Searching for Light
Poetry by Martha King
Published on 16. November 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
48 pages
978-1-257-03733-9 (ISBN)
Description
In this group of poems, Martha King describes in searing and beautiful language her experiences of being a patient on a psychiatric unit, suffering from anorexia and a dissociative disorder, and her movement towards self-acceptance and healing. Her initial terror of other people on the unit is replaced by a sense of a supportive community and love, and she also becomes aware that she herself can be of help to others, that she has value. At the same time, she grows in her faith in a Being beyond herself who is patient, uncritical, undemanding , and above all, THERE, for her and for anyone else who wants to risk trusting and reaching out.
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Person
Martha King was born and grew up in Hawaii, where she attended Punahou School, played the violin, and sang in her church choirs. After graduation from Mt Holyoke College with a degree in music, she returned to Honolulu and became a much-loved primary school teacher specializing in math and reading skills. She also took up watercolor painting, at which she excelled, and continued singing. In 1986 she moved to a town outside Boston to teach in a boarding school, and over the course of that year became seriously anorexic for the first time and was hospitalized for treatment. It was during that hospitalization and those that followed that she became aware of having been molested as a child and began to write poetry to reflect her experiences of dealing with that trauma. Since that time she has worked as an editorial assistant and a tutor in math and reading. She now resides in Dalton, Massachusetts.