Scivias Choreomaniae (Spuyten Duyvil, 2024), a poetry collection by Lake Angela, a poet, translator and dancer-choreographer from Lake Erie, transports readers to an outdated prison for schizophrenics and psychiatric inmates from medieval times to the time-space of the contemporary United States.

All who pass through the “mad-houses” are held behind wrought-iron words, including the author as dance therapist, whose great failure culminates when her augmenting madness fells her into a similar psychiatric ward. But her unusual success is that before her downfall, the poet uses dance therapy to rot the iron words of prison cells and chains, exposing the core of the institution where doctors and medical staff treat the patients with brutality.