Case Notes

Judith Wozniak spent her working life as a GP. These poems look at illness from a doctor's point of view. They include her own experiences caring for patients as a family doctor and her imagined experiences of doctors caring for artists and poets from the past.

"Through a series of distilled and precisely observed portraits of patients in crisis, the poet offers us a glimpse into the day-to-day physical and emotional challenges facing a family doctor. The vanishing world of the old-style GP who knows her patients and journeys alongside them, often in their last moments, is intimately described, profoundly empathic and at times unbearably moving."

Jacqueline Saphra

"The poetry of medicine is in all places, all people - New York to Edinburgh, Sarah Bernhardt to the old woman afraid to upset her doctor by showing her tumour. To feel and find that poetry takes the sensitivity and experience that Judith Wozniak possesses in abundance. To translate it to the page requires a calm discipline that will find the words to enact the eye's observation and the heart's compassion. Case Notes reveals on every page that Judith Wozniak is a poet fully and compellingly equal to the task."

Michael Hulse

"A worthy winner of the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine in 2020, Judith Wozniak gives us another intriguing insight into the working life of a General Practitioner. Her second pamphlet paints a wide canvas of encounters with patients. To this heady mix she adds the imagined voices of other doctors in different times. With keen observation and precise images, we understand the helplessness of young doctors faced with unexpected tragedy. A number of poems about house calls give us sensitive insights into the bond between doctor and patient. Wozniak explores the vulnerabilities of both with a memorable honesty and humanity."

Denise Bundred