Spoke at the Trent Clinical Local Research Network (CLRN) ‘life sciences’ conference this morning. What a nice bunch of people.

It being World Poetry Day I read out the following poem about being a patient in research:

If we work together
We can do it better
This thing called research.

This endeavour.

So here I am
Neither subject nor guinea pig
With no letters after my name.

But I know a thing or two.
About what it’s like.
About what it’s really like.

And all I ask
Is that you let me ask
Why, when, who and what for?

I’ll work with you on a cure
Although I’ll be long dead by then I’m sure

(But who knows we might get lucky).

If you’ll also help me with the pain
And making the day
Worth waking for.

For when dusk does night betray
I want to be able to say
I made a difference for me, for you, for us.

Now that we are working together
Wouldn’t you say
it’s better?

This thing called life.

I started writing it on the train going up and then changed it a bit on the way back. But I was too shy to ‘fess’ up in front of people.

Anyway, I’m passionate about poetry and in my world we would divert all the money we spend on homeopathy to support the promotion of the arts in healthcare settings. It would do us all a whole lot more good.