Canadian Literature and Medicine breaks new ground by formulating a series of frameworks with which to read and interpret a national literature derived from the very fabric of that literature – in this case Canadian. Canadian literature is of particular interest because of its consideration of coloniality, Indigeneity, and coincident development alongside a nascent socialized medical system currently under threat from neoliberalism. The first chapters of the book carefully track the development of Canada’s socialized medical system as it manifests in the imaginations of the nation’s poets and authors who depict care. Reciprocal flows are investigated in which these poets and authors are quoted in policy documents. The archive-based methodology is sustained in subsequent chapters that rely upon a unique interdisciplinary mix of medical history, philosophy of medicine, medical policy, theory inherent to the field of Canadian literature (focusing in particular on the garrison mentality as a form of aesthetic protest and the feminist ethics of care), and Indigenous ways of knowing.

This book explores previously unexamined overlaps between the poetic imagination and the medical mind. It shows how appreciation of poetry can help us to engage with medicine in more intense ways based on 'de-familiarising' old habits and bringing poetic forms of 'close reading' to the clinic. Bleakley and Neilson carry out an extensive critical examination of the well-established practices of narrative medicine to show that non-narrative, lyrical poetry does different kind of work, previously unexamined, such as place eclipsing time. They articulate a groundbreaking 'lyrical medicine' that promotes aesthetic, ethical and political practices as well as noting the often-concealed metaphor cache of biomedicine. Demonstrating that ambiguity is a key resource in both poetry and medicine, the authors anatomise poetic and medical practices as forms of extended and situated cognition, grounded in close readings of singular contexts. They illustrate structural correspondences between poetic diction and clinical thinking, such as use of sound and metaphor. This provocative examination of the meaningful overlap between poetic and clinical work is an essential read for researchers and practitioners interested in extending the reach of medical and health humanities, narrative medicine, medical education and English literature.

In the middle of his life, Robert Lowell wrote "Memories of West Street and Lepke," a poem that reflected on Lowell's recurrent manias and included the lines "My manic statement." This is Shane Neilson's manic statement, arching backwards through his personal histories (rural, difficult) and then into the current scale of illness: how it prophecizes and destroys. But this is not a book solely given over to a state; Neilson gives most of the book over to love, how it moves him, the disaster of chasing it, and how it settles all the accounts in his life.

"Why do we fall ill? How do we get better? When his two-year-old develops epilepsy, Shane Neilson, a doctor, struggles to obtain timely medical care for his son. 'Saving' shares his familys journey through the medical system, but also Shanes own personal journey as a father who feels powerless when faced with his childs illness. It entwines these stories with Shanes personal history of mental illness as a child and his professional experience with disability. By exploring the theme of family, Shane Nielse manages to show that, over time, it is possible to not only escape the wreckage of the past, but to celebrate living with disability in the present."

Early in the pandemic, medical personnel were our front lines. What was that like? Through stories, art, and poetry, Canadian health-care workers from across the country recount their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The contributors to The COVID Journals share the determination and fear they felt as they watched the crisis unfold, giving us an inside view of their lives at a time when care itself was redefined from moment to moment. Their narratives, at turns tender, angry, curious, and sometimes even joyful, highlight challenges and satisfactions that people will continue to explore and make sense of for years to come. Contributors: Ewan Affleck, Sarah-Taïssir Bencharif, Manisha Bharadia, Christopher Blake, Candace de Taeye, Arundhati Dhara, Paul Dhillon, Liam Durcan, Monika Dutt, Sarah Fraser, David Gratzer, Jillian Horton, Andrew Howe, Monica Kidd, Jaime Lenet, Pam Lenkov, Suzanne Lilker, Jennifer Moore, Shane Neilson, Kacper Niburski, Elizabeth Niedra, Margaret Nowaczyk, Tolu Oloruntoba, Rory O’Sullivan, Jordan Pelc, Nick Pimlott, Angela E. Simmonds, Tanas Sylliboy, Helen Tang, Bobby Taylor, Tharshika Thangarasa, Diana Toubassi, Shan Wang, Marisa Webster, Chadwick Williams, Dolly Williams, Jiameng Xu.

Will is Shane Neilson’s debut collection of short fiction. The book ranges from straightforward East Coast depictions of alcoholism and frustrated farming told in dense, lyric prose, to experimental works that play overtly with language and form. In Will, a boy is beaten by his father; another father cares for his epileptic son; an anesthetist addicted to sevoflurane ponders the works of Michael Jackson; Vladimir Nabokov takes a writer-in-residence position at Memorial University of Newfoundland; and World War I poet John McCrae dies. And yes, there is a hockey story. Individual stories have appeared widely in magazines including Queen’s Quarterly, The Malahat Review, Fiddlehead, Geist, and The Canadian Medical Association Journal, among others.

Conceived as an archive of wisdom written by a disabled man for his children, You May Not Take the Sad and Angry Consolations gives voice to the experience of living in an ableist society: "Why does it hurt when emotion spills out of a body? How does emotion spell 'body'? What does it mean to be good? Why is the surplus of beauty everywhere? What is the password?" Weaving together reflections on fatherhood, Walt Whitman's place in American history, art, and the lingering effects of past trauma, these ringing and raw poems theorize on the concept of shame, its intended purpose, and its effects for and on disabled body-minds.