Excited to announce that InVerse Medicine – my book of poems – is now available as an Audiobook! Be sure to look for it at a vendor of your choice…

The audio features the warm and empathetic voice of Didi.

InVerse Medicine: These are poems about conversations that we’d like to have with ourselves and with others when our bodies and minds are fraying…

There’s struggle and triumph, loss and humanity within the pages of this eclectic collection of verse.

Reviews of the book

Our reading can thus attune us to how poetry listens, speaks and heals with empathy, and Dhaliwal crafts each poem with this explicit tenor.

Dr Gayathri Prabhu, Poet, Novelist, & Associate Professor,
Manipal Centre for Humanities, Manipal

The author wields her words like a scalpel in this cleverly titled collection of ‘medical poetry’. They cut to the chase, they spill the lifeblood of an existence dedicated to saving others in various ways while also saving oneself.

Devika Fernando, Poet & Romance Writer,
Srilanka

We often forget that doctors are human beings. We forget that there are emotions, passions, fears, and so many feelings behind their surgical masks. Doctors are not robots. They feel everything just like you and me. 

Sudesna Ghosh, Romance Writer,
Kolkata

This collection should be a required starting point for any medical student or their seniors to explore together this multifaceted intersection of patient and professional lives. The way the ‘I’ changes in each poem is beautifully handled and makes the collection genuinely moving and thought provoking.

Ruth Chalkley, Neurology patient,
Sheffield, UK

These poems have a direct and easy style that lends itself to reading, capturing the silences between the lines and drawing in the reader early in the narration. The settings are familiar to any practitioner: the ward, the ICU and clinic. The gaze moves from doctor to patient, from mother to child, the dying to the living.

Dr Olinda Timms, Division of Health and Humanities,
St John’s Research Institute, Koramangala, Bengaluru
in: Indian Journal of Medical Ethics

Get a copy from an audiobook vendor of your choice!

InVerse Medicine: These are poems about conversations that we’d like to have with ourselves and with others when our bodies and minds are fraying…

There’s struggle and triumph, loss and humanity within the pages of this eclectic collection of verse.

Reviews of the book

Our reading can thus attune us to how poetry listens, speaks and heals with empathy, and Dhaliwal crafts each poem with this explicit tenor.

Dr Gayathri Prabhu, Poet, Novelist, & Associate Professor,
Manipal Centre for Humanities, Manipal

The author wields her words like a scalpel in this cleverly titled collection of ‘medical poetry’. They cut to the chase, they spill the lifeblood of an existence dedicated to saving others in various ways while also saving oneself.

Devika Fernando, Poet & Romance Writer,
Srilanka

We often forget that doctors are human beings. We forget that there are emotions, passions, fears, and so many feelings behind their surgical masks. Doctors are not robots. They feel everything just like you and me. 

Sudesna Ghosh, Romance Writer,
Kolkata

This collection should be a required starting point for any medical student or their seniors to explore together this multifaceted intersection of patient and professional lives. The way the ‘I’ changes in each poem is beautifully handled and makes the collection genuinely moving and thought provoking.

Ruth Chalkley, Neurology patient,
Sheffield, UK

These poems have a direct and easy style that lends itself to reading, capturing the silences between the lines and drawing in the reader early in the narration. The settings are familiar to any practitioner: the ward, the ICU and clinic. The gaze moves from doctor to patient, from mother to child, the dying to the living.

Dr Olinda Timms, Division of Health and Humanities,
St John’s Research Institute, Koramangala, Bengaluru
in: Indian Journal of Medical Ethics

Interventional cardiologist and lifestyle guru, Dr Bharat Rawat, took a copy of my poetry book on a hike in beautiful wilderness somewhere in Indore.

With an appreciative audience of primates in the backdrop, and humans in the foreground (I hope), he read out one of the poems from the collection. Have a listen…

Haven’t read InVerse Medicine yet? Grab a copy for yourselves

A reader from the United Kingdom made my day by leaving a lovely review for my book of poems on Amazon.

Do you review every book you read?

I can imagine how arduous and time consuming that could get if you read a LOT, but do consider reviewing the books you really enjoy or those that move you in a meaningful way.

It makes a world of a difference to the author…

If you’d prefer a Print Version, check out these vendors:

Every review is special, but when it has been crafted by an accomplished author and poet – Gayathri Prabhu – it leaves one speechless.

“You can kill a book quicker by your silence than by a bad review.”
― EA Bucchianeri

Here it is:

“Ophthalmologist, Storyteller, Poet are the three words and identities that accompany Upreet Dhaliwal’s name on her website and on the cover of her recently published book of poetry, InVerse Medicine: Poems About Things Often Left Unsaid (2021). Comprising of 27 poems, this collection evokes a tantalising possibility of what the specific location of identities, between or through medicine and literature, can illuminate for us. It equally reminds us that readers are located as well, in time, space and identity. We are reading this book during a global health catastrophe that has no precedent in our lifetimes for its spread and devastation.  Our reading can thus attune us to how poetry listens, speaks and heals with empathy, and Dhaliwal crafts each poem with this explicit tenor.

The Preface draws attention to the first poem of the collection and that its first-person voice is autobiographical. This poem titled  “Four-leaf Clover” is addressed to a dead daughter, a newborn who is taken for surgery even as the mother is still groggy.”

Read the full review online at Reading Room Co

There is nothing more heartening for a writer than readers who take the trouble to write reivews.

“You can kill a book quicker by your silence than by a bad review.”
― EA Bucchianeri