Search This Blog

Thursday 30 August 2018

Passamezzo concert of music, words and song from Shakespeare’s England in support of children’s cancer charity CLIC Sargent

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe internationally renowned early music ensemble Passamezzo performed Music, words & song from Shakespeare’s England on Wednesday 25th July, 2018 in support of the children’s cancer charity CLIC Sargent at the 5th in a series of annual charity musical evenings organised by the Worsted Weavers Guild.

The performance was held in St James’ Church on the Packington Estate in Warwickshire (~ 20 minutes north of Kenilworth), by generous permission of Lord and Lady Guernsey.
The concert was followed by a reception in the Pompeiian Room and on the terrace of Packington Hall.  The Capability Brown designed grounds and the Diocletian-era inspired church on the Packington Estate are not normally open to the public.

Programme
Touches of sweet harmony:
Music, words & song from Shakespeare’s England

  • The broom/Jog on/Heartsease
  • Thomas Morley: O Mistress mine
  • John Wilbye: There is a jewel
  • John Dowland: Paduan
  • John Wilson: Take, o take those lips away
  • Robert Jones: Farewell dear love
  • Anon: Whoope do me no harm
  • Anon: Daphne
  • Anon: The Willow song
  • Anon: Mad Tom of Bedlam
  • Anon: Tomorrow it is St Valentine’s Day
  • Anon: Bonny sweet Robin
  • Anon: Packington’s Pound
  • John Wilson: Lawn as white as driven snow
  • Anon: Chorus of Mountebanks
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAPassamezzo was founded by Tamsin Lewis in 2001, initially to explore the Jacobean Masque.

A passamezzo was a popular sixteenth century tune and dance. It could be played and danced simply and enjoyed by anyone, but could also become an exhibition piece, with virtuosic and showy divisions played upon it.

Passomezzo founder Tamsin Lewis said: We chose the name Passamezzo for ourselves because we feel it reflects the character of our work: we provide a wide range of performances from the very simple to the very elaborate, and pride ourselves on creating a piece which suits your occasion perfectly.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe core membership of the ensemble has expanded to: Eleanor Cramer (soprano), Alison Kinder (viols and recorders), Tamsin Lewis (Renaissance violin, viols, voice), Richard Mackenzie and Robin Jeffrey (plucked strings), Richard De Winter and Michael Palmer (actors and baritones), and Charlotte Ewart (choreographer.

The ensemble specialise in English Elizabethan and Jacobean repertoire, the masque remaining an important part of their programming, and concerts have a distinct theatrical air created by costume, readings and presentation. The ensemble delights in all aspects of musical life, from the intimacy of the lute song, to the brash raucousness of the broadside ballad, from the sacred part song, to the profane insanity of bedlamite mad songs. 

IMG_0286.JPG
The programmes are carefully researched with music frequently taken from manuscript sources, unearthing pieces that have lain hidden for centuries. It is this range of material and overall spectacle, combined with the informative and accessible manner of their presentation, that makes Passamezzo such an engaging group.

Passamezzo often work with dancers and actors. They have played in a great variety of venues including the British Museum; the Victoria and Albert Museum; Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre; Hampton Court Palace and in theatres, concert halls, stately homes, churches, palaces and ruins throughout England.

PASSA-141Television and Radio credits include: BBC Restoration; Howard Goodall’s The Truth about Carols (BBC2); Elizabeth I’s Secret Agents (BBC2);  Henry VIII and his six wives, and Elizabeth I (Channel 5); Frost Fair; King Lear and Boxing Day, (Radio 4); Early Music for the Holidays; Christmas Carols, Chant and Legend (Harmonia Early Music/PRX).
Passamezzo also work with with Moroccan Sufi musicians, Ensemble Mogador Soufie performing 17th Century English and Moroccan music in both countries as part of the Shore To Shore Project

Centenary for the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine: a conference, awards for medical writing and new associate memberships


The Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine is organising its Centenary Conference, which is to be held on 7th December at the Royal College of Physicians in London. The December 2018 FPM Centenary Conference will include a poster awards session showcasing national and international studies aimed at Transforming Health. The Conference will be eligible for 6 CPD points.



Talks by expert clinicians will provide updates on best medical practice in diagnostics and new therapies with regard to common serious clinical disorders, ranging from lung disease to cancer, stroke and cardiac disease, liver problems  and other serious clinical disease. Speakers will also discuss management of new clinical challenges, including antibiotic resistance, the impact of ageing on co-morbidity, and other important current challenges for clinical practice.

