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Wednesday 18 July 2012

Haiku from the 2013 Hippocrates Awards launch at the Lichfield Festival

@HealthMed The 2013 Hippocrates Award for poetry and medicine was launched on 12th July at the Lichfield Festival.  Entries are now open for the 2013 Hippocrates Prize for poetry and medicine, which is for unpublished poems in English of up to 50 lines text, excluding title and line spacing.  Judges for the 2013 Hippocrates Awards include poet Jo Shapcott, Past-President of the Poetry Society, and winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Awards will be presented at an international symposium for poetry and medicine to be held on Saturday 11th May, 2013 at the Wellcome Collection rooms in London.
To mark the launch of the 2013 Hippocrates Awards at the Lichfield Festival, a discussion about haiku was followed by opportunity for the audience to write their own. The audience of scientists and engineers were enthusiastic in creating haiku on the day, with the aim of introducing a wide range of medical themes in this accessible short Japanese poetry format.
Here is a selection of the haiku composed by the Lichfield Festival audience.
  
Gray, pounding rain, wet.
The Sun comes through at last.
A double rainbow.

I’m enjoying this.
But blood pressure much lower
If I were fishing.

Walking to Lichfield
The branches block my way.
Welcome to Garrick.

New life expected:
Years of hope and dreams fulfilled .
May she be born whole?

Back pain, stabbing deep,
Stop, sit, rest, doze, read, hope
Beats pills and patches

Knee cracks painfully.
Salve smoothed on halts agony.
Oh for youth again!

Sonograms sent
Via the internet and distance.
Diagnosis ensues.

I wandered lonely
As a cloud - too late to see
The surgery was shut

Anxiety lurks,
Dampening every spirit.
A rain-soaked August

The old woman’s day
Passes in drug-induced sleep,
Missing the bird’s song

A pain in the neck,
Squeezing, prodding and poking.
Head turns to the Sun

Little old lady,
Frightened bloodied broken. No!
She is my mother.

The op is today.
The high hospital window
Shows a wide world view.

Movement gone, mind free
But Sun still breaks through the clouds.
And life continues.

A frozen shoulder
Crackling like Titanic ice.
Pain moving on, on.

Paranoid – he said:
Seven years towards the cure
Thankfully alive!

Here I am in pain
Waiting for the Sun to shine.
Rain it comes again

English summers now,
Clouds floating across the sky.
Then Sun peeping through!

Penicillin cures
Every patient. Hopes it does.
Bugs need to be foxed

Non malignant mass:
A friend sitting on my face.
Silky with stitches. 

Doctors writing pad:
Phenyloxybutazone,
Poetry, prescription.

Eyes weeping,
Pollen season comes creeping.
Throat sore again.

Lichfield Science talk:
Sorry to leave your lecture.
On way to Norfolk.

Homeopathy
Written within the water.
Placebo effect.

Sun this morning lights,
Warms the back and spirits wax.
Joints loosen again.

Intelligence strayed.
Arms like thin weak-branches,
Cold anorexia

Where did my summer go?
Rain-drenched days washed the sodden land.
Continental drift.

Wild dolphins play.
Darkness of depressing lifts,
Healing with a smile

Humanity weeps.
Distended bellies, halved limbs.
No more weapons, please.

My toes are frozen.
The snow falls all around me.
Get me to a fire.

No chips, no pudding,
Clogged arteries last summer.
What can I do now?

Defibrillators,
Statins, ACE Inhibitors.
Save heart of my heart   

Pain is a quandary,
A clock that chimes at 4am.
Sleep is pure relief.

All down the wide shore
Sand ghosts snake along the ground.
We do not know why.

Scarlet poppies grow,
Stunning splashes of colour.
Escape from your mind.