Shane Neilson

In this utterly unique modern fairy tale, Shane Neilson steps clairvoyantly into Enniskillen, an expropriated New Brunswick community abandoned just before it became part of a military base. Intellectually disabled and left behind, the story's protagonist, Willard, fades into the land and into love with Casey -- a tyrannical industrialist who is also a magnificent whitetail buck. The Reign is the swirling, ever-shifting story of a land that endures industrialism and a love that refuses subordination. From lyrics to prose, images to echolalia, this unforgettable myth drifts effortlessly through a wide range of forms and registers to deliver a breathtaking, unparalleled tale.

Canadian Literature and Medicine breaks new ground by formulating a series of frameworks with which to read and interpret a national literature derived from the very fabric of that literature – in this case Canadian. Canadian literature is of particular interest because of its consideration of coloniality, Indigeneity, and coincident development alongside a nascent socialized medical system currently under threat from neoliberalism. The first chapters of the book carefully track the development of Canada’s socialized medical system as it manifests in the imaginations of the nation’s poets and authors who depict care. Reciprocal flows are investigated in which these poets and authors are quoted in policy documents. The archive-based methodology is sustained in subsequent chapters that rely upon a unique interdisciplinary mix of medical history, philosophy of medicine, medical policy, theory inherent to the field of Canadian literature (focusing in particular on the garrison mentality as a form of aesthetic protest and the feminist ethics of care), and Indigenous ways of knowing.

This book explores previously unexamined overlaps between the poetic imagination and the medical mind. It shows how appreciation of poetry can help us to engage with medicine in more intense ways based on ‘de-familiarising’ old habits and bringing poetic forms of ‘close reading’ to the clinic. Bleakley and Neilson carry out an extensive critical examination of the well-established practices of narrative medicine to show that non-narrative, lyrical poetry does different kind of work, previously unexamined, such as place eclipsing time. They articulate a groundbreaking ‘lyrical medicine’ that promotes aesthetic, ethical and political practices as well as noting the often-concealed metaphor cache of biomedicine. Demonstrating that ambiguity is a key resource in both poetry and medicine, the authors anatomise poetic and medical practices as forms of extended and situated cognition, grounded in close readings of singular contexts. They illustrate structural correspondences between poetic diction and clinical thinking, such as use of sound and metaphor. This provocative examination of the meaningful overlap between poetic and clinical work is an essential read for researchers and practitioners interested in extending the reach of medical and health humanities, narrative medicine, medical education and English literature.

Canadian Literature and Medicine breaks new ground by formulating a series of frameworks with which to read and interpret a national literature derived from the very fabric of that literature – in this case Canadian. Canadian literature is of particular interest because of its consideration of coloniality, Indigeneity, and coincident development alongside a nascent socialized medical system currently under threat from neoliberalism. The first chapters of the book carefully track the development of Canada’s socialized medical system as it manifests in the imaginations of the nation’s poets and authors who depict care. Reciprocal flows are investigated in which these poets and authors are quoted in policy documents. The archive-based methodology is sustained in subsequent chapters that rely upon a unique interdisciplinary mix of medical history, philosophy of medicine, medical policy, theory inherent to the field of Canadian literature (focusing in particular on the garrison mentality as a form of aesthetic protest and the feminist ethics of care), and Indigenous ways of knowing.

Why do we fall ill? How do we get better? When his two-year-old develops epilepsy, Shane Neilson, a doctor, struggles to obtain timely medical care for his son. Saving shares his family's journey through the medical system, and also Shane's own personal journey as a father who feels powerless when faced with his child's illness. It entwines these stories with Shane's personal history of mental illness as a child and his professional experience with disability. By exploring the theme of family, Shane Neilson manages to show that, over time, it is possible to not only escape the wreckage of the past, but to celebrate living with disability in the present.

Conceived as an archive of wisdom written by a disabled man for his children, You May Not Take the Sad and Angry Consolations gives voice to the experience of living in an ableist society: "Why does it hurt when emotion spills out of a body? How does emotion spell ‘body’? What does it mean to be good? Why is the surplus of beauty everywhere? What is the password?" Weaving together reflections on fatherhood, Walt Whitman’s place in American history, art, and the lingering effects of past trauma, these ringing and raw poems theorize on the concept of shame, its intended purpose, and its effects for and on disabled body-minds.

This book explores previously unexamined overlaps between the poetic imagination and the medical mind. It shows how appreciation of poetry can help us to engage with medicine in more intense ways based on ‘de-familiarising’ old habits and bringing poetic forms of ‘close reading’ to the clinic. Bleakley and Neilson carry out an extensive critical examination of the well-established practices of narrative medicine to show that non-narrative, lyrical poetry does different kind of work, previously unexamined, such as place eclipsing time. They articulate a groundbreaking ‘lyrical medicine’ that promotes aesthetic, ethical and political practices as well as noting the often-concealed metaphor cache of biomedicine. Demonstrating that ambiguity is a key resource in both poetry and medicine, the authors anatomise poetic and medical practices as forms of extended and situated cognition, grounded in close readings of singular contexts. They illustrate structural correspondences between poetic diction and clinical thinking, such as use of sound and metaphor. This provocative examination of the meaningful overlap between poetic and clinical work is an essential read for researchers and practitioners interested in extending the reach of medical and health humanities, narrative medicine, medical education and English literature.

Heralding a new regionalism, New Brunswick interrogates the popular representations of Shane Neilson's home province. Structured as a group of serial long poems, this fifth book by the winner of the 2017 Walrus Poetry Prize recasts the political, economic, and social histories of settler New Brunswick, particularly as they relate to the sacrifices of his parents. As forests are reborn and fields are healed by rest, Neilson insists that though "we want catastrophes of fire," out of the ashes of charred dreams and old myths arise avenues for reconciliation through vulnerability and affect.

Constructive Negativity is a book of criticism without precedent in Canadian Literature. The result of over twenty years of participation in the nations poetry community, it combines Shane Neilsons lived experience of disability with prize culture theory in order to create that rarest of creatures: criticism as page-turner. In the first section of the book, Neilson repurposes Rilkes famous admonition, saying to poets You must change your genre meaning, you must write criticism in order for poetry to have a life in an era dominated by prize culture. Later, Neilson provides a starting point for others to engage with books of Canadian poetry using the lens of disability, covering a range of texts and especially weighing in on the authors particular community, those with invisible disability.

A heart-rending poetic commentary on the pain, anxiety and dissatisfaction that go hand-in-hand with mental illness, and on the complex and emotional interplay between doctor, patient and outsider.

Will is Shane Neilson’s debut collection of short fiction. The book ranges from straightforward East Coast depictions of alcoholism and frustrated farming told in dense, lyric prose, to experimental works that play overtly with language and form. In Will, a boy is beaten by his father; another father cares for his epileptic son; an anesthetist addicted to sevoflurane ponders the works of Michael Jackson; Vladimir Nabokov takes a writer-in-residence position at Memorial University of Newfoundland; and World War I poet John McCrae dies. And yes, there is a hockey story. Individual stories have appeared widely in magazines including Queen’s Quarterly, The Malahat Review, Fiddlehead, Geist, and The Canadian Medical Association Journal, among others.

In the middle of his life, Robert Lowell wrote "Memories of West Street and Lepke," a poem that reflected on Lowell's recurrent manias and included the lines "My manic statement." This is Shane Neilson's manic statement, arching backwards through his personal histories (rural, difficult) and then into the current scale of illness: how it prophecizes and destroys. But this is not a book solely given over to a state; Neilson gives most of the book over to love, how it moves him, the disaster of chasing it, and how it settles all the accounts in his life.