Poetry

Dealing with the body is a complex problem, raising a mass of emotional, scientific, artistic and social issues. While the modern study of anatomy adheres to the highest ethical standards, this has not always been the case.

The poems on this page examine different aspects of the history and practice of anatomy: Chiara, one of the first recorded dissections; Mary, the last of Burke and Hare‘s victims to be sent to the Edinburgh anatomists; and an introduction to a modern-day anatomy class. The video of The Boy with Two Bodies explores the social framework of 14th Century Florence, when a mother of conjoint twins could be held responsible for the parlous state of local politics and the economy.

Ian’s chapbook A Skeleton of Desire is a collection of poems that are based on the human body in various ways. Much of the imagery is derived from re-interpreting the original meanings of the latin names for body parts, diseases, and the environment they exist within.

Abbess Chiara, Montefalco, 1308

“… her body should be preserved on account of her holiness and because God took such pleasure in her body and heart … After vespers or thereabouts, the said … Click here for more.

How do we communicate how we feel inside? Not just emotions, but our body sense, our pains, perhaps even the parts that are missing, or we never had…

Here are some of Ian’s poems that explore these issues:

from Lessons in Neuroscience

Lesson 1: Phantom Limb 
 
The space between my hands.

Like whiskey-tongued fishermen, shore-bound by Force Ten gales, I dream
about the ones that got away: snapper, mulloway, ocean trout, hammerhead,
fins slicing the sea into sashimi, carpaccio, butterfly fillets, jettisoned,
spinning and flipping and floating far from any dimly recollected grasp.

The gaps between my fingers,

as if they were feathers, as if they should span the imbalance dividing
this updraught from that, this diminishing shadow from its source,
this invisible calculation defining lift and drag, streamlined flight and
unrecoverable freefall, from this total, irredeemable, loss of sensibility.

The space between my hands, the gaps between my fingers:

only now can I describe the shapes that fill my memory; only now can I
describe the holdfasts, the hefts, the weights, the locks and latches, the keys
misplaced forever; only now, can I describe, for you, a tattoo needle,
a wedding ring, collisions, inadequate light, unbidden, insufficient narcosis.

~ … Click here for more.