Magnetic Resonance Imaging

The poet went to hospital for a scan. By Magnetic Resonance Imaging it was possible for doctors to look through his skull and spine, into his brain and spinal cord. The author's poems emerge from his engagement with this experience and its aftermaths, and the readings it provides.

The poet went to hospital for a scan. By Magnetic Resonance Imaging it was possible for doctors to look through his skull and spine, into his brain and spinal cord. What might be written in those places, the nervous system of the human body, indeed written in or into any organic body or into the earth itself. Jon Glover's poems emerge from his engagement with this experience and its aftermaths, the readings it provides. What writing might appear in the brain, on the inside walls of a cave, the atoms aligning and then colliding, and as they do so a story emerging which is the story of the inner nature of things and lives. The process of poetic discovery entails finding the distinctive forms of bodies and their modes of expression. The process of scientific discovery, making atoms do strange things, parallels the processes of the imagination in writing a poem, finding what elements fit together into a new message or a message that rings true.