To date, what is your greatest poetry moment?
Probably when we got given a really fit student teacher from Oxford to read Keats et al. to us for a term during A-level English at High School. He was as passionate about the romantic poets as we were about his corduroy trousers perched on the corner of our desks whilst he read…
Also back at medical school, at a time when I was suffering from panic attacks in crowded rooms, I managed to stand up in front of two hundred people and read a poem I’d written for my friend’s wedding. Gin definitely helped.
What type of poetry do you like to read?
I like using the poems of Rumi, Khalil Gibran and Derek Walcott in the poetry therapy sessions I run. I’ve recently enjoyed some heart breaking collections by contemporary poets Rebecca Goss, Sharon Black and Sian Hughes. Oh and I love getting my hands on the Hippocrates Prize anthology each year –I enjoy poems that manage to weave medical language and scientific terminology into them. Oh and I’m also a fan of Jo MacFarlane (Edinburgh Jo) who writes hard-hitting poems about psychiatry from the patient’s perspective.
What is your greatest poetry ambition?
I’d love to create an anthology (with permission) of the work generated in the poetry therapy sessions I’ve run and by patients I’ve worked with.
I’m also putting together an ICD-10 poetry anthology – a catalogue of poems I’ve collected that describe the lived experience of each catalogued diagnosis listed in the ICD-10 (The psychiatric diagnostic manual.)
How does a poem begin for you? A idea? A form? An image?
It usually begins with a moment of poignancy during a clinical encounter with a patient or a feeling of tension between the humanity of a situation versus the clinical confines of our profession. Then there are the angsty teen poems about my high school ex-boyfriends, which are basically just me being an emotional flasher (I’ve been told.)
Where do you write?
I write on my NHS laptop on the train to work and in hardback notebooks. Sometimes when I’m out running, ideas and lines come into my head and I have to type them into my draft messages on my phone until I get home. This occasionally leads to running off kerbs and into ditches however.
What helps you with the writing process?
Diet red bull. Boost. Emerge. Red rooster. Blue Bear – basically any kind of budget stimulation drink that costs between 35p and 49p and can be bought from a corner shop such as Premier or Nisa’s.
Spotlights Anthology: http://paragrampress.co.uk/product/spotlights-paragram-anthology-2016/
Probably when we got given a really fit student teacher from Oxford to read Keats et al. to us for a term during A-level English at High School. He was as passionate about the romantic poets as we were about his corduroy trousers perched on the corner of our desks whilst he read…
Also back at medical school, at a time when I was suffering from panic attacks in crowded rooms, I managed to stand up in front of two hundred people and read a poem I’d written for my friend’s wedding. Gin definitely helped.
What type of poetry do you like to read?
I like using the poems of Rumi, Khalil Gibran and Derek Walcott in the poetry therapy sessions I run. I’ve recently enjoyed some heart breaking collections by contemporary poets Rebecca Goss, Sharon Black and Sian Hughes. Oh and I love getting my hands on the Hippocrates Prize anthology each year –I enjoy poems that manage to weave medical language and scientific terminology into them. Oh and I’m also a fan of Jo MacFarlane (Edinburgh Jo) who writes hard-hitting poems about psychiatry from the patient’s perspective.
What is your greatest poetry ambition?
I’d love to create an anthology (with permission) of the work generated in the poetry therapy sessions I’ve run and by patients I’ve worked with.
I’m also putting together an ICD-10 poetry anthology – a catalogue of poems I’ve collected that describe the lived experience of each catalogued diagnosis listed in the ICD-10 (The psychiatric diagnostic manual.)
How does a poem begin for you? A idea? A form? An image?
It usually begins with a moment of poignancy during a clinical encounter with a patient or a feeling of tension between the humanity of a situation versus the clinical confines of our profession. Then there are the angsty teen poems about my high school ex-boyfriends, which are basically just me being an emotional flasher (I’ve been told.)
Where do you write?
I write on my NHS laptop on the train to work and in hardback notebooks. Sometimes when I’m out running, ideas and lines come into my head and I have to type them into my draft messages on my phone until I get home. This occasionally leads to running off kerbs and into ditches however.
What helps you with the writing process?
Diet red bull. Boost. Emerge. Red rooster. Blue Bear – basically any kind of budget stimulation drink that costs between 35p and 49p and can be bought from a corner shop such as Premier or Nisa’s.
Spotlights Anthology: http://paragrampress.co.uk/product/spotlights-paragram-anthology-2016/