This image is the cover for the book What Do You Think?

What Do You Think?

As a physician I frequently have to search for a diagnosis which will account for most, or hopefully all, of a patient’s problems. So when I consider a question related to politics, religion or philosophy, I look for an answer that will help us to understand the known facts.

When you read these poems, I don’t expect that you will necessarily agree with the conclusions but hope that you will be stimulated to ask, ‘What do I think?’ and, maybe of more importance, ‘Why do I think so?’

The interpretations will be a product of age, gender, culture, race, nationality, politics, education and religious beliefs or lack of them. It is hardly surprising that our responses may differ. I frequently apply the following quotation from Oliver Cromwell (1599-1650), the Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland, to my own thoughts:

“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”
– Letter to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland (8/3/1650).

Ken Weir

Ken Weir was born in Ireland during the Second World War. He went to school in England (Oundle), got his BA at Oxford (Pembroke College), and his medical degrees (BM. BCh. and DM) were also from Oxford. His clinical training in cardiology was at the Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, where he and his wife, Elizabeth V. Pearman, first met. His research training was at the CVP Lab of the University of Colorado in Denver, as a Fulbright scholar. His clinical, research, and teaching careers have been at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center and the University of Minnesota Medical School. He has edited 11 scientific books and is an author of over 200 scientific papers but these poems, which have been written in the Twin Cities over the last twenty years, are his first volume of poetry.

Austin Macauley Publishers