ABSTRACT
The metaphors have enabled complex feelings and thoughts to be described in simple, easily understood language, using familiar images and analogies. Poems emphasise imagination, feeling and insight. The text is concentrated, distilling the essence of a feeling, experience or emotion. This chapter begins with the narrative theme and explores poetry as a means of expression where conventional prose seems inadequate. It discusses how this is often achieved with metaphor and words that require a leap of imagination and intuition, and how poetry can be used as a resource in teaching about difficult areas in medicine and can in itself be therapeutic. When is it appropriate to use poetry? Bereavement and loss, suffering, social injustice, adolescence and old age, family dysfunction, jealousy and guilt all afflict us and our patients at some time. Many of these themes are explored by poets, and their poems provide some inspirational teaching material.
