Time spent waiting around to see your doctor can now be spent brushing up on a little bit of culture.
"Poems In The Waiting Room" - a programme providing selected poems in the form of a brochure - will start appearing in doctors' waiting rooms around the province.
Dunedin teacher Ruth Arnison, who has had poems and short stories published in journals and magazines around the world, has gained the local rights to introduce the programme in this part of the world.
Its aim is to provide a free source of well-chosen poetry for people waiting for their doctors' appointment.
Ms Arnison said the free service would not only give patients a more interesting wait, it would promote poetry to a wide audience.
The publications are presented as A4-sized three-fold cards, reproducing between six and eight poems. New editions are printed and distributed to waiting rooms four times a year.
Patients can either read and leave the cards or take the cards away with them.
The first sheet contains poems from Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Browning, Katherine Mansfield and even a touch of Otago with one by Brian Turner included.
In Balclutha, the sheets will be available at the Clutha Mental Health rooms and Balclutha General Practitioners Ltd.