Speakers and discussants will include Professor Christopher Byrne, University of Southampton on Identifying and managing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, Professor Peter Barnes FRS, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, with updates on treating asthma and COPD, Professor Tom Kirkwood CBE, University of Newcastle, on ageing, health and multi-morbidity, Professor Sir Munir Pirmohamed, University of Liverpool NHS Chair of Pharmacogenetics on applying personalised medicine in clinical practice. Dr Tim Nicholson, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s Medical School, on functional neurological disorders and Professor Anthony Rudd, Guy’s and St Thomas’s, National Clinical Director for Stroke with NHS England, on reducing the severity of stroke. FPM President Donald Singer FPM journal editors Bernard Cheung (Postgraduate Medical Journal) and Ken Redekop (Health Policy and Technology) will give a brief overview of the FPM and its activities.
 
The FPM is a British non-profit organisation founded in the autumn of 1919 as a merger of the Fellowship of Medicine and the Postgraduate Medical Association, with Sir William Osler as its first president. Its initial aims were the development of educational programmes in all branches of postgraduate medicine. The FPM now organises clinical and research meetings and publishes two journals. The FPM has since 1925 published the international journal, the Postgraduate Medical Journal. In 2012 the Fellowship launched a new international journal, Health Policy and Technology, published on the Fellowship’s behalf by Elsevier.
The Postgraduate Medical Journal publishes topical reviews, commentaries and original papers on themes across the medical spectrum. It provides continuing professional development for all doctors, from those in training, to their teachers, and active clinicians, by publishing papers on a wide range of topics relevant to clinical practice. Papers published in PMJ describe current practice and new developments in all branches of medicine; describe relevance and impact of translational research on clinical practice; provide background relevant to examinations; and papers on medical education and medical education research.
The FPMs peer-reviewed journal Health Policy and Technology focuses on past, present and future health policy and the role of technology in clinical and non-clinical national and international health environments. It aims to foster closer links with policy-makers, health professionals, health technology providers, patient groups and academia.
Further ways in which the FPM will mark its anniversary  include introducing a new Associate Member category for the FPM and launch of new international awards for excellence in medical writing by doctors in social media.

The new Associate Member category for the FPM will be open to doctors in established postgraduate training posts, to senior doctors in established posts and to other experts who are interested in postgraduate medicine. Authors and reviewers for the official journals of the FPM – Health Policy and Technology and the Postgraduate Medical journal will be entitled to a reduced membership fee for their first year as Associate Members. Benefits for Associate Members will include a reduction in the registration fee for attending FPM educational events and a reduced annual electronic subscription to the PMJ or HPT journal. See the FPM website for more details about how to apply to become anAssociate Member of the FPM .

The FPM will also launch international awards to recognise best social media writing on medical themes.  To be eligible, articles should be aimed at increasing understanding by the public and health professionals of important health-related issues. Articles published online since 1st January 2018 will be eligible.

Up to 5 awards of £100 each will initially be made – one for each major geographical region: the Americas, Europe, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Australia/New Zealand.  The judging panel will include health professionals from the FPM and from the Editorial Boards of HPT and the PMJ and experts in social media. Winning writers will have the opportunity to publish their award-winning article in HPT or the PMJ, depending on the theme of the article.




Wednesday 30 May 2018

Creativity and compassion: winners of the 2018 FPM Hippocrates Open and Health Professional Prize for Poetry and Medicine

Joanne Key from England has been announced by judge Mark Doty as the winner of the 2018 FPM Hippocrates Open Prize for Poetry and Medicine at an awards ceremony at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. Her winning poem was Colony which concerned the distress of her father during his final illness.

Also competing for the FPM Hippocrates Open Prize were Sarah Ann Leavesley from Droitwich in England who was awarded 2nd Prize for At breaking point, and jointly sharing the 3rd Prize Aniqah Choudhri from Didsbury in England for Repeat Prescriptions and Raphael Dagold from Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan for Pharmacology.
IMG 6852
Donald Singer, judge Mark Doty, FPM Health Professional winner Inez Garzaniti, judge Alisha Kaplan, Michael Hulse and Rafael Campo at the awards event in Chicago
Mark Doty announced Inez Garzaniti from Pontiac in the USA as the winner of the 2018 FPM Hippocrates Open Prize for Poetry and Medicine for Cranial Nerve Shadowbox which was inspired by the functions and dysfunctions of cranial nerves.

Also in the running for the FPM Hippocrates Health Professional Prize were surgeon Stephen Harvey from Nashville in the USA who was awarded 2nd Prize for The Thirteenth Floor, and sharing the 3rd Prize Maria Ji from Onehunga in New Zealand for Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Patient and Emma Storr from Leeds in England for Six Week Check.

