The Innocence Cloth is the title of a special poetic anthology written by people who have received psychiatric help, and have heightened their experience to literature.
The writer of the anthology, Maria Fafaliou, was inspired the title by an answer she was once given by a patient in a psychiatric clinic.
-Who is mentally ill?
-The man who tells all his secrets. The transparent man. The innocence cloth.
Fafaliou has a master in social psychology and is a member of educational and cultural organizations in England and Greece, as well as a writer of social history books. She also founded Kaleidoscope, which is a non-profit organization/social enterprise, established in Athens in 1995 that aims to promote psychosocial and economic integration of various vulnerable groups with a special focus on people who are disadvantaged due to mental illness, learning difficulties, and physical disabilities.
Fafaliou edited the 132-page volume of poems written by men and women who were once in their life admitted to asylums.
These poems disprove the prevailing idea that the mentally ill lack perception. That is the reason of this publication, Sotiria Chatzaraki stresses in the book’s introductory note. Chatzaraki also mentions that for some people this anthology will be a surprise, because they have stereotyped people with mental problems as mentally retarded.
Falaliou explains in the introduction of the book that these poems-diamonds were given to her by the patients themselves or by their relatives and those who refused to give their writings were not few. “The social stigma is still strong nowadays. We fear that a mentally ill person is dangerous, but this fear is baseless and not at all justified by statistics. This fear is toward our own selves”. That is why in the anthology there are anonymous poems as well.
The Innocence Cloth has been published by Estia Editions.
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