Poems to live for: live webinars from the Hippocrates Initiative for Poetry and Medicine

To raise spirits in these very troubled times, the Hippocrates Initiative for Poetry and Medicine is launching a series of live webinars on Poems to live for.

See the Poems to Live for website for details about how to join the sessions by computer/laptop/smartphone or by dialling in by phone.

There will be discussions on poetry. Invited poets around the world will read a poem that seems full of the spirit that's worth living for, and will say why this poem means so much to him/her.  Sessions will also provide updates from the 2020 Hippocrates Prize  and other activities of the Hippocrates Initiative for Poetry and Medicine.

The organisers also welcome suggestions for poems in English (out of copyright) from contributors from anywhere in the world would like read. Contributors should email suggestions or a link to a reading of a favourite poem (must not your own AND must be out of copyright).
Please email your suggestions or links to a reading to hippocrates.poetry@gmail.com

Programme for the first live session:

Poems to Live for

Session 1Wednesday 8th April 9pm UK time

IntroductionMichael Hulse

Contributors
Michael Hulse, UK, Luz Mar Gonzales, Spain, Geoffrey Lehmann, Australia, Professor John Stein, UK, Lawrence Sail, UK, Donald Singer, UK.

Short-lists announced for the 2020 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and MedicineOpen shortlist: announced by judge Geoffrey Lehmann, Australia
Health Professional shortlist announced by judge Professor John Stein, UK
Young poets short list: announced by judge Lawrence Sail, UK

Readers include 
Michael Hulse, UK
Luz Mar Gonzales, Spain

Poetry to prevent childhood obesity? The Healthy Heart Poetry Project.

Unhealthy lifestyle in children increases risk of premature and preventable heart disease in later life. Since 2011, 22 schools have received Healthy Heart Awards from the healthy heart charity the Cardiovascular Research Trust. Schools participating in the Healthy Heart initiative receive a Healthy Heart Award certificate to recognize their interest in education about how to keep the heart healthy.




Healthy heart poetry for schools was a theme during the 6th International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine held in London on 22nd May 2015. 


Listen to the talk on healthy hearts for schools 

Poet Wendy French described a schools project she undertook with 2015 Hippocrates Prize

Wendy French

judge Rebecca Goss as part of a collaboration between the healthy heart charity the Cardiovascular Research Trust and the Hippocrates Initiative. Raphael Shirley read poems by children from the edited anthology Love your Heart which arose from the project.


The Cardiovascular Research Trust established Healthy Heart Poetry in 2013 in partnership with the Hippocrates Initiative. The aim of the Healthy Heart Poetry initiative is to encourage interest among children of all ages in lifestyle that helps to keep the heart healthy.

There is now an annual Healthy Heart Poetry event at which the children have the opportunity to read their poems from the published Anthology, and Healthy Heart Awards are presented to participating schools. Selected poems are published in an anthology, the first of which, Love your Heart, was published in December 2014. 

The Poetry and Medicine Symposium was held to mark the announcement of the winners of the 2015 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine. The Hippocrates Prize is an annual award with a closing date of 31st January 2016 for the 2016 Hippocrates Prize.

See more about entering for the 2016 Hippocrates Prize. 



With a 1st prize of £5000 for the winning poem in the Open International category of  £5,000, £5000 for the 1st Prize in the NHS category, and £500 for the Young Poets Award the Hippocrates Prize is one of the highest value poetry awards in the world for a single poem. In its first 5 years, the Hippocrates Prize has attracted over 6000 entries from over 60 countries, from the Americas to Fiji and Finland to Australasia.

A turn for the verse: poetry in medical education

Giskin Day spoke on poetry in medical education during the 6th International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine held in London on 22nd May 2015.  

 In her talk, she described initiatives in her own teaching for enhancing reflection and resilience – two qualities that are ‘trending’ in medical education. She also put the case for a third ‘R’: resonance. 

Listen to the talk by Giskin Day on poetry in medical education



Giskin Day said: "Medical education is well known for having a very crowded, fact-driven

Giskin Day

curriculum. Making space for the humanities, including poetry, often is an uphill struggle. Even so, medical schools around the world are realising that reading and writing poetry can develop important skills".

