Gunmetal Blue is an investigation of how to be in the world—how to be a doctor, how to be a poet, and how to be both. Tempered with memoir and populated with poetic case studies, Neilson learns about himself as his patients reveal their frailties. Medicine might be considered the more productive activity by society, but Neilson found poetry in every office visit. Taught to research clinical questions, he took this scientific practice and made it a literary one: how can a doctor better know his patients, and how does this translate into self-knowledge” Poetry and medicine are topics intertwined since the time of the Greeks and, in this case, the connection between the two literally becomes his lifeline.

Shane Neilson's profile page

Shane Neilson is a poet, physician, literary critic, and scholar of Canadian literatures who lives with disability. He published his first review in 1998 and has had to look over his shoulder ever since. In 2012, his critical prose won Arc Poetry Magazine's “Critic's Desk” award as selected by Amanda Jernigan. In 2018, his scholarly work on Canadian literature that is rooted in disability studies was awarded SSHRC's $50,000 “Talent” Award. In 2019, his article on the representations of pain in Canadian literature was shortlisted for Canadian Literature's 60thAnniversary Graduate Student Essay Prize. Shane's own poetry has received several accolades, including the Hamilton Literary Award for Poetry in 2018; The Walrus Poetry Prize in 2017, selected by Margaret Atwood; and in 2011, he was shortlisted for the Trillium Poetry Prize. Shane is an assistant professor in family medicine at McMaster University (adjunct) and he continues to practice medicine at a little clinic in Guelph, Ontario.