Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Home
  • COVID-19
    • Articles & podcasts
    • Blog posts
    • Collection
    • News
  • Content
    • Current issue
    • Past issues
    • Early releases
    • Collections
    • Sections
    • Blog
    • Infographics & illustrations
    • Podcasts
    • Classified ads
  • Authors
    • Overview for authors
    • Submission guidelines
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Forms
    • Editorial process
    • Editorial policies
    • Peer review process
    • Publication fees
    • Reprint requests
  • CMA Members
    • Overview for members
    • Earn CPD Credits
    • Print copies of CMAJ
    • Career Ad Discount
  • Subscribers
    • General information
    • View prices
  • Alerts
    • Email alerts
    • RSS
  • JAMC
    • À propos
    • Numéro en cours
    • Archives
    • Sections
    • Abonnement
    • Alertes
  • CMAJ JOURNALS
    • CMAJ Open
    • CJS
    • JAMC
    • JPN

User menu

Search

  • Advanced search
CMAJ
  • CMAJ JOURNALS
    • CMAJ Open
    • CJS
    • JAMC
    • JPN
CMAJ

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • COVID-19
    • Articles & podcasts
    • Blog posts
    • Collection
    • News
  • Content
    • Current issue
    • Past issues
    • Early releases
    • Collections
    • Sections
    • Blog
    • Infographics & illustrations
    • Podcasts
    • Classified ads
  • Authors
    • Overview for authors
    • Submission guidelines
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Forms
    • Editorial process
    • Editorial policies
    • Peer review process
    • Publication fees
    • Reprint requests
  • CMA Members
    • Overview for members
    • Earn CPD Credits
    • Print copies of CMAJ
    • Career Ad Discount
  • Subscribers
    • General information
    • View prices
  • Alerts
    • Email alerts
    • RSS
  • JAMC
    • À propos
    • Numéro en cours
    • Archives
    • Sections
    • Abonnement
    • Alertes
  • Visit CMAJ on Facebook
  • Follow CMAJ on Twitter
  • Follow CMAJ on Pinterest
  • Follow CMAJ on Youtube
  • Follow CMAJ on Instagram
Humanities

“I am a doctor, and I write poems.”

Vincent Hanlon
CMAJ November 06, 2012 184 (16) 1818; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.120299
Vincent Hanlon
Alberta Medical Association, Calgary, Alta.
Roles: Physician and Family Support Program
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Article
  • Responses
  • Metrics
  • PDF
Loading
Gunmetal Blue: A Memoir. Shane Neilson. Palimpsest Press; 2011.

I’m less familiar with guns than essays — initially I overlooked the graphic design on the cover of Shane Neilson’s book, Gunmetal Blue: A Memoir. Then I read his opening essay, “Uncle Miltie and the locked ward.” It’s a harrowing account of his hospitalization for a suicidal psychosis.

The essay opened my eyes to the sepia-coloured specimens of brain and heart positioned like targets in the twin barrels of a shotgun — a visual compliment to poet Milton Acorn’s The Brain’s the Target. The cover’s blue-black wash becomes the fathomless perimeter of a disordered mind in a hospital room: “The hospital was gunmetal blue: madhouses are best stark.”

“I am a doctor, and I write poems,” states Neilson on the final page of the book. That sounds more straightforward than it is. The practical demands of a life in medicine and the aesthetic realities of being a writer are not easily reconciled. Add to the work of poet and doctor the preoccupations of father, son and husband, and a man with a history of life-threatening mental illness, and it gets even more complicated. He explains in the essay, “The Practice of Poetry”: “I try to make sense of the world, of myself and others, and the major tool I use is poetry.”

Neilson remembers that “[W]riting poems about medicine started out as an egocentric enterprise.” One of his motives for going down the medical road: “I didn’t want the life of the typical fulltime writer, dependent on dead end jobs and grants.” That sounds a little dismissive of fellow writers whose life circumstances and career prospects may be different than his own. Neilson identifies more closely with the suffering than the starving artist. He acknowledges a special writerly debt to Acorn and Alden Nowlan, two of Canada’s top tier, but also wounded, poets.

Many of the essays in Gunmetal Blue are illness narratives — his own and those of his patients. Neilson also repeatedly makes his case for the legitimacy of the literary arts, especially poetry, in the training and life of doctors. He describes the traps and disappointments — and rewards — inherent in writing. Along the way he draws inspiration and bolsters his observations and arguments with references to the work of many other writers.

According to Neilson, “[T]he real benefit of medicine [is] immersion in people’s lives by choice.”

Gunmetal Blue may be signalling a career transition for the author. Neilson contemplates writing a novel — about “love as an enormous yes, and death as its counter, but with failure as the final word.” As much as I look forward to that book, it is the possibility of Neilson’s subsequent work — beyond doctors and patients — that intrigues me even more.

PreviousNext
Back to top

In this issue

Canadian Medical Association Journal: 184 (16)
CMAJ
Vol. 184, Issue 16
6 Nov 2012
  • Table of Contents
  • Index by author

Article tools

Respond to this article
Print
Download PDF
Article Alerts
To sign up for email alerts or to access your current email alerts, enter your email address below:
Email Article

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on CMAJ.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
“I am a doctor, and I write poems.”
(Your Name) has sent you a message from CMAJ
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the CMAJ web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
“I am a doctor, and I write poems.”
Vincent Hanlon
CMAJ Nov 2012, 184 (16) 1818; DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.120299

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
‍ Request Permissions
Share
“I am a doctor, and I write poems.”
Vincent Hanlon
CMAJ Nov 2012, 184 (16) 1818; DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.120299
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Jump to section

  • Article
  • Responses
  • Metrics
  • PDF

Related Articles

  • No related articles found.
  • Google Scholar

Cited By...

  • No citing articles found.
  • Google Scholar

More in this TOC Section

  • Dear Grandma
  • The butterfly
  • Are we going to talk about it?
Show more Humanities

Similar Articles

Collections

  • Topics
    • Medical humanities
    • Medical careers

Content

  • Current issue
  • Past issues
  • Collections
  • Sections
  • Blog
  • Podcasts
  • Alerts
  • RSS
  • Early releases

Information for

  • Advertisers
  • Authors
  • Reviewers
  • CMA Members
  • Media
  • Reprint requests
  • Subscribers

About

  • General Information
  • Journal staff
  • Editorial Board
  • Governance Council
  • Journal Oversight
  • Careers
  • Contact
  • Copyright and Permissions

Copyright 2021, Joule Inc. or its licensors. All rights reserved. ISSN 1488-2329 (e) 0820-3946 (p)

All editorial matter in CMAJ represents the opinions of the authors and not necessarily those of the Canadian Medical Association or its subsidiaries.

Powered by HighWire