Robert Dickins, PhD, is a literary historian and publisher. His research focuses on the connection between writing and altered states of consciousness.
His talk is titled: “Holy Moly: Bottled Madness and Lysergic Poesy”.
Location: Cruciform Building - B404 LT2 Gower Street London WC1E 6BT
Since ancient times, people have used poetry to explore and describe the effects of psychoactive substances, and their words and experiences tell us much about the worlds and societies they inhabited. This talk explores a literary history of psychedelic drugs in the mid-twentieth century—a time of cold war anxiety, pharmaceutical revolution and cultural transformation in the anglophone world. How did LSD users make linguistic sense of the drug’s effects? And what do their chosen words tells us about that era?