Tools of the Trade E-Book

• Herausgeber: Polygon
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 41

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Being a doctor is a privilege; it is also very demanding and can be stressful, and to be able to look after others, we need to look after ourselves. We offer you this little book of poetry, Tools of the Trade, as a friend to provide inspiration, comfort and support as you begin work. Tools of the Trade includes poems by poet-doctors Iain Bamforth, Rafael Campo, Glenn Colquhoun, Martin MacIntryre and Gael Turnbull. 

Leseprobe

This new edition first published in 2025 by

The Scottish Poetry Library

5 Crichton’s Close, Edinburgh EH8 8DT and

Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

West Newington House, 10 Newington Road,

Edinburgh EH9 1QS

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First published in 2014 by the Scottish Poetry Library

www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk

www.polygonbooks.co.uk

Preface copyright © Chris Kenny, 2025

Selection and notes copyright © Scottish Poetry Library, 2025

ISBN 978 1 78885 808 3

The publishers are grateful for all the donations towards the cost of this anthology

Typeset in Verdigris mvb by Polygon, Edinburgh

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

CONTENTS

From the Editors

Preface

I. LOOKING AFTER YOURSELF

Tools of the Trade | Màrtainn Mac an t-Saoir/Martin MacIntyre

Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower | Rainer Maria Rilke

Clearing | Martha Postlethwaite

from Auguries of Innocence | William Blake

Dealbh mo Mhàthar / Picture of my Mother | Meg Bateman

Indelible, Miraculous | Julia Darling

Doing Nothing | Mandy Haggith

Love after Love | Derek Walcott

II. LOOKING AFTER OTHERS

Bedside Teaching | Rachel Bingham

Anne Tries to Explain How Chronic Fatigue Feels | Sue Norton

A Brief Format to Be Used When Consulting with Patients | Glenn Colquhoun

(Not so) Patient | M.V. Blake

10th April 2020 | Hannah Hodgson

The Crick | Will Harris

What Matters | Larry Butler

Twenty-eight Weeks | Lesley Glaister

III. BEING WITH ILLNESS

Achhe dukkho achhe mrityu | Rabindranath Tagore

How to Behave with the Ill | Julia Darling

Things | Fleur Adcock

Teddy | Glenn Colquhoun

Lucencies | Michel Faber

Everything Is Going to Be All Right | Derek Mahon

For My Valentine in an fMRI Scanner | Claudia Daventry

Diagnoses | Nuala Watt

Worried Well | Steve Xerri

Eye Chart | Nuala Watt

My Mother’s Skin | Pascale Petit

Disarticulation | Nicola Healey

Guidewire insertion, pre-surgery | Jay Whittaker

Junior Doctor Learning Log | Karen Schofield

Who Knew | Sheila Templeton

All Clear | Sara-Jane Arbury

Antidotes to Fear of Death | Rebecca Elson

Healings 2 | Kathleen Jamie

IV. ENDINGS

For a Child Born Dead | Elizabeth Jennings

Nothing | Selima Hill

Names | Wendy Cope

Ode to My Father’s Dementia | Raymond Antrobus

The First Death | Andrea Wershof Schwartz

Memorial | Norman MacCaig

from Cumha Chaluim Iain MhicGill-Eain / Elegy for Calum I. MacLean | Somhairle MacGill-Eain/Sorley MacLean

Ben Lomond | Kathleen Jamie

At Eighty | Edwin Morgan

from The Cure at Troy | Seamus Heaney

Going Without Saying | Bernard O’Donoghue

V. TO THE FUTURE

Beannacht / Blessing | John O’Donohue

Doctor | Nina Young

Atlas | U. A. Fanthorpe

In All Those Years in Medical School | Roger Bloor

Superwoman | Julia Meade

Notes on some of the poems

Acknowledgements

FROM THE EDITORS

Congratulations on graduating as a doctor, and welcome to this wee book – a new friend!

We wish you all the very best for your life and career in medicine. You’ve worked hard to get here and there’s more hard work ahead, but there’s also the great privilege of helping your patients through illness or difficult times and listening to their stories. Along with the many rewards will come challenges and stressful times, and we hope that this book will act as a source of support and succour for you.

Besides sound clinical knowledge, caring well for people requires compassion (for yourself and others), connection, kindness and creativity, and our aim is that these poems nurture and support your creativity. They are all short and accessible and speak in some way to the experience of being a junior doctor. They have been chosen because they cast light on the variety of situations and emotions that you will deal with. Good listening is the foundation of effective healthcare, and we believe that the ideas and images generated by these poems will encourage you to listen well to your patients and enhance your understanding of what they are going through.

You may feel that poetry is not your thing. Fair enough, but please dip in; we would be surprised if you do not find poems that speak to you and how you feel as a new doctor. To this end, the poems are arranged in sections: ‘Looking after yourself’, ‘Looking after others’, ‘Being with illness’, ‘Endings’ and ‘To the future’.

As you embark on this new and exciting phase of your life, the world we all share is in a fragile state, and anxiety about events, both local and global, can sometimes feel debilitating. Working as a doctor offers endless opportunities to transform that anxiety into positive action and to contribute to making the world a better place. As Arundhati Roy, author and activist, has written:

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way, On a quiet day I can hear her breathing.