29th Jun '26
£29.99
This title is due to be published on 29th June, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Inspired by the grief of Australian musician Nick Cave, this edited anthology presents a host of creative and aesthetic ways of living with grief. In doing so, it challenges persistent attempts to homogenise grief and frame it as a solely negative and barren state from which the bereaved must expediently escape.
Across eleven chapters, each an account of lived grief by multi-disciplinary academics, artists and funeral professionals, this book showcases the potential for creativity and aesthetic experience within grief. Through autoethnographic and research-based approaches, communicated through evocative imagery as well as text, contributors describe creative and aesthetic ways of grieving that are spectacularly rich, profoundly idiosyncratic and fantastically diverse, forged artfully, playfully and inventively within their contexts, knowledges and realities.
Via these layered and living articulations, this book reflects our capacity—and indeed our right—to craft griefs resonant with our own ways of being, lives and contexts, and it attests that forging our own griefways is a creative enterprise that can be enriching, transforming, connecting, protecting and even beautiful. This anthology will be of interest and inspiration not only to diverse academics and grief practitioners alike, but to all of us who are mortal and all of us who grieve.
"This anthology showcases many creative endeavors and rituals to create meaning and posthumous storied connections. While the book is filled with anthropological wisdom, readers will discover heartfelt, moving accounts throughout affirming how grief charts new pathways that stand against the Western misperceptions that relationships end at death."
LorraineHedtke, MSW, ACSW, PhD, professor of counseling, California State University, San Bernardino, USA, and co-author (along with J. Winslade), of The Crafting of Grief
"This book is a fascinating collection of stories, observations and reflections from the space where grief leaves us searching for new ways to understand our changed world: where we must learn anew 'how to be.' Bringing together ethnography, creativity, and reflection on using our senses when words fail us, the authors have crafted a rich and intriguing invitation to look, listen and live differently."
Kathryn Mannix, author, end-of-life-care campaigner and retired palliative physician, Northumberland, UK
"This beautifully crafted collection of multi-disciplinary, creative workings challenges the reader to reimagine grief and to embrace the creative possibilities it affords. Each story is carefully and sensitively told, through words and imagery, resulting in accounts that are intellectually stimulating, emotionally engaging, uplifting, and life affirming."
Gayle Letherby, visiting professor, Plymouth, Greenwich, Bath, UK
ISBN: 9781041046516
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
248 pages