Call for papers for 2012 International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine and Hippocrates Awards

Registration is open for the 3rd International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine to be held on Saturday 12th May 2012  in London at the Wellcome Collection rooms on the Euston Road. The symposium will include poster sessions, lectures, round table discussions and poetry readings (by former President of the Poetry Society Jo Shapcott and 2012 Hippocrates Awards judge Marilyn Hacker) and the 2012 Hippocrates Awards will be announced at the end of the Symposium. 

The programme includes contributors from the UK, USA, Denmark, Greece, Cyprus and France. There are sessions on historical and contemporary themes, illness and poetry, poetry as therapy, poetry in the education of medical students, nurses and doctors, and poetry as an aid to health professionals. The provisional programme of lectures, round table discussions, poetry readings and the Hippocrates Awards Ceremony is now published on the Symposium website.

 Poster abstract submission remains open - deadline 31st March 2012.
 
The Hippocrates initiative was named winner of the Award for Excellence and Innovation in the Arts in the 2011 Times Higher Education awards, announced on 24th November 2011 in London. This award aims to recognise the collaborative and interdisciplinary work that is taking place in universities to promote the arts. 

Entries are now closed for the 2012 Hippocrates Prize for poetry and medicine, which is for unpublished poems in English.  

The Hippocrates poetry and medicine initiative was co-founded by a team from University of Warwick, and has been supported by several external organizations interested in medicine and the arts, including the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, the Wellcome Trust, the Cardiovascular Research Trust and Heads, Teachers and Industry. 

In its first 3 years, the Hippocrates Prize has attracted over 4000 entries from 45 countries, from the Americas to Fiji and Finland to Australasia.

With a 1st prize for the winning poem in each category of £5,000, the Hippocrates prize is one of the highest value poetry awards in the world for a single poem. In each category there is also a 2^nd prize of £1,000, 3^rd  prize of £500, and 20 commendations each of £50.  

BBC broadcaster and journalist Martha Kearney has joined New York poet and critic Marilyn Hacker and medical scientist Professor Rod Flower FRS to complete the judging panel for the 2012 Hippocrates Awards for Poetry and Medicine.

For more on the 2012 Hippocrates Awards and the Hippocrates initiative see my recent update.