It’s an enormous pleasure to introduce our guest poet. Safia and I met on a Poetry Business workshop a few years ago.

Safia Khan is a newly qualified doctor and poet. Her debut pamphlet (Too Much Mirch, Smith | Doorstop) won the 2021 New Poet’s Prize. Safia’s full biography can be found below her stunning poems.

Dave

Let’s discharge him today.
We’re wasting a bed keeping him here,
I know a lost cause when I see one.

No need to biopsy, it’s clearly end-stage.
Sadly, not much we can do at this point,
best to discharge him today.

He’s asked, but don’t bother with a referral
to Addiction Services – he won’t engage.
Trust me, I know a lost cause when I see one.

Before you book his cab, tell him he needs
to break the cycle. Record it, otherwise
we can’t discharge him today.

His notes say no fixed abode. He mentioned
a daughter. I doubt she’ll take him in this state,
that’s a lost cause if I’ve ever seen one.

Social services have called twice now.
The daughter asked why she wasn’t contacted.
I said they told me to discharge him,
they knew a lost cause when they saw one.

On Placement

I donned mask, visor, and apron,
washed my hands the right way,

correctly identified an osteophyte
at the acromioclavicular joint,

imagined the right diagnosis,
asserted the wrong ones,

was humbled like pines after avalanche,
inspected behind the curtain,

tried not to register relief
when hers looked like mine,

translated incorrectly, blamed my parents
for speaking English in the house.

I donned mask, visor, and apron,
washed my hands the right way,

noted an antibiotic prescription
for a young wife’s sudden death,

and a son’s hanging decades later,
ate fish and chips during a discussion

on seven-year old M, presenting with
pain down there (by his cousin),

taken into care after being removed
for witnessing Mum’s self-immolation.

After, I wiped
the mushy peas from my mouth.

I donned mask, visor, and apron,
washed my hands the right way,

vaccinated death in a red dressing gown,
touched its eggshell, auscultated its yolk.

I have heard ghosts blooming like spring mist
through my stethoscope.

River
(After Selima Hill)

Other people’s mothers
shout at them in public,
I cry in the car on the way
back from dinner.
Other people’s mothers
don’t cremate their
daughters with a look.
My mother opens
like the seed of a tree.

I am sorry, she says.
You are right. But
other people’s mothers
had the chance
to be daughters.
Other people’s mothers
were softened by rivers.
I had to be bedrock
all my life.

I am sorry
you can feel silt
in my love,
but know you are
water to me.
Wherever you run
I’ll run under you,
holding the current
like no one else can.

But where are you really from?

Clay. A shapeshifting clot of blood. A kernel inside the first shell-
breath of God. Primordial soup, reduced to its atoms after being
brought to boil. The same place as the stars and birds, where
everything that ever existed was wrapped in tin foil and microwaved
into being. An iron ballerina, pirouetting round the Sun and sweating
out the Oceans. Mountains formed in an ice tray mould. A patch of
grass that drifted from elsewhere. A patch of grass still drifting. Like a
refugee with amnesia, I cannot recall home, though once in a while, I
catch its fragrance on the wind.

Biography:

Safia Khan is a newly qualified doctor and poet. Her debut pamphlet (Too Much Mirch, Smith | Doorstop) won the 2021 New Poet’s Prize. Her work has been published in various journals and anthologies including The North, BATH MAGG, Poetry Wales, Introduction X: The Poetry Business Book of New Poets (New Poets List), We’re All in It Together: Poems for a disUnited Kingdom (Grist), Dear Life (Hive), Surfing the Twilight (Hive).

She has been commissioned to write poetry for the University of Huddersfield and The British Library. Safia has performed her work widely, including as a headliner for Off The Shelf Festival. She has delivered poetry workshops for The Poetry Business, and seminars for the University of Oxford on the role of poetry as patient advocacy. Safia has been invited to deliver a creative writing teaching series with Nottingham Trent University’s WRAP Program, as their featured writer for 2023. 

refugee with amnesia, I cannot recall home, though once in a while, I
catch its fragrance on the wind.