Open Workings

Bamforth Iain

Iain Bamforth's third collection applies carnival licence to various kinds of histories: personal, symbolic, ethnographic, social – even to a history of representations in the 101 epigrams and "autographemes" which make up the Paris sequence "Impediments". Away from the city, the series of narratives of patients based on his experience as a country doctor in the south west of Scotland, and the harsher poems set in a mining town in the Australian outback contribute to the social history of their communities as they examine how far a rural doctor – "a fortunate man" in John Berger's phrase – can negotiate against the sheer weight of common sense. Traditional knowledge and applied science start from different kinds of literalness:this book acknowledges the claims of both and stands at some personal risk in the breach between them. With rigour and style, intelligence is brought to bear on the natural extravagance of the spirit, and on the resilience of people living at the mercy of circumstances.

About the Author

Iain Bamforth grew up in Glasgow and graduated from its medical school. He has pursued a peripatetic career as a hospital doctor, general practitioner, translator, lecturer in comparative literature, and latterly public health consultant in several developing countries, principally in Asia. His four books of poetry were joined by a fifth, "The Crossing Fee", in 2013.

His prose includes "The Body in the Library" (Verso, 2003), an account of modern medicine as told through literature; and "The Good European" (Carcanet, 2006), a collection of writings on ideas and literature in European history. He is currently working on a collection of aphoristic, fantastic and philosophical stories about medicine conjointly with a book of impressions of Wallacea – the biogeographical name for the various archipelagos between Asia and Australia. Several of his wide-ranging essays and reviews can be read on his website.

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