Letters to Young People

In this collection of poetry Glenn Colquhoun writes to the young people he works with at the Horowhenua Health Service. Tender and poignant, wondering and wry, here his words become small scissors, knives, bandages and balms. Gathered together they represent an inventory of one doctor's consultations taken home, responses to those moments he might have woken in the night and wished he had said things better.

Glenn Colquhoun is a poet and doctor. He was born in 1964 and grew up in South Auckland. He went to school at the South Auckland Seventh-day-adventist primary school and later the Auckland Adventist High School in Mangere. He went on to study theology for two years at Avondale College, the church’s tertiary institution in Australia and completed a BA in English and Education at Auckland University in 1987. He later attended Auckland Medical School, graduating in 1996. In 1994 he took a year off his medical training and spent that time in Te Tii, a small Maori community in Northland. This began a lifelong relationship with the community and its people. His first collection of poetry, The Art of Walking Upright , was written about this community. He returned there later to work as a doctor in the Bay of Islands.