The project is the gift of a book to a person - the first 30,000 copies are to be given free to NHS workers in Birmingham. It is the gift of talent of the writers in the book, who, in their turn, gave their work free. And it celebrates the gift of life that is the central concern of our doctors, nurses, ancillary staff and other medical workers.

One of the contributors, NAWE member David Hart writes: 'I've done enough work now as a poet in the NHS to see that we must join up our varieties of languages which are by themselves dysfunctional: the medical, the managerial, the poetic, the conversational, the imaginative, the instinctive, the comic, the instructional, the clinical and the surreal, all these and more are who we are, the ways in which we mortal soft machines make our way together. What is healing if it isn't all of these?'

The first edition is published using print by demand, funded by the Nuffield Trust. The ambition is to print a second edition with a major publisher, so that the book can be given to every NHS worker in the UK. Editor David Morley (Director of the Warwick Writing Programme) would welcome any assistance in furthering this objective.