Poetry and Medicine
2012 International Hippocrates Awards for Poetry and Medicine
The Hippocrates Prize is amongst the best funded awards anywhere in the world for a single poem.
The Hippocrates initiative received the 2011 Times Higher Education Award for Excellence and Innovation in the Arts.
Entries will open soon for the 2013 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine
1. Open category - for any national or international entry: 1st Prize £5000.
2. National Health Service-related entries limited to current or former UK NHS-related staff and UK health students: 1st Prize £5000.
3. Entries must be in English, unpublished and a maximum of 50 lines of text, excluding title or line breaks.
Judges for the 2012 Hippocrates Awards
US poet and critic Marilyn Hacker
Broadcaster and journalist Martha Kearney
Medical researcher Professor Rod Flower FRS
2012 Hippocrates Awards were announced by the judges on Saturday 12th May in London at an International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine.
Registration will open 12th July 2012 for the 2013 Awards Symposium
Supporters of the 2012 Awards
Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine 
Cardiovascular Research Trust
Hippocrates poetry and medicine initiative short-listed for 2011 Times Higher Education awards
2011 Hippocrates Awards for Poetry and Medicine
The 2011 Hippocrates Awards Symposium included readings by New York poet Marilyn Hacker and former Welsh National Poet Gwyneth Lewis
2011 Hippocrates Open Awards
▪ 1st Prize: Michael Henry (Cheltenham, England) - The Patella Hammer
▪ 2nd Prize: Cheryl Moskowitz (London, England) - Correspondence with the Care Home
▪ 3rd Prize: Johanna Emeney (Albany, New Zealand) - Radiologist's Report
2011 Hippocrates NHS Awards
▪ 1st Prize: Paula Cunningham (Belfast, N Ireland) - The Chief Radiographer Considers
▪ 2nd Prize: Wendy French (London, England) - The Doctor's Wife
3rd Prize: Dr Sandy Goldbeck-Wood (Cambridge, England) - Inappropriate ADH
The 2011 Hippocrates Award judges
The main presenter of Front Row, BBC Radio 4's nightly arts programme and runs an interview series on BBC4 (Mark Lawson Talks To ...). He is a Guardian writer, is theatre critic of the Tablet and previously wrote for the Times, the Independent, the Independent on Sunday, and the Universe. Other writing includes 4 works of fiction, several BBC radio plays, and episodes of the BBC sitcom Absolute Power.
Gwyneth Lewis
Appointed Wales’ first National Poet in 2005. She is celebrated for her writings on poetry and medicine, including her recent,
A Hospital Odyssey, published in 2010 (Bloodaxe) and described by Nobel Prize-winner Sir Martin Evans as a ‘beautifully written poem that describes the epic journey of the soul…’.
Professor Steve Field CBE
A national leader in medical education. He is Chairman of the National Health Inclusion Board, a Member of the Faculty of the Harvard University program for leading innovation in healthcare and education, and was Chairman of the Council of the Royal College of General Practitioners from 2007-2010.
Supporters of the 2011 Awards
Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine
Heads, Teachers and Industry
Cardiovascular Research Trust
2011 International Hippocrates Prize and Symposium reports and news
May 7 2011: Guardian Review article by Mark Lawson on poetry, medicine and the Hippocrates Prize
May 7 2011: 2011 Hippocrates Prize winners announced
March 2011: The Huffington Post flags 2011 Hippocrates Prize shortlist
March 2011: Top 6 shortlist announced for 2011 Hippocrates Prize
January 2011: BBC Radio 4’s Mark Lawson joins panel of judges for Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine 2011
January 2011: Hippocrates Prize featured in the The Times (Eureka) - 6th Jan Edition
January 2011: Postgraduate Medical Journal - Editorial on poetry as medical humanity by Michael Hulse and Donald Singer Postgrad Med J January 2011;87(1023):1-2
December 2010: BMJ Careers feature - Johanna Shapiro [Irvine, CA] and Sarah Mourra [Yale] ask whether poems make you a better doctor
December 2010: Press release - aspiring young poets encouraged: comment by Clare Pollard who published her first poems aged 16
December 2010: Thanks to the following for information passed on about the 2011 Prize: Royal College of Physicians, Royal College of Psychiatrists, Royal College of General Practitioners, national assocation of writers in education, Australian Society of Authors, Writer's Hub, The Poetry Kit, WriteOutLoud, The Writers' Guild, Russell Group,
November 2010: Lapidus Journal article - Poetry and Medicine at Warwick by Michael Hulse and Donald Singer
November 2010: Thanks for 2011 Prize web-posting to Poetry Library, SouthBank Centre, New Zealand Poetry Society, Academic Resources, Prize Do, Write Out Loud, Beattie's Blog, History of Medicine, Society for Academic Primary Care, The BookTrib, Lapidus, Sutton Coldfield Grammar, Russell Group,
November 2010: Press release: national poet outgoing UK family doctor chief to judge the 2011 Hippocrates Prize
October 2010: Simon and Schuster flag entries for the 2011 Hippocrates Prize
October 2010: 2011 Hippocrates Prize now also supported by Head Teachers and Industry and Cardiovascular Research Trust
October 2010: British Medical Journal - Medical Humanities blog re 2011 Hippocrates Prize - Call for applications
