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In this outstanding debut pamphlet, Emma Storr, medic and poet, gives us a masterclass in how to write about medicine.<\/p>\n
Equally at home writing about the personal or the professional, she shows us the experience of the patient as well as the doctor. I loved \u2018Delivery\u2019 with its calm account of the experience of an emergency section from the mother\u2019s point of view. In this twin delivery<\/p>\n
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\u2018Midnight slipped between their births,
\nthe witching hour split in two.\u2019<\/p>\n
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Elsewhere, we see the GP\u2019s human side when a patient \u2018took off half her face\u2019 and placed it on the desk. She admits to \u2018my own repulsion\/ veiled with fascination\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u2018Six-week Check\u2019 is one of two poems placed in the Hippocrates Prize and deservedly so. We feel we are examining the infant with the poet who notes \u2018your baked cub-like scent\u2019 and seems moved anew by this new life in her hands, though ending on a humorous note \u2018We won\u2019t need to meet again.\u2019<\/p>\n
Humour, too, in the beautifully controlled anger behind the poem \u2018Clinical Trials\u2019 in which she forensically examines a relationship in technical language which breaks down at the end of each stanza with the words \u2018you bastard\u2019. The poem ends<\/p>\n
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\u2018You did not have ethics approval.
\nYour control group was out of control.
\nYour random sampling was not so bloody random.<\/p>\n
You bastard\u2019<\/p>\n
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The revenge is sweet and this one goes down particularly well at readings!<\/p>\n
I loved the title poem, \u2018Heart Murmur\u2019 for its intelligent and effective mix of the clinical and the emotional in delicately controlled couplets.<\/p>\n
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\u2018My heart doesn\u2019t have to think.
\nIt works on impulse: squeeze, relax.<\/p>\n
It speeds up when I climb hills,
\nslow dances during sleep<\/p>\n
until it\u2019s hijacked, slewed by lust,
\nthe chemicals of longing\u2019<\/p>\n
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There is emotion in the job, too. Doctors make mistakes and there is real sadness and empathy in \u2018Missed\u2019<\/p>\n
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\u2018I prescribed you medicine.
\nI didn\u2019t think when you told me.
\nThe scan shocked us both.
\nI am a bad doctor. I failed you.\u2019<\/p>\n
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There is a generosity about the sharing of such experiences as well as those poems in which the poet turns her observant eye onto herself, as in \u2018Your Skin\u2019 which is a beautiful and honest look at a woman\u2019s life through the changes which take place in her skin;<\/p>\n
\u2018History is seared<\/p>\n
in its layers<\/span><\/p>\n the half-moon burn<\/span><\/p>\n the white tracks of<\/p>\n your babies\u2019 escape<\/span><\/p>\n that burst appendix\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Honesty, too, in rueful reflections on the limitations of what a GP can do for her patients<\/p>\n \u2018Every ten minutes There is a wide variety of form in this collection too and a sureness of touch which promises great things when Emma Storr brings out a full collection. I can\u2019t wait to read it. In the meantime I really recommend sampling her work in this excellent pamphlet. Read it. You will be in safe hands.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Carole Bromley l<\/strong>ives in York. Winner of 2019 Hamish Canham Award, she has a new collection\u00a0due out from Valley Press in 2020 and a pamphlet,\u00a0Sodium 136,\u00a0<\/i>will be published by Calder Valley Poetry in November.\u00a0www.
\na patient leaves
\ngripping a script
\nfor plasters,
\npills, placebos \u2013
\nI didn\u2019t want to sign.\u2019<\/p>\n