Appliance of Science: “Artists need to put themselves into their art”

Richard Tyrone Jones. Credit: Andrew Crowe.

My name is Richard Tyrone Jones. I have heart failure, and for the last year I’ve been developing a solo show talking about how and why this happened – despite my being just 30 when diagnosed. 

Evidently, I’ve been quite good at this, winning positive reviews, a Wellcome Trust People Award, and even having audience members ask, ‘Are you a doctor?’ In fact, I’m the opposite of a doctor, in terms of use to society, anyway. No, I’m not a politician. Worse than that, I’m a poet.

It’s good to get that off my chest. As good as it was to get the milkshake-thick phlegm off my chest when the quacks finally put me on diuretics. It’s ironic, because my parents always wanted me to be a doctor when I was younger. (They laboured under the strange misconception that doctors needed to speak Latin, but perhaps the Enlightenment hadn’t reached their part of the West Midlands by then.)

What held me back from ever considering it was my fainting at the mere sight of blood or needles, which was perhaps my own undiagnosed heart condition (atrial fibrillation, leading to hypotension then dilated cardiomyopathy) all along.

My heart stopped for four seconds (less impressive than Fabrice Muamba, but my poetry’s better than his). This crisis, which looked like it would kill or disable me, has not only given me much fertile poetic material and a strong show structure, it’s also piqued my curiosity like nothing since the philosophy of science part of my history degree. I think it’s only natural to want to get to know your own heart’s history as well as your doctor’s, isn’t it? But then I’ve always been curious. And I did get an A* in GCSE biology.

So I’ve made the most of my condition, not just as an opportunity to cannibalise myself into art – for artists have to, really – but to educate myself and others on the workings of the body’s engine room. Being poetic and scientifically accurate at the same time is a tough job, but the most fun part has been memorising 48 tongue-twisting, life-shortening genetic conditions for a biomedical cover version/tribute/rip-off of Tom Lehrer’s ‘The Elements’. (Ironically, Lehrer himself is still alive aged 84, so probably has none of them.)

And to reach as many people as possible, I’ve decided to make it free.* So although I may know all the causes of right ventricular dilated cardiomyopathy or factor V Leiden thrombophilia, in the financial sense at least, I am definitely still a poet, not a doctor…

By Richard Tyrone Jones, poet.

* In Edinburgh, anyway. Richard Tyrone Jones’s ‘Big Heart’ will be at the Edinburgh Free Fringe this August, at Liverpool Dadafest and on tour round the UK in autumn, supported by the Wellcome Trust.

This feature also appears in issue 71 of ‘Wellcome News’.