Joanne Key
FPM Hippocrates Open Prize winner Joanne Key
The judges for the Open and Health Professional awards were Carol Rumens from Bangor in North Wales, Peter Goldsworthy from Adelaide in Australia and Mark Doty from New York City. They also agreed commendations for entrants from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, England, Northern Ireland, Norway, Sweden and the USA – 19 in the Open category and 20 in the Health Professional Category.
r Taylor Fang
Hippocrates Young Poet Prize winner Taylor Fang

Taylor Fang from Logan, Utah, USA was announced by judge Alisha Kaplan as the winner of the 2018 Hippocrates Young Poets Prize for Poetry and Medicine at the awards ceremony at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. Her winning poem was Letter to Body Made Hollow and she was also shortlisted for On the Evolution of Cancer.

With an awards fund of £5500 the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine is one of the highest value poetry awards in the world for a single unpublished poem. The 2018 Hippocrates Prize is supported by medical charity the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine and the healthy heart charity the Cardiovascular Research Trust.

Entries for the 2018 Hippocrates prize were received from 37 countries and from 5 continents.
IMG 6853
Commended poets with judges and organisers in Chicago
Judge Carol Rumens said: “A good poem is like a blood transfusion. It replenishes the body of words, the language in which the poem is written. These prize-winning and commended poems sometimes highlight the metaphorical possibilities of a scientific vocabulary: one of the valuable aspects of the Hippocrates Prize is that it encourages such creative cross-fertilisation. But they also demonstrate that the borders stereotypically perceived between art and science cease to matter in the heat of imaginative and lived engagement.“ 
 
She added: “The health professionals write with empathy and a sense of mystery, the ‘open category’ writers summon descriptive precision.  Their forms are rarely traditional, but grow organically from the subject or the experience. So these poems celebrate language itself, while relocating bodily events to a less time-haunted region, and transforming some of the loneliest  aspects of human experience to the most vividly connective.“

Judge Mark Doty said: “Caring for the marvelous and fragile thing a human body is, those who work in the healing professions live in intimate relation with what it is to be alive. Every day they face our vulnerability, as well as their own.  That’s why so many have second lives as poets; writing can be a way to keep their own hearts open, giving form to feeling they must often hold at bay while they attend to what patients need.”

He added: ”The humane and moving work shortlisted for the Hippocrates Poetry Prizes testify to the power of poetry to help us to negotiate the difficult. In carefully crafted, artful language, they demonstrate how the wellspring of compassion renews itself In us again and again.”

Judge Peter Goldsworthy said: ”Sometimes pus, sometimes a poem…but always pain,’ the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai wrote, a near-perfect poetic distillation of the costs of creativity, at least ‘sometimes’    Of course not all great art has its genesis in pain, and not all pain – not even a fraction – leads to the partial consolations of art.  But if lancing an abscess is the surest way to healing,  poetry can  offer that same cleansing of emotional wounds – at least, again, ‘sometimes’.   As can humour;  and jokes are a species of poem, sharing its same search for precision, density, rhythm, timing – perfection.”

He added: ”There are many species of  poem  here – dark, poignant, epigrammatic  celebratory, funny – which caused me many headaches when judging their merits.  How to separate apples from oranges – and grapes, and melons, and durians?   In the end I can only applaud the  endless capacity of  the poets  – and the language –  for creativity, for compassion, for generosity, for courage under fire – and all their various subspecies of humour.”

See more on the shortlisted and commended poets on the Hippocrates Poetry website.

The winners were announced at the 2018 Hippocrates Awards ceremony at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago from 4pm on Friday 11th May when the Hippocrates Awards Anthology was launched. There was also a reading at the Poetry Foundation by Mark Doty from 7pm on Thursday 10th May, an accompanying conference on poetry and medicine that morning and afternoon at Northwestern University in Chicago, and a workshop on poetry, medicine and art at Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art on Friday evening, 11th May.

The winning, shortlisted and commended poems in the 2018 Hippocrates Young Poets Prize have been published in the 2018 Hippocrates Prize Anthology which was launched at the 2018 Hippocrates Awards ceremony at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago on Friday 11th May.

