New York poet Maya C Popa joined a panel of poets at a Hippocrates evening reading in London on 24th June. Maya Popa won the £5000 2015 Hippocrates Open Prize for Poetry and Medicine for her poem A Technique for Operating on the Past.
Hear Maya discussing poetry, medicine and her 2015 Hippocrates Open First Prize.
Poets who contributed to the readings included 4 poets commended in the 2015 Hippocrates Prize: Cate Bailey, Valerie Fry, Molly Garbutt, Sandy Goldbeck-Wood, and Norbert Hirschhorn; Wendy French, who won the inaugural first prize in the 2010 Hippocrates NHS awards, and poet and artist Lynne Hjelmgaard.
Maya Popa was among 9 poets from the US named in the 2015 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine announced on Friday May 22nd at an Awards Ceremony in London at the close of an International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine.
He worked on neuro-morphology in the 1930s and 40s, but his remarkable research was ultimately cut short in light of his anti-fascist, and anti-communist affiliations. That he was forced into hiding and died of a routine ailment while escaping the communists still seems a dark irony. In a way, writing this poem felt like a letter to him, an acknowledgement of that unfairness."
Maya Popa is a teacher and writer living in New York City. She holds degrees from Oxford University, where she was a Clarendon Scholar, NYU, and Barnard College. Her poetry appears in Tin House, Kenyon Review, Poetry London, and elsewhere. Her essays and criticism appear widely, including in Poets & Writers Magazine, PN Review, The Rumpus, and The Huffington Post. Her first collection of poems, Severe Clear, was completed this year.
Cate Bailey is an Academic Clinical Fellow in Old Age Psychiatry and trainee psychiatrist in East London by day (and often night). At present most of her writing is restricted to systematic reviews, posters and discharge summaries though occasionally she scrawls illegible ramblings on post-it notes and in margins, whilst commuting (if she gets a seat). She has previously won the Mslexia short story competition (2011) and her poetry has been published in Popshot and the Lightship Anthology (2011).
She said: "Restraint was written after a series of seclusion reviews with a patient seen during a night shift. It attempts to capture the challenge of balancing containment of highly agitated patients with the risk of repeating traumatic experiences in an effort to manage harm to self and others."
Wendy French is Poet in Residence at the Macmillan Cancer Centre at University College Hospital, London. She also developed healthy heart poems within the Healthy Heart Awards founded by the Healthy Heart charity the Cardiovascular Research Trust. Wendy was head of the Maudsley and Bethlem Hospital School for fifteen years and now works with people with aphasia/dysphasia, helping them to recover their use of language through poetry. She also facilitates writing in other healthcare settings.
She has won prizes in
international competitions, including first prize in the NHS category of
the Hippocrates Prize in 2010 and second prize in 2011. She co-authored
Born in the NHS with poet Jane Kirwan, published by the Hippocrates Press in 2013. More about Wendy French.
Valerie Fry is part of the duo, Wind and Words, which takes clarinet and poetry recitals into care homes. Using themes, (including love, weather, travel, World War I, Christmas) to integrate the music and the words, the duo also give recitals in churches, WIs and libraries. Valerie's play, A Game of Two Halves won BBC Radio Five Live’s playwriting competition in 2006; she has also been commended in Rottingdean, Ware and South Bank poetry competitions. Last year she was joint second in the first Carers UK poetry competition. This is her second Hippocrates commendation, the first being in 2013. Valerie lives in London.
She said: “Nourishment was inspired by my mum, Ruby, whose feet and legs I used to massage regularly. It was something we both used to enjoy, but it became doubly nurturing when she decided to reciprocate. I used to love her thumbs on the soles of my feet. Ruby died just over a year ago.”
Molly Garbutt was commended in the Hippocrates Young Poet category for her poem Crystal Violet. She is from Worcestershire and primarily writes on the themes of mythology, feminism and current affairs. Despite her love for all things Literature-related, she will, if all goes well, be taking up an offered place at veterinary school this autumn. She was recently a finalist in the Worcestershire Young Poet Laureate competition, and was also a commended Foyle's Young Poet last year, and hopes to continue her endeavours into the world of poetry in the future.
She said: "My inspiration for Crystal Violet came, as many of my ideas do, from being a little too daydream-y in Biology, and letting the knowledge I garnered in the lesson loose on my subconscious. From that rose a poem I love simply because it intertwines the complicated and emotional aspects of a terminal diagnosis with the pure, blank results of a medical test, which parallels the deep contrast between humanity and science that I've been seeing for the past three years as a work experience student in various veterinary situations."
Sandy Goldbeck-Wood is a psychosomatic
gynaecologist, poet, and international medical journal editor currently
living in arctic Norway. She has published poems in anthologies, poetry
magazines, medical journals and national newspapers, many of which
explore medical language and experience. Several have received prizes or
commendations since 2010.
She has recently completed a first full collection, as part of a doctorate exploring the relationships between medicine, poetry and narrative from a psychoanalytic standpoint (University of East Anglia,Tromsø). With research interests in biopsychosocial approaches to medicine and medical humanities, Sandy is a regular contributor to international medical journals, media commentator on sexual health, and member of international research networks in medical humanities.
Her commended poem was Anosmia.
Norbert Hirschhorn (photo credit: Cynthia Myntti) is a public
health physician, commended by President Bill Clinton as an “American Health
Hero.” He lives in London and Beirut. He
has published four collections: A Cracked
River (Slow Dancer Press, London, 1999), Mourning in the Presence of a Corpse (Dar al-Jadeed, Beirut, 2008),
Monastery of the Moon (Dar al-Jadeed,
Beirut, 2012), and To Sing Away the
Darkest Days. Poems Re-imagined from Yiddish Folksongs (Holland Park
Press, London, 2013). His poems have appeared in numerous US/UK publications,
several as prize-winning (see www.bertzpoet.com).
He said: "The tragedy described in my poem Even If He Can't Answer Maybe He Can Hear You happened to my father with whom I had had an awkward relationship, one just beginning to resolve when he was struck. I thought of him increasingly as my own children reached adulthood. The poem took shape in the 40th year after the event -- anniversary dates have a way of intruding on the mind."
Lynne Hjelmgaard (see photo above) was born in New York city and moved to Denmark in 1971. She studied at the Aarhus Art Academy and graduated from Frøbel Seminarium in Copenhagen. She taught Creative Art for children before becoming a full time sailor. As a result of crossing the Atlantic in a sailboat with her husband she wrote poems that were later published in the chapbook, Distance Through the Water in 2002. (I Want Press, France).
Her first collection, Manhattan Sonnets was published in 2003. (Redbeck Press, U.K). In 2007 she received a Residency grant for the Danish Academy in Rome. Manhattan Sonnets was recorded in CD format with Brockhoff’s Arhiv in Denmark in 2008, as was her 22 page poem The Coconut Rat Diary. Her work has appeared in many literary magazines such as Acumen, The Rialto, Poetry Wales and Shearsman. She divides her time between London and Copenhagen.
Jane McLaughlin has been successful in several national competitions including the Hippocrates Prize, in which she was commended in 2014 for her poem All Clear. Her poems and stories have been widely published in anthologies and magazines, and her first collection of poetry will be published by Cinnamon Press in 2016.
David Morphet has
published eleven collections of poetry.
He has taken a keen interest in mental health and aftercare. In 1972 he was a founder member of the
National Schizophrenia Fellowship (now RETHINK) and was its Chairman from
1977-82. For the first part of his
career he worked in the Diplomatic Service.
Subsequently he became an Under-Secretary in the former Department of
Energy, and he has also worked in the private sector.
About He Has Turned Within he said that over the years he has written poems inspired by the plight of sufferers from severe mental illness, and in particular that of a (now deceased) younger brother. He Has Turned Within comes from his 2003 collection The Angel and the Fox.
Hear Maya discussing poetry, medicine and her 2015 Hippocrates Open First Prize.
Poets who contributed to the readings included 4 poets commended in the 2015 Hippocrates Prize: Cate Bailey, Valerie Fry, Molly Garbutt, Sandy Goldbeck-Wood, and Norbert Hirschhorn; Wendy French, who won the inaugural first prize in the 2010 Hippocrates NHS awards, and poet and artist Lynne Hjelmgaard.
Maya Popa was among 9 poets from the US named in the 2015 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine announced on Friday May 22nd at an Awards Ceremony in London at the close of an International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine.
The Hippocrates Prize is an annual award with a closing date of 31stJanuary. There are 3 categories: an Open International award, First Prize £5000, with entries from over 60 countries since 2010; a UK NHS award, First Prize £5000; and a Young Poet award of £500.
About her poem A Technique for Operating on the Past, Maya said: "There is something pleasantly elliptical about the fact that a neuroscientist relies on the very instrument that is the subject of his study. I had long wanted to write a poem about Gr.T. Popa, my great-grandfather, after whom the Medical University in Iași, Romania, is named.
About her poem A Technique for Operating on the Past, Maya said: "There is something pleasantly elliptical about the fact that a neuroscientist relies on the very instrument that is the subject of his study. I had long wanted to write a poem about Gr.T. Popa, my great-grandfather, after whom the Medical University in Iași, Romania, is named.
 |
| Maya Catherine Popa |
He worked on neuro-morphology in the 1930s and 40s, but his remarkable research was ultimately cut short in light of his anti-fascist, and anti-communist affiliations. That he was forced into hiding and died of a routine ailment while escaping the communists still seems a dark irony. In a way, writing this poem felt like a letter to him, an acknowledgement of that unfairness."
Maya Popa is a teacher and writer living in New York City. She holds degrees from Oxford University, where she was a Clarendon Scholar, NYU, and Barnard College. Her poetry appears in Tin House, Kenyon Review, Poetry London, and elsewhere. Her essays and criticism appear widely, including in Poets & Writers Magazine, PN Review, The Rumpus, and The Huffington Post. Her first collection of poems, Severe Clear, was completed this year.
 |
| Cate Bailey |
Cate Bailey is an Academic Clinical Fellow in Old Age Psychiatry and trainee psychiatrist in East London by day (and often night). At present most of her writing is restricted to systematic reviews, posters and discharge summaries though occasionally she scrawls illegible ramblings on post-it notes and in margins, whilst commuting (if she gets a seat). She has previously won the Mslexia short story competition (2011) and her poetry has been published in Popshot and the Lightship Anthology (2011).
She said: "Restraint was written after a series of seclusion reviews with a patient seen during a night shift. It attempts to capture the challenge of balancing containment of highly agitated patients with the risk of repeating traumatic experiences in an effort to manage harm to self and others."
Wendy French is Poet in Residence at the Macmillan Cancer Centre at University College Hospital, London. She also developed healthy heart poems within the Healthy Heart Awards founded by the Healthy Heart charity the Cardiovascular Research Trust. Wendy was head of the Maudsley and Bethlem Hospital School for fifteen years and now works with people with aphasia/dysphasia, helping them to recover their use of language through poetry. She also facilitates writing in other healthcare settings.
 | ||
| Lynne Hjelmgaard, Dannie Abse and Wendy French at the 2013 Hippocrates Summer reading evening |
Valerie Fry is part of the duo, Wind and Words, which takes clarinet and poetry recitals into care homes. Using themes, (including love, weather, travel, World War I, Christmas) to integrate the music and the words, the duo also give recitals in churches, WIs and libraries. Valerie's play, A Game of Two Halves won BBC Radio Five Live’s playwriting competition in 2006; she has also been commended in Rottingdean, Ware and South Bank poetry competitions. Last year she was joint second in the first Carers UK poetry competition. This is her second Hippocrates commendation, the first being in 2013. Valerie lives in London.
She said: “Nourishment was inspired by my mum, Ruby, whose feet and legs I used to massage regularly. It was something we both used to enjoy, but it became doubly nurturing when she decided to reciprocate. I used to love her thumbs on the soles of my feet. Ruby died just over a year ago.”
 |
| Molly Garbutt |
Molly Garbutt was commended in the Hippocrates Young Poet category for her poem Crystal Violet. She is from Worcestershire and primarily writes on the themes of mythology, feminism and current affairs. Despite her love for all things Literature-related, she will, if all goes well, be taking up an offered place at veterinary school this autumn. She was recently a finalist in the Worcestershire Young Poet Laureate competition, and was also a commended Foyle's Young Poet last year, and hopes to continue her endeavours into the world of poetry in the future.
She said: "My inspiration for Crystal Violet came, as many of my ideas do, from being a little too daydream-y in Biology, and letting the knowledge I garnered in the lesson loose on my subconscious. From that rose a poem I love simply because it intertwines the complicated and emotional aspects of a terminal diagnosis with the pure, blank results of a medical test, which parallels the deep contrast between humanity and science that I've been seeing for the past three years as a work experience student in various veterinary situations."
 |
| Sandy Goldbeck-Wood |
She has recently completed a first full collection, as part of a doctorate exploring the relationships between medicine, poetry and narrative from a psychoanalytic standpoint (University of East Anglia,Tromsø). With research interests in biopsychosocial approaches to medicine and medical humanities, Sandy is a regular contributor to international medical journals, media commentator on sexual health, and member of international research networks in medical humanities.
Her commended poem was Anosmia.
 |
| Norbert Hirschhorn |
He said: "The tragedy described in my poem Even If He Can't Answer Maybe He Can Hear You happened to my father with whom I had had an awkward relationship, one just beginning to resolve when he was struck. I thought of him increasingly as my own children reached adulthood. The poem took shape in the 40th year after the event -- anniversary dates have a way of intruding on the mind."
Lynne Hjelmgaard (see photo above) was born in New York city and moved to Denmark in 1971. She studied at the Aarhus Art Academy and graduated from Frøbel Seminarium in Copenhagen. She taught Creative Art for children before becoming a full time sailor. As a result of crossing the Atlantic in a sailboat with her husband she wrote poems that were later published in the chapbook, Distance Through the Water in 2002. (I Want Press, France).
 |
| Jane McLaughlin |
Her first collection, Manhattan Sonnets was published in 2003. (Redbeck Press, U.K). In 2007 she received a Residency grant for the Danish Academy in Rome. Manhattan Sonnets was recorded in CD format with Brockhoff’s Arhiv in Denmark in 2008, as was her 22 page poem The Coconut Rat Diary. Her work has appeared in many literary magazines such as Acumen, The Rialto, Poetry Wales and Shearsman. She divides her time between London and Copenhagen.
Jane McLaughlin has been successful in several national competitions including the Hippocrates Prize, in which she was commended in 2014 for her poem All Clear. Her poems and stories have been widely published in anthologies and magazines, and her first collection of poetry will be published by Cinnamon Press in 2016.
 |
| David Morphet |
About He Has Turned Within he said that over the years he has written poems inspired by the plight of sufferers from severe mental illness, and in particular that of a (now deceased) younger brother. He Has Turned Within comes from his 2003 collection The Angel and the Fox.
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