This New Zealand GP-writer has recently won his country’s top literary prize. His second book of poems is called ‘Playing God’. 

Colquhoun had the always edifying experience of living and working with indigenous people, in this case Maori on the west coast of the North Island. His experience has translated into a poetry with abundant use of simile, and repetitive traditional structures.  

It is a difficult task to write so simply, yet evoke our deepest responses. 

Teddy

for a child with leukaemia 

Teddy was not well.

Teddy had been feeling sick. 

Teddy had to go to hospital. 

Teddy was told that he had too much blood. 

Teddy did not miss his friends. 

Teddy knew the thermometer was not sharp. 

Teddy was not scared of needles. 

Teddy said the medicine would make him better. 

Teddy closed his eyes at night. 

Teddy ate his vegetables. 

 

Teddy’s small girl lay in the corner of his bed. 

She was not so sure. 

Her eyes were made from round buttons. 

The fluff on the top of her head was worn

as though it had been chewed.

 

 The crumbling patient

 

I glued her nose back on

with chewing gum.

Later- her hair fell out.

 

I taped her hair back to her head.

Her tongue stuck like a dagger

between my toes.

 

I wedged her tongue inside her mouth.

Her lips clung to the side of my hand.

 

Her arm clattered to the floor.

I secured it to her shoulder

with a drawing pin.

 

Her fingers came off in my hand.

I used them to hold the lips

back on her mouth.

 

Her eye bounced on the ground

and rolled underneath the bed.

I washed it in cold water

and stuck it back in place.

 

Her jaw dropped but held with

two small screws in each corner 

which made her grin.

 

I made a spike out of her neck

and stuck her head back on.

 

A row of clips held up her skin.

 

I fastened her legs with an old hinge.

 

Her feet glued carefully

together like a broken vase.

Each crack was a vein.

 

I said goodbye.

 

And hoped she would not slam

the door on her way out. 

 

Cartoon-like, these absurd yet arresting images are framed in snapshot stanzas. The gum sticks to the fingers, leaving one beginning to wish one had never undertaken the repair. The poem closes with the door, opening up a private world of humour without which the GP might himself fall to pieces. 

The GP’s linguistically complex world is expressed well in this next poem: 

She asked me if she took one pill for her

heart and one pill for her hips and one pill

for her chest and one pill for her blood

how come they would all know which part

of her body they should go to

 

I explained to her that active metabolites in each

pharmaceutical would adopt a spatial configuration

leading to an exact interface with receptor molecules

on the cellular surfaces of the target structures

involved.

 

She told me not to bullshit her.

 

I told her each pill had a different shape and that

each part of her body had a different shape and that

her pills could only work when both of these shapes could

fit together.

 

She said I had no right to talk about the shape of her

body.

 

I said that each pill was a key and that her body was

ten thousand locks.

 

She said she wasn’t going to swallow that.

 

I told her they worked by magic.

 

She asked me why I didn’t say that in the first place.

  

Consider: Have you had a similar experience with a patient? What of the gulf in understanding between you both? Whose responsibility is it to bridge it?

 References and Further Reading 

Colquhoun G (2002) Playing God     Steele Roberts  

(All poems used by permission)