Since it was launched in 2010, the Hippocrates Prize has attracted over 8000 entries from over 60 countries, from the Americas to Fiji and from Finland to Australasia.
___________________________________________________________________________
Notes for editors
For photos of finalists, biographies and extracts of their poems, call 07494 450805  or email hippocrates.poetry@gmail.com

The Hippocrates Initiative – winner of the 2011 Times Higher Education Award for Innovation and  Excellence in the Arts – is an interdisciplinary venture that investigates the relationship between medicine and poetry.

More on support for the 2018 Hippocrates Awards for Poetry and Medicine
The 2018 Hippocrates Open Awards and Health Professional Awards are supported by the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine. The FPM is a UK medical society founded in 1918, which publishes the international journals the Postgraduate Medical Journal and Health Policy and Technology.

The 2018 Hippocrates Young Poets Prize is supported by the Cardiovascular Research Trust, a healthy heart charity founded in 1996, which promotes research and education for the prevention and treatment of disorders of the heart and circulation. The charity has a particular interest in avoiding preventable heart disease through educating school students.

The 9th Annual Symposium on Poetry and Medicine is supported by:

Friday 6 April 2018

Clarity, wisdom, and resilience: shortlisted and commended young poets in the 2018 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine

With £500 for the Young Poets Award, the Hippocrates Young Poets Prize for Poetry and Medicine  is one of the highest value poetry awards in the world for a single poem by a young poet. The Young Poets award is supported by healthy heart charity the Cardiovascular Research Trust.
The 2018 Hippocrates Young Poet Award is being judged by Toronto poet Alisha Kaplan who has shortlisted and commended poems from the USA and the UK.
In the running for the £500 2018 Hippocrates Young Poets Prize are Haemaru Chung from New York City, for Alice; Margot Armbruster, from Wisconsin, USA for Husk; and Taylor Fang from Logan, Utah, USA for two poems: Letter to Body Made Hollow and On the Evolution of Cancer.  
The following poets were commended: Miles Johnston McInerney from San Diego, USA for 20 Reasons Why I Can’t Order in a Restaurant; Vivian Lu from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, USA for Case Study on Grief; Lara Wise from Oundle in England for In Quarantine; Sabina Holzman from Laguna Beach, California, USA for Panic Attack as a House Fire in the City;  Shannon Lin from Santa Clara, California, USA for Passing; and Taylor Fang from Logan, Utah, USA for Scale of Bone Density, Azure. 
Poetry Foundation, Chicago
About the Young Poet entries she said: “I am in awe of the clarity, wisdom, and resilience with which these young poets write. Weaving medical language with lyrical, they give raw, honest depictions of both physical and mental illness. These poems are written with the vision one can gain when malady or death enters and pervades one’s world, changing its colors, textures, tempo.”
She added: “There are many candid elegies to bodies transformed visibly or invisibly by illness, addressed to loved ones as well as to the poets’ own selves. At times whispering, at times keening, these voices face their pain and grief, and out of their suffering make something beautiful, something true.”
The winning, shortlisted and commended poems in the 2018 Hippocrates Young Poets Prize will be published in the annual Hippocrates Prize Anthology. The 2018 Hippocrates Prize Anthology will be launched at the 2018 Hippocrates Awards ceremony at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago on Friday 11th May.
Notes for editors
For photos of finalists, biographies and extracts of their poems, call 07494 450805  or email hippocrates.poetry@gmail.com
The Hippocrates Initiative – winner of the 2011 Times Higher Education Award for Innovation and Excellence in the Arts – is an interdisciplinary venture that investigates the relationship between medicine and poetry.
More on support for the 2018 Hippocrates Awards for Poetry and Medicine
The 2018 Hippocrates Young Poets Prize is supported by the Cardiovascular Research Trust, a healthy heart charity founded in 1996, which promotes research and education for the prevention and treatment of disorders of the heart and circulation. The charity has a particular interest in avoiding preventable heart disease through educating school students.
The 2018 Hippocrates Open Awards and Health Professional Awards are supported by the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine. The FPM is a UK medical society founded in 1918, which publishes the international journals the Postgraduate Medical Journal and Health Policy and Technology. 
The 9th Annual Symposium on Poetry and Medicine is supported by:

Thursday 5 April 2018

Caring for the marvelous and the fragile: shortlists announced for 2018 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine

