Emily Wills Poetry

As a poet and retired GP, I’m interested in the overlap between poetry and medicine, and how they inform each other. I’m encouraged by the recognition of the importance of the arts in healthcare, and especially by the recent integration of the humanities into medical training.

My poetry has been widely published, and I enjoy facilitating workshops, especially for people who don’t think they can write, or even like, poetry. I’ve done workshops and residences in various arts and health care settings, and used poems and reflective writing to teach GPs in training.

As part of a collaborative project, I worked as a poet at Gloucester crematorium and cemetery, and this led to the opportunity of being poet in residence at the International Conference on Death, Dying and Disposal. (I gather there has been much debate about the third ‘D’ but no-one as yet has come up with anything better.) These experiences, in addition to my experience of working in health care, continue to feed into my current writing.