'Medical' were to be interpreted in the broadest sense. Anyone in the world may nominate a poem. Nominations were to be for poems written by a poet from anywhere in the world and in any language. The poem could be contemporary or from any historical period.
When a favourite poem on a medical theme was nominated, there was the option to add a comment about why you liked the poem and the poet.
Here are some examples of comments received:
On 'Patience Strong' by
UA Fanthorpe: 'Here writes a poet about a poet, and about a lesson
learnt from a gentleman living with epilepsy. Ursula Fanthorpe was a champion
of the underdog, this poem is an epitome of both insight and humility and
offers lessons to us all'.
On 'Hospital Waiting
Room' by WH Davies: 'I love this poem. It was written in the early days of
the NHS and is a fascinating look at class in British society from someone who
put himself outside of it.'
On "The
Pathology of Colours' by Dannie Abse: 'Abse is a master at combining
the every day earthy detail with the mystical. He brings the world of medicine
into the world of poetry in a way that speaks to all of us'.
On 'Seven Ages
of Man' by William Shakespeare: 'A cameo of the whole of life from birth to
frail, unknowing 'second childishness'.'
The
top 10 entries will be included in an international Anthology on Poetry and
Medicine to be published in 2012 by the Hippocrates Press.
Submissions
Dannie
Abse - Song for Pythagoras
and The
Pathology of Colours
Joë Bousquet - La pupille (… the half-opening of the swallow’s nest …) La Connaissance du Soir, 1947, Gallimard
Simon Bridges - Tomorrows
Joë Bousquet - La pupille (… the half-opening of the swallow’s nest …) La Connaissance du Soir, 1947, Gallimard
Simon Bridges - Tomorrows
Constantine
Petrou Cavafy - The
death of the Emperor Tacitus
Blaise
Cendrars - Le
ventre de ma mère [My mother's womb]
WH
Davies - Hospital
Waiting Room
John
Donne - No man is an island
UA
Fanthorpe - Patience Strong
Thom
Gunn - In
time of plague
Oliver
Wendell Holmes - The morning visit
Jane
Hirshfield - What binds
us
Ted
Hughes - Examination
at the Womb-Door
Victor
Hugo - Les feuilles d'Automne -
Ce siècle avait deux ans! [Autumn leaves - This century was 2 years
old]
John
Keats - Ode to a
nightingale [... where palsy shakes a few, sad, last, gray hairs...]
Philip
Larkin - Ambulances
Federico
Garcia Lorca - El Lagarto Viejo (The Old Lizard)
Stéphane
Mallarmé: Le tombeau de Charles
Baudelaire
Katherine
Mansfield - A day in bed
Roger
McGough - Wisdom
Teeth Czeslaw Milosz - So
little
John
Milton – On his blindness
and Lycidas
Merrill
Moore - The noise
that time makes
Pablo
Neruda - Oda ala tristeza (Ode to sadness)
Sylvia
Plath - The companionable ills
Anna
Piutti – Current
Peter
Porter - A Chagall postcard
Peter
Reading - C
Adrienne
Rich – Power
William
Shakespeare - Seven ages of man
[As you like it 2.3.139-167]
Jo
Shapcott - Hairless
and Of
mutability
Stevie
Smith - Not
waving but drowning
Robert
Louis Stevenson - The land of
counterpane
Dylan
Thomas – Do
not go gentle into that good night
Heather
Wastie - Ping pong
neonatal ICU
William
Carlos Williams - The
last words of my English grandmother
William
Butler Yeats - When
you are old
The
Hippocrates Prize is one of the highest value awards in the world for an
unpublished poem in English on a medical theme.
2012 Awards were
presented by the judges at the close of the 3rd
International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine on Saturday 12th May at the
Wellcome Collection Rooms.
