1. Allusions of Healing?: Poetry and bioethics Dr Trevor Stammers Programme Director in Bioethics and Medical Law St Mary’s University, London, UK

2. Memorable verse “I wandered lonely as a cloud……”
“Water, water, everywhere,
nor any drop to drink”
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
“O, wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us!”
“The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat.”

4. Poet Physicians John Keats William Carlos Williams
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Dannie Abse
Rafael Campo
1986 White Coat Purple Coat

5. "Poetry contest reminds trainee medics that patients are people, not machines."  THE in reporting the competition

7. IVF by Kona MacPhee
“I come home early, feel the pale house close around me as the pressure of my blood knocks at my temples, feel it clench me in its cramping grasp, the fierceness of its quiet sanctioning the small and listless hope that I might find it mercifully empty.
Robert Frost “The ear is the reader”

8. IVF by Kona MacPhee Dazed, I turn the taps to fill the empty
tub, and draw the bathroom door to close
behind me. I lie unmoving, feel all hope
leaching from between my legs as blood
tinges the water, staining it the quiet
shade of a winter evening drifting in
on sunset. Again no shoot of life sprouts in
this crumbling womb that wrings itself to empty
out the painfully planted seeds. The quiet …..

9. IVF by Kona MacPhee
…………………………we go on living in the shadow of the cliffs now looming close: the blood that’s thick with traitorous clots of hope; the quiet knack we’ve lost, of giving in; the empty room whose door we cannot close.”

10. Advantages of Poetry Emotional intensity
Succinct, portable formulations
Communication of encompassing ‘existential’ truths
Diagnosis and picking up on subtle verbal cues
Memorable and lasting effects on professional life
Can bring healing to the wounded healer
DR Caroline Welberry Assoc Prof of Family Medicine Georgetown

11. Disadvantages of Poetry
Prejudice
Can induce unexpected and unpleasant emotion
Lack of familiarity with medium and its methodology
Negotiation of multiple complex meanings
Different mind-set from that of scientific, logical inquiry
Lack of systematic and extensive resource base
Loss of meaning in translation
“Poetry is of no use”
Literature Medicine and Arts database POEMS

12. Analysing Poetry Metonymy and synecdoche
Iambic pentameter and alexandrine
Trochee and dactyl
Tenor and vehicle
Explicit and implicit metaphors

13. Lithium by Robin Robertson
After the arc of ECT and the blunt concussion of pills, they gave him lithium to cling to- the psychiatrist's stone. A metal that floats on water, must be kept in kerosene, can be drawn into a wire. (He who had jumped into the harbour, burnt his hair off, been caught hanging from the light) He'd heard it was once used to make hydrogen bombs, but now was a coolant for nuclear reactors, so he broke out of hospital barefoot and walked ten miles to meet me in the snow.

14. References
NYU Medical School Literature, Arts and Medicine Database
Oliver, M Understanding Poetry San Diego: Harcourt Brace
Reid, C A Scattering Oxford: Arete Books
Stammers, T Poems in practice BJGP
Wellbery, C On the use of poetry in medical education Journal for Learning through the Arts 2