Not Much to Say Really - Paperback

by Kelvin Corcoran (Author), Emma Collins (Illustrator), Sam Guglani (Introduction by)

Not Much to Say Really is an account of extended conversations with four elderly patients in hospital. Standing on the edge of their time they look back over their lives with good humour, tenderness and remarkable candour. At every turn these conversations show the reader that the most personally lived events and experiences are the most powerfully shared in the common lot of mortality. On that score they have much to say.

"We asked the poet, Kelvin Corcoran and the doctor and artist, Emma Collins to meet and speak with elderly patients in Cheltenham General Hospital, then to translate these conversations into creative works. The poems and artworks in this book offer us a glimpse of other human lives; of persons who have experienced our very own desires, fears and hopes; of human beings who are now briefly patients. Patients whom we owe a duty beyond the delivery of just blood tests or drugs or suitable placement. Patients and persons who, one day soon, we ourselves will be." --Dr Sam Guglani

'Working with interview material from the palliative ward, Kelvin Corcoran's new work conveys "the miracle of ordinary events recalled" - births, deaths, weddings, international travel, and social change. Through his characteristic technique of layering voices, places and times into a continuous present, Corcoran re-weaves these testimonies into a Greek chorus of lived experience. From his generous encounters, Corcoran finds the poetry and patterns in memories and the gaps between them, exploring how a life is made, re-made and re-told through the changing textures of history and language. Songful, humorous, poignant and often very moving, this work proves just how valuable poetry can be at that point where it interfaces with medicine.' --Andy Brown (co-editor A Body of Work: Poetry & Medical Writing, Bloomsbury 2016)