If you haven’t discovered the Hedgehog Press and its ‘Stickleback’ editions, please go and find them. These are slim volumes of four poems from a single poet, or sometimes two poets. They are beautifully- produced, colourful gems. My favourite at the moment is by Jules Whiting and Vic Pickup.

It’s about four responses to an EEG, a method of recording brain activity. In one poem, the technician shines lights at the patient, which become a fairgound ride, the sun glinting on trees and a glass bird. It is a fine way of showing how our imagination creates glorious things out of what is a technical but scary procedure.          

Another disturbing poem deals with falling in love – how the radiologist ‘holding her head in his hands, whispered reassurance’ and how he watches ‘this electrolysed Medusa’ and imagines her convulsions.

And in ‘Sleep EEG’ a wonderful conceit unwinds, where the patient asks if the technician can press a switch to ‘restore factory settings’.

The last poem ‘What Colour is My Brain?’ is a tender portrait of the interaction between patient and a radiologist who has himself had cancer. The patient touches his arm and wishes him a long life. ‘He cups my hand in his, smiles’.

If, in future, I have an EEG, I will carry these images with me, these human interpretations of what is a unsettling but necessary intervention.

I can’t recommend the Sticklebacks highly enough – they give huge bang for a poetic buck. www.hedgehogpress.co.uk