She added "Where reflection requires the distancing mechanism of a mirror, and resilience requires a degree of emotional hardening, resonance unites the rational and emotional in a state of responsive consonance. As a clinical skill, we need to insist on the importance of understanding and developing aurality alongside medicine’s traditional ocular-centricism. 
It is the attentive, empathic listener who establishes resonance with his or her patients. But resonance is also about setting other strings aquiver. Poetry challenges detachment and unites reason, memory and imagination. This allows us to make a strong case for its inclusion in medical education as an intellectual, creative and practical pursuit."

Giskin Day trained as a botanist in South Africa before falling in love with a British species and moving to London. After five years at the Science Museum she moved next door to Imperial College London. She coordinates some 30 College-wide courses in the humanities and teaches science communication and medical humanities. Giskin is an unofficial ambassador for the humanities in the Medical School and frequently is called upon to suggest resuscitation techniques for lifeless teaching workshops. 

She completed an MSc in Science Communication and an MA in Literature and Medicine from King's College, and might soon embark on a PhD on the rhetoric of gratitude in healthcare. She is possibly the only person to have themed her application for senior fellowship of the Higher Education Academy around medical poetry. Imperial is awarding her a President’s medal for outstanding contribution to teaching excellence.

The Symposium was held to mark the announcement of the winners of the 2015 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine.

The Hippocrates Prize is an annual award with a closing date of 31st January 2016 for the 2016 Hippocrates Prize. 

See more about entering for the 2016 Hippocrates Prize.

With a 1st prize of £5000 for the winning poem in the Open International category of

£5,000, £5000 for the 1st Prize in the NHS category, and £500 for the Young Poets Award the Hippocrates Prize is one of the highest value poetry awards in the world for a single poem. In its first 5 years, the Hippocrates Prize has attracted over 6000 entries from 61 countries, from the Americas to Fiji and Finland to Australasia.  

Simon Rae discussing poetry, medicine, and entries for the 2015 Hippocrates Young Poets Prize

There have been entries this year from Young Poets from 10 countries for the Young Poets Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine  - from Australia to Canada and the USA. 

You can now hear 2015 Young Poets Judge Simon Rae discussing medicine as a theme for poetry, and the Young Poets Prize, with award co-founders Donald Singer and Michael Hulse. 

In an audio interview Simon Rae notes the emotional response of the poets, and the authority and authenticity in their poetry. He also discusses use of imagery in the poems, and their relevance to a universal audience.

In a further discussion on YouTube, Simon reads extracts from shortlisted poems from the USA and from England.

Simon Rae

Simon Rae is a poet, biographer, broadcaster, playwright and novelist. He presented Poetry Please! on Radio 4 for many years and wrote rude poems about politicians for the Guardian newspaper for even longer.
In 1999 he won the National Poetry Competition after twice coming runner-up. His collection, Gift Horses, was published in 2006. More recently he has written three novels for younger readers, Unplayable, Keras and Medusa’s Butterfly, and his first detective story, Bodyline, comes out in spring 2015.

Entries from 11 countries for the 2015 Hippocrates Young Poets Award for Poetry and Medicine

Entries for the £500 Young Poets Award in the 2015 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine have arrived from Australia, Canada, England, Nepal, Nigeria, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Ukraine and the USA.

The 2015 Hippocrates Young Poets Award will be judged by distinguished poet Simon Rae.

Shortlisted Young Poets will be informed by email and the shortlist posted on the Hippocrates Prize website. The 2015 Hippocrates Young Poets Prize will be announced in London at the Hippocrates Awards on Saturday 23rd May.

2015 Hippocrates Young Poets judge Simon Rae

Simon Rae is a poet, biographer, broadcaster, playwright and novelist. He presented Poetry Please! on Radio 4 for many years and wrote rude poems about politicians for the Guardian newspaper for even longer. In 1999 he won the National Poetry Competition after twice coming runner-up. His collection, Gift Horses, was published in 2006. More recently he has written three novels for younger readers, Unplayable, Keras and Medusa’s Butterfly, and his first detective story, Bodyline, comes out in spring 2015.

He presented Radio 4's Poetry Please for five years and wrote a regular topical poem for the Saturday Guardian for ten years. His most recent book of poems was Gift Horses, published in 2006 by Enitharmon Press.

The winner in the 2014 Hippocrates Young Poets Prize was Conor McKee from Sidney Sussex College Cambridge for his poem I Will Not Cut for Stone.

The winner in 2013 of the inaugural Hippocrates Young Poets Prize was Rosalind Jana from Hereford Sixth Form College in England, for her poem Posterior Instrumented Fusion for Adolescent Scoliosis.

