Opium and Ambergris is the haunting debut collection by poet Colin Dekeersgieter, whose lyric poems scrutinize a family’s history with addiction, death, and mental illness.

Reeling from the loss of his brother to a heroin overdose, Dekeersgieter grieves while doing his best to keep his suicidal mother alive and raise his family. As a result, these poems shift between historical retellings and urgent examinations of love. In the title poem, “opium” is associated with death and “ambergris”—a substance formed in sperm whales’ digestive tracts and valued by many cultures for over one thousand years—is associated with love. As family history, death, trauma, and duty become entwined with the acts of living, suffering, growing, and writing, these metaphorical categories become essentially interchangeable. Opium comes from the beautiful poppy; ambergris is an ingredient still used in high-end perfumes to help the fragrance last longer, yet it is extracted from dead whales. Thus, “opium” and “ambergris” come to represent the possible coexistence of love and loss.

While men and women physicians face different challenges and bring different historical experiences to the examination table, the history of medicine has been primarily told by men. Doctors Kimberly Greene-Liebowitz and Dana Corriel compile the pieces in this collection to highlight the many topics of concern for women physicians––some of which may be unknown to medical field outsiders. Topics include the physician-patient relationship, mastery of clinical practice, barriers to career advancement and success, and the challenge of balancing a demanding professional life with domestic responsibilities, an issue brought to the fore by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In March 2021, the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University and the University of Arizona Poetry Center launched the website for the Global Vaccine Poem project, inviting anyone to share experiences of the pandemic and vaccination through poetry. Dear Vaccine features selections from over 2,000 poetry submissions to the project, which come from all 50 states and 118 different countries.

Living at the intersection of medicine and art, medical illustration is a field that is not well understood by most—especially by physicians and other healthcare practitioners. In this comprehensive and practical guide to medical illustration, pediatric surgeon François I. Luks provides a useful overview of the field and explains its essential function in facilitating true communication between healthcare providers and their patients.