Hatchery by Elizabeth Osmond
V. Press
Hatchery is an essential guide on how to wed, celebrate, and advocate for our NHS. Stunning imagery and metaphor stitched throughout in myth, a hard graft medic with historical transitions in care. 'Take comfort in ritual / step into sacred waters.' Elizabeth Osmond's poems treat birth to a last breath with all senses, especially touch. She splices medical expertise and tantalising storytelling with human kindness. 'Doctors in Difficulty' is raw in its reality of caring whilst juggling family and self. 'Yeah, this is how it's done'.'� Helen Sheppard Drawing on her expertise as a neonatal consultant, Elizabeth Osmond applies her impressive sensibilities as a poet to chart a chronological course through the evolution of medical care and prevailing attitudes, skilfully interweaving these fascinating historical dioramas with contemporary testimony borne of experience and observations in the field. A 1903 exhibition of 'incubator babies' contrasts with the tender dignity of 'Conversation', in which 'I talk to the baby in the incubator [...] I tell him we all once were stars'. Finding imaginative resonance in references ranging from a zoo's Reptile House to the BBC Shipping Forecast, these poems are alternately magical and pragmatic, interrogative yet compassionate, brimming with humanity and intelligence. Even if Osmond's 'heart is wanting to be fearless / but it is a colander with little holes / through which doubt seeps in', Hatchery is a work of hope and wonder: 'I wash my hands' she writes, 'and contemplate new life'.'� Sarah Doyle Hatchery is very visceral and very vibrant.
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