Lesley Morrison, John Gillies, Samuel Tongue, Ali Newell (eds)Polygon Press, 2019, PB, 96pp, £6.99, 978-1846974885
Five years ago I reviewed the first edition of this book of poems designed to be carried in the pocket of newly qualified doctors. I thought it was a brilliant idea and am delighted to see it is still going strong in its third edition as a resource to turn to for inspiration, comfort, and even guidance during a working day — or unwinding after it. It still weighs in at just 96 pages, so what’s new in this edition? There are prefaces by the editors and sponsor (MDDUS) and an introduction by Gavin Francis. Notes are included on some of the poets and by some of the poets themselves on their poems. Poems are also grouped together in five sections — looking after yourself, looking after others, beginnings, being with illness, and endings. Having mourned my own father’s death earlier this year it wasn’t surprising that I found some of the poems in the final section particularly resonated with me. Denise Levertov is a wonderful poet and ‘Talking to Grief’ is a powerful metaphorical evocation of loss:
Ah, grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.
It is not loss in death but decline though dementia that many readers will also identify with in Bob Hicok’s ‘Alzheimer’s’:
Chairs move by themselves, and books. Grandchildren visit, stand new and nameless, their faces’ puzzles missing pieces.
However, this edition is shot through with plenty of joy as well. In Jo McDougall’s ‘Mammogram’, after receiving the all-clear from the surgeon, the patient in the poem gives vent to her relief:
I pull on my radiant clothes.
I step into the Hanging Gardens, the Taj Mahal,
the Niagara Falls of the parking lot.
Czesław Miłosz’s ‘Gift’ is a dizzying dance of delight in simply being alive:
A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over the honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him. Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
If only a fraction of the readers of this wonderful anthology enter their surgeries and clinics with this kind of spirit each day, this book may do more to help the NHS be a better place to work in than the many grand schemes costing millions.
- © British Journal of General Practice 2019