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04 • Humanities


TOOLS OF THE TRADE


A new edition of a pocket-sized poetry book that speaks to the experience of being a doctor


W


HAT are your essential tools of the trade? People might assume a stethoscope but if you ask most


doctors today they would probably reply their smartphone. It’s doubtful anyone would say a book of poetry. And yet this is what was presented to all


doctors graduating from medicine this year in Scotland. Tools of the Trade is a pocket-sized volume


of medically-themed poetry first published in 2014 and offered “simply as a compassionate friend” to Scottish medical graduates that year


and in 2015. Now a new edition of the book has been published for doctors graduating in Scotland in 2019, 2020 and 2021 – thanks to the support of both MDDUS and the Royal College of GPs (Scotland). All the poems speak in some way to the


experience of being a doctor, say the editors. Some of the poets featured in the book are or were doctors themselves, including Dannie Abse, Rafael Campo, Glenn Colquhoun, and Martin MacIntyre. Different poems suit different situations and readers but all are intended simply “as tools to help connect with your patients, your colleagues, yourself.” Chris Kenny, Chairman of MDDUS, said: “MDDUS are delighted to provide support for a new edition of Tools of the Trade, a resource for doctors to draw on in both the quiet and thoughtful moments of your career and perhaps at its most challenging times as well.”


From Tools of the Trade: Poems


for New Doctors which is available for sale from the


Scottish Poetry Library’s online shop at: www.scottishpoetrylibrary. org.uk/shop


Adam, There Are Animals Chloe Morrish


There is a small fox slipping through the fabric of morning, still coated in a layer of grey dusk


and carefully placing his paws between what’s left of night in the garden.


There is a monkey, a stained toy, in your hand when you arrive at the hospital,


which none of the fussing people had noticed and you had clung to.


There are wild-eyed soldiers’ horses, charging at us from the jigsaw pieces in the waiting room


where we try to sleep on the table and chairs and pretend we’re not waiting.


There are several pigeons on the window ledge, shuffling about before the steel chimneys and pinking sky


and a seagull’s bark in the deflated quiet just after you die.


There is an overfed cat in the arms of a nurse who smokes by the automatic doors.


and there are baby rabbits eating the grass verges of the hospital car park.


There is our dog at the door, confused when we get home without you.


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