2010 International Hippocrates Awards
Open Category
£5000 1st prize C K Stead Ischaemia Podcast with CK Stead
£1000 2nd prize Siân Hughes Treatments
£500 3rd prize Pauline Stainer Insight
£5000 1st prize C K Stead Ischaemia Podcast with CK Stead
£1000 2nd prize Siân Hughes Treatments
£500 3rd prize Pauline Stainer Insight
NHS Category
£5000 1st Prize: Wendy French It’s about a man
£1000 2nd Prize: Alex Josephy The Corridor
£500 3rd Prize: Edward Picot Time to get ready
2010 Commended entries
2010 Top 300 entries
More on the 2010 International Hippocrates Prize
2010 Inaugural International Hippocrates Prize: Press and publications
20.3.10 Lancet article on Poetry and Medicine
23.3.10 Radio 4 Today Interview with John Humphrys
23.3.10 BBC World Service Newshour Interview with Claire Bolderson
24.3.10 The Independent on the Prize Shortlist - 'Verse that will make you feel better'
10.4.10 Winners of 2010 Hippocrates Prize awards announced.
13.4.10 BMJ News. 2010;340:c2023 Winning NHS poem takes a doctor's life as its inspiration doi:10.1136/bmj.c2023
15.4.10 Warwick blog re awards symposium
Awards were announced on Saturday 10th April, 2010 during the International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine at Warwick Arts Centre.
Awards were presented by judges broadcaster and journalist James Naughtie, NHS Medical Director Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, and poet Dannie Abse.
A book of the 6 award winning and 40 commended poems has been published - cost £8 + postage and packaging (£4 + P & P for Commended entrants).
Anthology order form.
CPT Newsletter 'Poetry and Medicine' entries 2008
Winning entry
- Beth Harrison: 'The Journey'
Commended
- Julia Barclay: ‘Clinic 9’
- Jamie Brindle: ‘The Executive Suite’
- Pete Sweeney: ‘Odd Ode’
Judges' report
Michael Hulse - Editor, The Warwick Review
on behalf of the panel
Associate Professor
Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
University of Warwick
At first glance, writing a poem on a medical subject may seem an unusual and even a daunting challenge. We often think that poetry expresses the emotions. Where does that leave the routines of the ward or operating theatre? In fact poetry, in its thousands of years to date, has expressed every aspect of human experience. It has told of warfare and heroic exploits, it has described the life of religious faith, it has offered scientific and philosophical accounts of the world, it has presented social and political facts and arguments—and of course it has talked of love and death and the feelings these and other experiences prompt in us. Today, the truth is that poetry can be about anything at all.
Beth Harrison’s winning poem, ‘The Journey’, might almost have been written on purpose to illustrate this point. Who would have thought a poem could be written about the passage of a new blood cell around the body? Beth Harrison’s achievement here is to take the time-honoured allegory of travel, with all of its physical obstacles and all its trials of endurance, and apply it not to the whole human creature’s journey through life but, on a much smaller scale, to the equally arduous progress of one of the human’s infinitesimal component parts. The poem is rich in its language and imagination. It is fired by an archaic, even primæval sense of the physical world. It is an altogether unusual piece of writing, and a worthy winner.
But the poems entered in the competition were of various kinds, and took a variety of approaches to medical experience, with highly readable results. The judges felt they wanted to commend three other poems as well. Julia Barclay’s ‘Clinic 9’ offers an arresting account of one daily hospital routine, in which the clinic seems to have a life of its own, and the human beings who work there or attend as patients never appear as individuals but function as generic parts of a de-personalised process. In ‘The Executive Suite’, Jamie Brindle brings a waspishly envious fantasy to bear on the well-known (but apparently mysterious!) suite of the title, bouncing us along in jocular rhyming tetrameter. And Pete Sweeney’s ‘Odd Ode’ offers a jaundiced take on NHS life, setting the everyday rhythms in the wider context of the world’s troubles and, in its sting-in-the-tail ending, adopting a sceptical stance on cure.
The poems entered were a lively crop, and the judges offer congratulations all round, especially to the winner and the three commended poets.
Well done!
Poetry Panel
Michael Hulse, English and Comparative Literary Studies*;
Prithwish Banerjee, Cardiology^
Donald RJ Singer, Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics*^, Warwick Medical School
University of Warwick*; University Hospital^
Helpful links
Medicine and Poetry. EP Scarlett. CMAJ. 1937;36:73–79.
Healing Words: Poetry and Medicine
Journal of the American Medical Association: Poetry and Medicine
Poetry and Healthcare resources
Stanford: Poetry in Medicine
The Poetry Kit
Blog on Health, Arts and Science
Order 2012 and earlier Hippocrates Anthologies
Download Programme for 2012 Poetry and Medicine Awards 12th May Symposium
Register for 12 May 2012 Hippocrates Awards Symposium in London
Download 2012 Awards Symposium flyerEntries for the 2013 Hippocrates Awards will open 12 July 2012
Hippocrates Initiative
Top 10 poems
Nominate your favourite poem on a medical theme
2012 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine
Programme for 2011 Symposium on Poetry and Medicine and Hippocrates Prize Awards
Excerpts in The Independent from
award-winning
'Treatments'
by Siân Hughes and
'Time to Get Ready'
by Edward Picot.
Commended excerpt from Gary Geddes'
'The Doubt about Gout'
read on the BBC World Service:
Interview with Claire Bolderson
award-winning
'Treatments'
by Siân Hughes and
'Time to Get Ready'
by Edward Picot.
Commended excerpt from Gary Geddes'
'The Doubt about Gout'
read on the BBC World Service:
Interview with Claire Bolderson
Poetry 2008
CPT Newsletter 11 - December 2008
Poetry & Medicine Cameo
Michael Hulse Grand Round
5th Feb 2009
University Hospital Campus [ map]
Coventry CV2 2DX
Michael Hulse Grand Round
5th Feb 2009
University Hospital Campus [ map]
Coventry CV2 2DX
