Reading - Corpus

Books beyond loss

5 February 2018 Leave a Comment

Kirstie McKinnon

Loss is like a current. Like fish, we respond with instinctive movement, ending up where we’re going but not, perhaps, where we intended. For some writers, the waterfall propulsion of grief channels, over time, into extraordinary work. Here are some books eloquent on loss, but greater than that, they reveal nature, character and a profound sense of being in the world, being part of it.

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (Vintage books, 2014. Winner of the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize and 2014 Costa Biography Award.)

The ignition point for H is for Hawk is the death of the author’s father. Macdonald is propelled by grief into a broken English landscape, wild as the bird she takes there to tame. Woven into the story is a biography of writer and would-be falconer T. H. White, which gives the narrative depth and mirror.

[Read more…] about Books beyond loss

Bibliotherapy: a cure for bigotry?

4 December 2017 1 Comment

Sue Wootton

Bibliotherapy is the treatment of ills and ailments by reading. The term was coined in a satiric article called “A Literary Clinic” published in 1916 in The Atlantic Monthly. Written by the American essayist and Unitarian minister Samuel McChord Crothers, it described an imaginary ‘bibliopathic institute’ run by one Dr Bagster, a gentleman to whom “nothing human was foreign”. Among other conditions, Dr Bagster is committed to treating bigotry in all its forms.

The sign on the door of Dr Bagster’s clinic reads:

Bibliopathic Institute. Book Treatment by Competent Specialists. Dr. Bagster meets patients by appointment. Free Clinic 2-4 P.M. Outpatients looked after in their homes by members of the Social Service Department. Young People’s Lend-a-Thought Club every Sunday evening at 7.30. Tired Business Men in classes. Tired Business Men’s tired wives given individual treatment. Tired mothers who are reading for health may leave their children in the Day Nursery.”

“Medicine and the novel”: a short story

27 November 2017 1 Comment

Sue Wootton

Medicine went to the doctor. “What brings you here today?” asked the doctor.

“I’m limping,” said Medicine. “My right side is strong, but my left side is weak. I’m tired but I can’t sleep. I never feel refreshed. I’m exhausted. I have everything I need but I’m not content. I don’t know what I want. I can’t see the wood for the trees.”

“When was the last time you sat under a tree?” asked the doctor.

“The Poetry Pharmacy”

20 November 2017 2 Comments

Emma Storr

Can poetry be therapeutic? William Sieghart, editor of the recently published The Poetry Pharmacy: Tried and True Prescriptions for the Heart, Mind and Soul, certainly believes in the power of a carefully selected poem to comfort and to make sense of feelings that threaten to overwhelm us at times of great stress. He argues that a poem can help us understand our emotional state and alleviate our fear that we are the only person who is suffering in this particular way. The inspiration for the book arose from a friend’s suggestion that after his talk at a poetry festival, Sieghart should offer short consultations to audience members and prescribe a suitable poem for their individual state of mind. It proved a great success and Sieghart subsequently toured the UK offering poetry pharmacies in libraries and festivals. As he states in the introduction to the book:

In all of this, I learned how much most people’s heartaches have in common.”

“Life in day-tight compartments”: Osler on doctor wellbeing

13 November 2017 1 Comment

Sue Wootton

Doctor wellbeing has been in the news lately, with the recent ratification by the World Medical Association of a new clause to the Declaration of Geneva (the modern Hippocratic Oath). The change was proposed and promoted by Queentown’s Dr Sam Hazledine, following concern at the very high level of burnout experienced by doctors. The old clause read, “The health of my patient will be my first consideration.” The new clause reads:

I will attend to my own health, wellbeing and abilities in order to provide care of the highest standard.”

A Swift bike and book tour

6 November 2017 5 Comments

Joe Baker

Dunedin’s Lilliput Libraries are hand-crafted book-filled boxes set up on the fence line of a dedicated Lilliput Library guardian. Passers-by are encouraged to “take a book now, leave a book later”. John’s Lilliput Library needed a bit of a turn around; we needed some exercise. Thus the Swift bike and book tour was born. We decided that each tour member would take a book to John’s library and swap it with a book found therein. We would then cycle on to other Lilliput Libraries, exchanging our book whenever we found one we preferred. At any one time we would each carry only one book. We would then cycle back up to John’s with our single prized tome.