Poets from Australia, Canada, Ireland, Singapore, the USA and the UK
are among finalists for major awards in this year’s Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine.
Shortlisted in the Health Profession category are Kathy D’Arcy from
Cork, Ireland, who has worked as a doctor and youth worker, Medical Social
Worker Iora Dawes from Mansfield in England, and respiratory physician Andrew
Dimitri from Sydney, Australia, who is also a field doctor for the
international humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières.
Competing for the top award in the Open category are poets Claire
Collison from London, England, Rosie Jackson from Somerset in England and
Alisha Kaplan from Toronto in Canada.
In the running for the £500 Young Poet Award are from the USA, Rachel
Litchman, Michigan, Joyce Zhou, Illinois, and Erin O'Malley, Pennsylvania; from
the UK Roberta Maia Sher, London and Izzy Wythe, Oundle; and from
Singapore Vernon Yian.
The winners will be announced at Harvard on Saturday 6th May at an international symposium on poetry and medicine. There is still time to
register for the Awards ceremony and the symposium on 6th May and for the
associated event at the Boston Museum of Fine Art on ‘Poetry and Training
the Eye’ on Friday 5th May.
The Hippocrates Prize attracts health professionals and established
poets alike, with entries this year from over 30 countries. This year, themes
have ranged from illness in children to recovery from depression and from
cancer to treating victims in conflict zones.
The judges for the 2017 Hippocrates Awards are paediatrician and
Emmy Award-winning producer of ER, Neal Baer; celebrated poet and Boylston
Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard, Jorie Graham; Scottish Makar
(National Poet) and novelist, Jackie Kay; and New York Professor of Psychiatry
and poet, Owen Lewis. The Young Poet category (for writers aged fourteen to
eighteen) was judged by New York writer and teacher Maya Catherine Popa.
Neal Baer observed: ”Here the ordinary becomes
extraordinary. These poems relate with emotional depth and in fresh
and compelling ways what it means to be healthy and sick."
Jorie Graham commented: “That so much raw suffering, clear-sighted
understanding of the vicissitudes of fate, and the perhaps lucky accidents of
medical knowledge, or chance, or compassion, could find their way through
formal intelligence to these pages is barely short of a miracle. It is
certainly a testament to the power of the imagination to heal, console, elegize
and cry out against the terrible demands of life and destiny. It is hard to
forget these voices once one inhabits their particular circumstances, their
messages of belief and profound trust in the consolations of beauty.”
Owen Lewis too was impressed by the skill and compassion shown in
the poems: “As a poet and a physician, reading through the entries as one of
the judges for this year’s Hippocrates Prize was a real page-turner. This
exciting and moving array of poems speaks to the experiences of illness and
health, of patient and healer. The poems are written with both immediacy and
reflection, with craft and heart-felt expression.”
Scottish National Poet Jackie Kay said: “What an inspiring
competition to be part of. The Hippocrates Prize is a mind, body and soul
competition. One minute you’re reading a poem from a patient, the next a
doctor, the next a nurse, the next a porter, the next a friend, the next a
family member. One minute you’re reading a poem set in a standard hospital in
the UK, the next a makeshift hospital in Syria. One minute you’re thinking
about mental anguish and anxiety, the next death and cancer."
She added: "The poems are powerful, funny, moving,
inspiring, thought-provoking. They show us everything we have in common. They
help us with grief and grieving. But above all they make us cherish life, our
health, our minutes and our hours. I’d keep these poems about me as my
companions. They radiate light.”
“I am very pleased to be supporting this year’s Hippocrates Prize
for poetry and medicine,” said patron of the awards Professor Anthony
Fretwell-Downing (pictured). “These international awards are an excellent way to encourage
people from around the world to take an interest in their health through
poetry, as shown this year by entries from over 30 countries. The poems
resonate with my sense of creativity.”
The Hippocrates Prize and this year's awards symposium are supported
by the healthy heart charity the Cardiovascular Research Trust, philanthropist
Professor Anthony Fretwell-Downing, the Hippocrates Initiative and the Arts and
Humanities Initiative of Harvard Medical School.
With a prize fund of £6000 /~ USD 7500 for winning and commended
poems, the Hippocrates Prize is one of the highest value poetry awards in the
world for a single poem. In its 8 years, the Hippocrates Prize has attracted
over 8000 entries from over 60 countries, from the Americas to Fiji and Finland
to Australasia.
Notes for editors
For more on the shortlisted poets and the 2017 Hippocrates Awards,
contact +44 7494 450 805 or +1 617 432 5693 or email hippocrates.poetry@gmail.com
The Hippocrates Initiative for Poetry and Medicine –
winner of the 2011 Times Higher Education Award for Innovation and Excellence
in the Arts – is an interdisciplinary venture that investigates the synergy
between medicine, the arts and health.