The judges - Carol Rumens from Bangor in North Wales, Peter Goldsworthy from Adelaide in Australia and Mark Doty from New York City have just agreed 4 shortlisted poets for the Health Professional Prize and a further 4 shortlisted poets for the Open Prize. Entries for the 2018 Hippocrates prize were received from 37 countries and from 5 continents.
Competing for the Open Prize are Joanne Key from Crewe in England for Colony, Sarah Ann Leavesley from Droitwich in England for At breaking point, Aniqah Choudhri from Didsbury in  England for Repeat Prescriptions and Raphael Dagold from Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan for Pharmacology.
In the running for the Health Professional Prize are Inez Garzaniti from Pontiac in the USA for Cranial Nerve Shadowbox, Stephen Harvey from Nashville in the USA for The Thirteenth Floor, Maria Ji from Onehunga in New Zealand for Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Patient and Emma Storr from Leeds in England for Six Week Check.
Commendations were also agreed for entrants from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, England, Northern Ireland, Norway, Sweden and the USA - 19 in the Open category and 20 in the Health Professional Category.
Judge Carol Rumens said: “A good poem is like a blood transfusion. It replenishes the body of words, the language in which the poem is written. These prize-winning and commended poems sometimes highlight the metaphorical possibilities of a scientific vocabulary: one of the valuable aspects of the Hippocrates Prize is that it encourages such creative cross-fertilisation. But they also demonstrate that the borders stereotypically perceived between art and science cease to matter in the heat of imaginative and lived engagement.“
Judge Mark Doty said: “Caring for the marvelous and fragile thing a human body is, those who work in the healing professions live in intimate relation with what it is to be alive. Every day they face our vulnerability, as well as their own.  That’s why so many have second lives as poets; writing can be a way to keep their own hearts open, giving form to feeling they must often hold at bay while they attend to what patients need.”
He added: ”The humane and moving work shortlisted for the Hippocrates Poetry Prizes testify to the power of poetry to help us to negotiate the difficult. In carefully crafted, artful language, they demonstrate how the wellspring of compassion renews itself In us again and again.” 
Judge Peter Goldsworthy said: ”Sometimes pus, sometimes a poem…but always pain,’ the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai wrote, a near-perfect poetic distillation of the costs of creativity, at least ‘sometimes’    Of course not all great art has its genesis in pain, and not all pain – not even a fraction – leads to the partial consolations of art.  But if lancing an abscess is the surest way to healing,  poetry can  offer that same cleansing of emotional wounds - at least, again, ‘sometimes’.   As can humour;  and jokes are a species of poem, sharing its same search for precision, density, rhythm, timing - perfection.”
He added: ”There are many species of  poem  here - dark, poignant, epigrammatic, celebratory, funny - which caused me many headaches when judging their merits.  How to separate apples from oranges - and grapes, and melons, and durians?   In the end I can only applaud the  endless capacity of  the poets  - and the language -  for creativity, for compassion, for generosity, for courage under fire - and all their various subspecies of humour.”

See more on the shortlisted and commended poets on the Hippocrates Poetry website.
Poetry Foundation, Cbicago
The winners will be announced at the 2018 Hippocrates Awards ceremony at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago from 4pm on Friday 11th May when the Hippocrates Awards Anthology will be launched. There is also a reading at the Poetry Foundation by Mark Doty from 7pm on Thursday 10th May, an accompanying conference on poetry and medicine that morning and afternoon at Northwestern University in Chicago, and a workshop on poetry, medicine and art at Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art on Friday evening, 11th May.
With an awards fund of £5500 the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine is one of the highest value poetry awards in the world for a single unpublished poem. The 2018 Hippocrates Prize is supported by medical charity the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine and the healthy heart charity the Cardiovascular Research Trust.
Since it was launched in 2010, the Hippocrates Prize has attracted over 8000 entries from over 60 countries, from the Americas to Fiji and from Finland to Australasia.
___________________________________________________________________________
Notes for editors
For photos of finalists, biographies and extracts of their poems, call 07494 450805  or email hippocrates.poetry@gmail.com

The Hippocrates Initiative – winner of the 2011 Times Higher Education Award for Innovation and Excellence in the Arts – is an interdisciplinary venture that investigates the relationship between medicine and poetry.
The 2018 Hippocrates Young Poets Prize 
More on support for the 2018 Hippocrates Awards for Poetry and Medicine
The 2018 Hippocrates Open Awards and Health Professional Awards are supported by the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine. The FPM is a UK medical society founded in 1918, which publishes the international journals the Postgraduate Medical Journal and Health Policy and Technology. 
The 2018 Hippocrates Young Poets Prize is supported by the Cardiovascular Research Trust, a healthy heart charity founded in 1996, which promotes research and education for the prevention and treatment of disorders of the heart and circulation. The charity has a particular interest in avoiding preventable heart disease through educating school students.https://thefpmuk.wordpress.com/
The 9th Annual Symposium on Poetry and Medicine is supported by: