About the Poem

A Journey Inside is an experience illustrating the thought poem written by Lytisha Tunbridge. Lytisha is a Nottingham, UK, based writer, podcaster and VR creative living with MS. Many of her poems reflect living with an invisible condition.

The idea began during an MRI monitoring of her MS in 2016. Then the poem arrived, and was performed on stages across the UK at spoken word events. Keen to open the discussion around MRI experiences, and balance the negative only narratives, Lytisha further developed the poem in different artistic formats.

In 2019 A Journey Inside was scored and performed as a live multi-sensory experience with COMA (East Midlands) contemporary orchestra as part of the National Contemporary Music Festival 2019 and Nottingham Poetry Festival 2019.

During 2021/22 Lytisha received a DYCP grant from the Arts Council England and took the opportunity to learn about augmented and virtual reality through the LEADD:NG programme. It was during this period the idea for the next development of A Journey Inside grew.

A further Arts Council Grant award has enabled Lytisha to work on this project in collaboration with the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham to develop the prototype of the VR Poetry Experience where audiences travel visually as well as aurally through the world of the poem.

Lytisha hopes this project will encourage people to share their stories, and open the discussion around experiences of MRIs.

At other times Lytisha can be found both hosting and performing her original poetry at events and festivals across the UK and abroad. In the lock-down of 2020 she began an MS focussed podcast entitled Multiple Shenanigans with comedian Jeanette Bird-Bradley. More about all Lytisha’s projects can be found at https://lytishapoet.co.uk/

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