SHRAPNEL

Greg has worked as a general practitioner in multi-cultural South Auckland for forty years, and as a medical educator for most of that time. Before that he worked for three years in a remote hospital in Nepal, with primary responsibility for obstetrics and paediatrics. He has recently retired, and is now able to devote more time to writing.

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His life-long love of poetry and fiction led him to start creating short stories, inspired by glimpses of the extraordinary lives of the people he encounters in his medical work. In 2020 these came together in the publication of Biopsies. All the characters appearing in these stories are fictional, however, and do not represent actual patients, past or present.

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Makalofi was published in the University of Auckland’s magazine, Ingenio, in 2014. The Canary was published in 2018 in The Australasian Journal on Ageing. Twelve of these stories have also been published separately in the New Zealand Medical Journal Digest.

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Greg was interviewed on RNZ's Nine to Noon about the writing of Biopsies, and about being a GP in South Auckland, and the link to that interview is below.

 

His first book of poems, Shrapnel, drawn from over twenty years of writing, has recently been published through The CopyPress. These poems are warm and accessible personal reflections on themes ranging from medical practice to family fun and loss, close observation of daily life and time-wrought transitions.

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Greg currently writes a column on Poetry and Medicine for New Zealand Doctor, and most of these articles can be accessed via the Writing tab at the top of this page.