{"id":8971,"date":"2011-10-11T06:30:39","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T17:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=8971"},"modified":"2011-10-10T11:09:24","modified_gmt":"2011-10-09T22:09:24","slug":"tuesday-poem-she-asked-me-if-she-took-one-pill-by-glenn-colquhoun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/10\/11\/tuesday-poem-she-asked-me-if-she-took-one-pill-by-glenn-colquhoun\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: “She asked me if she took one pill … ” by Glenn Colquhoun"},"content":{"rendered":"

She asked me if she took one pill for her
\nheart and one pill for her hips and one pill
\nfor her chest and one pill for her blood
\nhow come they would all know which part
\nof her body they should go to<\/strong><\/p>\n

I explained to her that active metabolites in each
\npharmaceutical would adopt a spatial configuration
\nleading to an exact interface with receptor molecules
\non the cellular surfaces of the target structures
\ninvolved.<\/p>\n

She told me not to bullshit her.<\/p>\n

I told her that each pill had a different shape and that
\neach part of her body had a different shape and that
\nher pills could only work when both these shapes could
\nfit together.<\/p>\n

She said I had no right to talk about the shape of her
\nbody.<\/p>\n

I said that each pill was a key and that her body was
\nten thousand locks.<\/p>\n

She said she wasn\u2019t going to swallow that.<\/p>\n

I told her that they worked by magic.<\/p>\n

She asked me why I didn\u2019t say that in the first place.<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Glenn Colquhoun
\n~ published in Playing God<\/strong><\/em>, Steele Roberts, 2002<\/p>\n

Reproduced here with permission.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>About the Poem:<\/h4>\n

On September 16, in a post titled Reflections on What I’m Reading<\/strong><\/a>, I talked about poet and doctor Glenn Colquhoun’s speech on \u201cThe Therapeutic Uses of Ache\u201d<\/strong> to the Royal College of General Practitioners in Wellington in 2009—and how re-reading it “reminded me all over again what an acute observer Glenn Colquhoun is and how I need to read his collection Playing God<\/strong> again, and maybe even share some of the poems with you of a Tuesday.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Playing God<\/strong><\/em> was published in 2002 to a level of critical and popular acclaim not often afforded poetry collections, receiving the Montana Award for Poetry and the Montana Readers’ Choice Award at the 2003 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.<\/p>\n

The collection draws on Colquhoun’s experience of medicine, a profession in which doctors are often accused on “playing God”, and reflects humour, pathos, and the frustration and heartbreak of a calling where:<\/p>\n

“On the seventh day bacteria were made resistant to antibiotics.
\nNew viruses were discovered in Africa. The drinking age was
\nlowered. In a regular column the British Medical Journal<\/em> reported
\na large increase in deaths attributed to earthquakes, pestilence,
\nlightning, famine, and flood.\u201d
\n~ from 1. Creation<\/em><\/p>\n

and the doctor<\/p>\n

\u201cContrary to popular opinion
\nI cannot raise the dead.\u201d
\n~ from 7. Myths<\/em><\/p>\n

And where<\/p>\n

\u201cAll miracles here
\nare usually performed
\nby various members of
\nthe domestic staff.\u201d
\n~ from 3. Performing miracles<\/em><\/p>\n

As you may guess from these quotes, I have quite a few poems in Playing God <\/strong><\/em>bookmarked—and had corresponding difficulty in deciding which poem to feature as today’s Tuesday Poem.<\/p>\n

In the end, I chose “She asked me if she took one pill … “<\/em> because it is one of the few poems I have read that made me laugh out loud on first reading. But who was I laughing at: the patient, the doctor, the system, myself as the reader? One of the things I love about this poem is its layers of humour, tinged with irony, and driven by that acute observation that characterises Glenn Colquhoun.\u00a0 And because I didn’t feel that I was laughing at<\/em> anyone; I was laughing with<\/em> everyone. I still grin every time I re-read it.<\/p>\n

About the Poet:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Glenn Colquhoun is a doctor, poet and children’s writer. His first poetry collection, The Art of Walking Upright<\/em>, won Best First Book of Poetry at the 2000 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. In 2003 he won the Poetry Category and also became the first poet to be awarded the coveted Montana Readers’ Choice Award, both awards for Playing God<\/em>. He has written several children\u2019s books and has been the convener of the New Zealand Post Book Awards. In 2004, Colquhoun was the recipient of the prestigious Prize in Modern Letters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8971"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8991,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8971\/revisions\/8991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}