This is just one example of interconnectivity between various art forms and the fields of engineering and medicine. There are many more, some of which I will explore in this book, as they related to the reconstruction of the body. When I was working in Liverpool, I received a very large grant for the construction of a new suite of laboratories for our work in biomaterials and regenerative medicine. I commissioned a series of paintings by the Belgian trompe l’oeil artist, Jean-Marc Collier, who was friend of ours in Brussels, to represent his understanding of aspects of our science. His ‘Macrophage Landscape’ is shown above.

Paintings are not the only art form which can relate to the reconstruction of the body. The written word, and especially poetry, is also of considerable relevance, and of special importance to me. I started writing poetry quite late in life, mostly as an escape from the rigors of accuracy that are associated with normal scientific writing. My first book of poetry was published in 2016 and I shall refer to some of the poems contained in that collection within the current book. Very few of my published poems concern professional work. However, after leaving Liverpool, and working in both North Carolina and South Africa, there are some connections. At the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine, a major emphasis of current research, under the direction of Dr. Anthony Atala, involves the use of stem cells in reconstruction; I wrote the following poem soon after my arrival in this part of the USA:

This poem is about stem cells, describing them in terms and objects that should be familiar, especially to those who lived in our area.

Take a clear sandwich bag
From Trader Joe’s
Place inside a mesh of linguine
Cooked to softly perfection in Toscana
Surround by vanilla jello
From Harris Teeter
Mix in a concoction of drugs
Prescription serviced by CWS
Add health supplements
Wisely obtained at Whole Foods
Delicately place in the middle, one soft egg yolk
Infuse with vitamin pills
Sourced carefully online.
Now, since this is child’s play
Get little, very little, candies
From Walgreens
Place them in the saved egg-white
And paste this on the
Outside of the bag
Conjure up some Atala magic
Infuse energy
Just a little oxygen
It gets smaller and smaller
The mimicry of life
In fact, the origin of the species
The cellular stem of living

David Williams “Child’s Play”, 2016,
In ‘A Decade of Transition,The Collected Poems of David Williams, 2004-2014’