The Nation

Any Good Poem

Richard Berlin, MD, shares the poem "The Nation," by Roy Fisher, who grew up in the UK in Birmingham and was educated at the local grammar school and Birmingham University. He worked as a teacher of English in schools and colleges. From 1982 onwards he was a freelance writer and jazz musician. First published in the 1950s, Fisher’s work was always outside the English poetry mainstream. He was indifferent to fame. He died in 2017 at the age of 86. At the time, Fisher was the UK’s best known living poet.

Dr Berlin has been writing a poem about his experience of being a doctor every month for the past 26 years in Psychiatric Times in a column called “Poetry of the Times.” He is instructor in psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts. His latest book is Tender Fences.