Poet & Physician
My Book
A History of Resurrection by Rachel Mallalieu unveils the stories of love and emotions, smiles and tears, the hope of life, and fear of impending doom. With the voice of a physician and the heart of a poet, Mallalieu takes on the courage to write about the untold stories and unheard sentiments.
Maryam Qureshi
Songs of Cardinal
Rachel Mallalieu’s collection, The History of Resurrection, is a group of poems about death, and has more life in it than most books I have read about the living. This is to say that Mallalieu’s gifts as a poet are born from her experiences as an emergency medicine doctor and as a mother. So many of these poems come from the poet’s daily interactions with the dying the way most of us are around shoes. Or refrigerators. Or automobiles. I have had the good fortune to read these poems over the course of a few years, and there is a constant amazement that I feel every time I encounter Mallalieu’s work. She could be writing about saving her son from the pool, or a patient in the trauma bay, or delivering a baby—it does not matter, the work always surprises. Her ability to bring us close to all of these living details is masterful because her work is so generous, so full of love and distance and vision and exhaustion. These poems lift us, deliver us, from the bottom of the pool, from six feet under soil, from the sky where her love of nature resides, even as we are heading to these places ourselves. The History of Resurrection says, No No No. Not Yet. There is more time to spend here, with me, rise.
Matthew Lippman,
Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful
Rachel Mallalieu had me hooked by the first line. she says maybe now you’ll understand, and I do.
“The History of Resurrection” shakes you to your core with reality. If you have ever lost anyone, you must read “Eyes Open.”
Rachel knows death in a clinical way and in the course of a mother who lost. This book is so important; I thank Rachel Mallalieu for sharing it.
Thasia Anne
The Past is Calling
Rachel Mallalieu’s History of Resurrection wields words scalpel-sharp and dissects grief while refusing to be pulled under. It is devastating magic, just like the best medicine.
Read this to hear what the doctor does not say.
Read this to hear what the mother does on her hardest day.
Read this to be Lazarus twice.
Read this to remember your own name.
Jill Bergantz,
EIC Written Here and There