'Everyone is pulling together': poems by NHS workers to raise money for Covid-19 appeal

Anthology These Are the Hands collects poems from across the health service, from doctors to cleaners

Nurse Audrey Ardern-Jones writes of her colleagues around the world “who in fog-grey mists of locked-up wards / talk gently to the confused, the paranoid”. Consultant paediatric intensivist Colin Begg reflects on a night shift, and the “complexity / and compassion, / heat and harsh lighting / and at its centre, a person / trying not to die”. And medical student Anna Harvey describes working on a donor’s body, “The flesh too different from our own to compare / saturated with preservative.”

All are contributors to a new poetry anthology, These Are the Hands, that collects poems from NHS doctors and nurses at all stages of their careers, as well as others whose vital work keeps the health service going, including cleaners, interpreters and clerical staff.

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