Corpus - conversations about medicine and life

A little book with big feathers: “Poems for a World Gone to Sh*t”

16 July 2018 Leave a Comment

Sue Wootton

‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul – ” Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

I was browsing in the bookshop, and a book flew into my hands. It was called Poems for a World Gone to Sh*t.

A “world gone to sh*t” – that seems a fair diagnosis of the current age. And who can say they’re not to some degree infected by the hopelessness this tends to engender? It’s a widespread general malaise. But here in the bookshop this bold wee book fluttered in my palms. I opened it, and read the epigraph by Oscar Wilde:

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

It was my first inkling of why Poems for a World Gone to Sh*t had flown so urgently out of the shelves. It’s that fully-feathered thing, a book of hope. It deserves a perch in every human soul.

“XYZ of Happiness”: C is for Harriet

9 July 2018 7 Comments

Mary McCallum

We were a very new press, barely begun. The daughter of an old school friend had been diagnosed with cancer and was writing a blog. A bunch of us who’d been at school together began to read it. One of our group, illustrator Fifi Colston, sent me an email: ‘You could do worse than make a book about this.’ I agreed. This young woman knew how to write. Her blog posts had strong read-me titles and energetic don’t-argue-with-me first lines. They were focused on one event or idea and they told that story with economy and humour and knew where to end. She didn’t feel sorry for herself. She celebrated life. She often said how lucky she was.

Harriet came to meet with us – that’s me and my son and publishing sidekick Paul Stewart – in our shoebox office. This vibrant young woman with creamy skin and a red shiny coat that squeaked when she walked, who adored food – brownies, pizza – and friends and skiing, had osteosarcoma and things weren’t looking good, but she had an enormous love of life and capacity for hope. She was 19, after all. We talked about what a book would look like.
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“Forget-me-not”: a short story

9 July 2018 3 Comments

Emma Simpson

The living room was a riot of freshly picked forget-me-nots. Every corner of the room was filled with vases and bottles, the little blue flowers exploding everywhere. In the middle of the room the usual furniture had been pushed back or taken away. A coffin, occupied, lay there, with two hardback chairs facing it. Made of walnut, the box was simple and unadorned. The deceased lay in state. The body was wearing a midnight blue dress, white face so pale against the dark surrounding it. A small bouquet of forget-me-nots was clutched in cold, stiff hands.

The capacity to be fully in the moment: a visit to Iran

9 July 2018 2 Comments

Annette Rose

“You are welcome to put your feet on my eyes but I’m worried my eyelashes will bother you.” This is an Iranian folk-saying that conveys how hospitable the Persians are towards visitors, who are seen as a gift from God.

My daughter and I have slipped out of our hotel room and are hitting the streets of Kashan. It is just on dark and a stream of white cars is heading into town. All along the sidewalk free soup is being stirred in large vats and ladled into bowls which runners carry on trays to revelers in their cars. It’s like a giant soup drive-in. We are instantly folded into these proceedings, handed a tasty bowl of thick green soup – which tastes of mint, beans, pasta and chickpeas – shown a place to sit, and an English-fluent explainer fills us in on the details. It’s “falling in love with the last Imam” soup he tells us. What a lovely name for a soup.

Light in darkness: Matariki and a winter carnival

2 July 2018 4 Comments

Sue Wootton

Matariki is the Māori name for the Pleiades, or ‘seven sisters’, a group of stars which in June or July becomes visible just above the horizon at dawn. Matariki means ‘the eyes of god’ (mata ariki) or ‘little eyes’ (mata riki). In Māori mythology, Ranginui, the sky father, and Papatūānuku, the earth mother, were separated by their children, causing the god of the winds, Tāwhirimātea, to fly into a rage, pluck out his eyes and hurl them into the skies.

Traditionally, the first new moon after the the appearance of Matariki signals the start of a new year. It’s a time for acknowledging the cycle of life and seasons, remembering the dead and celebrating the turn toward lengthening days.

Each year the southern New Zealand city of Dunedin celebrates the winter solstice and Matariki with a midwinter carnival. Thousands of people, young and old, gather in the Octagon in the heart of the city to enjoy music, street food and fireworks – but the highlight for everyone is always the lantern parade, a procession of children and adults bearing (or wearing) a gorgeous array of luminous flora and magical beasts. Light glows and flows around the Octagon, and face after face bursts out smiling. Click on the images below to share the experience.

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Euthanasia and the common good

2 July 2018 10 Comments

Charlotte Paul

When I started thinking hard about euthanasia, I visited my friend who has a progressive illness affecting his body and mind, and who is in hospital-level care. His partner has moved into the same residence to help look after him. She responds to his suffering with love, and you can sometimes see in his eyes that he recognises this. I honour them both: his endurance and gratitude; her generosity.

But, with euthanasia in mind, I think about them both in a different way. Is his suffering unbearable? Although he wouldn’t be competent to make a request for euthanasia, should it become legal in New Zealand, their situation calls into question the value of his endurance and her generosity.

In what follows I explore my intuition that actively ending suffering by causing death undercuts the meaning of suffering.