Poetry in the Clinic: Towards a Lyrical Medicine

This book explores previously unexamined overlaps between the poetic imagination and the medical mind. It shows how appreciation of poetry can help us to engage with medicine in more intense ways based on ’de-familiarising’ old habits and bringing poetic forms of ’close reading’ to the clinic.

Bleakley and Neilson carry out an extensive critical examination of the well-established practices of narrative medicine to show that non-narrative, lyrical poetry does different kind of work, previously unexamined, such as place eclipsing time. They articulate a groundbreaking ’lyrical medicine’ that promotes aesthetic, ethical and political practices as well as noting the often-concealed metaphor cache of biomedicine. Demonstrating that ambiguity is a key resource in both poetry and medicine, the authors anatomise poetic and medical practices as forms of extended and situated cognition, grounded in close readings of singular contexts. They illustrate structural correspondences between poetic diction and clinical thinking, such as use of sound and metaphor.

This provocative examination of the meaningful overlap between poetic and clinical work is an essential read for researchers and practitioners interested in extending the reach of medical and health humanities, narrative medicine, medical education and English literature.

Alan Bleakley is Life Emeritus Professor of Medical Education and Medical Humanities at Plymouth Peninsula School of Medicine, UK. He is a widely published poet, psychologist, and psychotherapist, and has written many academic books, most recently Medical Education, Politics and Social Justice: The Contradiction Cure (Routledge 2021).

Shane Neilson is a poet and medical doctor who practices in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. He has written several books of poetry and poetry criticism. In 2022, he will publish You May Not Take the Sad and Angry Consolations and Saving.