Loneliness is often described as social pain—a psychological mechanism which motivates individuals to seek social connections. For many people, loneliness is associated with unwanted lack of connection and intimacy and can affect physical and mental health. It can take root deep within the psyche as a restless longing for something. It can be most intense when you’re surrounded by smiling people or in the middle of crowds. Loneliness can drain you of energy and feeling, and yet, somehow, loneliness seems to have birthed great work of art after great work of art. Or has it?

I am currently exploring the connection between creativity and loneliness. One of the things I have been looking at is the way loneliness is treated in text by different writers. Here is a list of poems from the Romantic Era which look at solitude and loneliness. I will be exploring them today to see how these authors share the [universal] human experience of loneliness with us.

I’ll be reading the poems aloud and exploring the text in some detail so feel free to download the poems and read them along with me and my surprise guest!

• I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud - William Wordsworth 
• Alone - Edgar Allan Poe
• Kubla Khan - Samuel Taylor Coleridge 
• The Albatross - Charles Baudelaire (translated George Dillon)

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