There has been a dramatic increase in international interest in recent years in the interface between medicine and the humanities in general, and in medicine and poetry in particular.  The Hippocrates Prize has attracted interest from over 60 countries since its launch in 2009.

To find out more about medicine and poetry, see our article in the Lancet, and recent features in The New Yorker and Times Higher Education.  

See update on entries for the 2015 Hippocrates Open Prize for Poetry and Medicine.

Judges announced for 2015 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine

Poet Rebecca Goss joins author, journalist and broadcaster John Humphreys, and psychiatrist Professor Femi Oyebode in the judging panel for the 2015 Hippocrates Prize.

The Hippocrates Prize is one of the highest value poetry awards in the world for a single unpublished poem. The  Hippocrates has a £5000 first prize both for its Open International and for its NHS Awards, and a £500 prize for the best poem in the Young Poets category. All awards are for a single unpublished poem on a medical theme. Entries for the 2015 Hippocrates Prize close at 12 midnight GMT 31st January, 2015.

Rebecca Goss was selected in 2014 by The Poetry Book Society's as a Next Generation Poet. Her first collection The Anatomy of Structures was published by Flambard Press in 2010. Her second collection, Her Birth (Carcanet/Northern House), was shortlisted for The 2013 Forward Prize for Best Collection and winner of the Poetry Category in The 2013 East Anglian Book Awards.

She joins a list of distinguished previous poet-judges for the Hippocrates Prize: Dannie Abse, Philip Gross, Gwyneth Lewis, Marilyn Hacker and Jo Shapcott.

John Humphrys is a distinguished journalist and presenter of radio and television who has won many national broadcasting awards. He has been a presenter on the award-winning Today programme on BBC Radio 4, since 1987. Since 2003 he has also been the host of the BBC2 television quiz Mastermind. From 1981 to 1987 he was the main presenter for Nine O’Clock News on BBC Television. Previous Hippocrates judges representing the public on the panel were broadcasters James Naughtie, Mark Lawson and Martha Kearney, Science Museums' Director of Communications Roger Highfield and Sarah Crown, Editor of Mumsnet.

Femi Oyebode is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Birmingham and Consultant Psychiatrist at the National Centre for Mental Health in Birmingham. His research interests include clinical psychopathology and medical humanities. He is also a published poet. Hippocrates judges previously representing health professionals were Sir Bruce Keogh, Professor Steve Field, Professor Rod Flower FRS, Dr Theodore Dalrymple and Sir Robert Francis QC. 
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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.
 

The International Hippocrates Prize is one of the highest value poetry awards in the world for a single unpublished poem on a medical theme. It is awarded in three categories:

- an Open category, which anyone in the world may enter;
- an NHS category, which is open to UK National Health Service employees, health students and those working in professional organisations involved in education and training of NHS students and staff;
- a Young Poets category in the international Hippocrates Prize for Young Poets  for an unpublished poem in English on a medical theme. Entries are open to young poets from anywhere in the world aged 14 to 18 years.

At the 2014 Awards Ceremony at the Royal Society of Medicine in London, the £5000 Hippocrates Open International first prize was awarded to UK-based poet Jane Draycott for her poem The Return. The NHS first prize was awarded to trainee paediatrician Dr Ellen Storm for her poem Out of Hospital Arrest, and the £500 Young Poet prize was awarded to Connor McKee, an English literature student at Sidney Sussex College at the University of Cambridge.

The judges of the 2014 Open and NHS prize categories were poet Philip Gross, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, Philip Mumsnet editor Sarah Crown, and barrister Sir Robert Francis QC.

To find out more about the 2015 prize, or to enter, click here.

Notes to editors


For more on the Hippocrates Prize and the 2015 judges, contact 0759 0478078 or email  hippocrates.poetry@gmail.com



Hippocrates Prize Organisers Professor Donald Singer is President of the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine. His interests include research on discovery of new therapies, and public understanding of drugs, health and disease. He co-authors Pocket Prescriber, the 7th edition of which is published by Taylor & Francis in May 2014. Professor Michael Hulse is a poet and translator of German literature, and teaches creative writing and comparative literature at the University of Warwick. He is also editor of The Warwick Review. His latest book of poems, Half-Life (2013), was named a Book of the Year by John Kinsella.




The 2015 Hippocrates Prize is supported by:

The Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, a national medical society founded in 1918 and publisher of the Postgraduate Medical Journal and Health Policy and Technology, has supported the Hippocrates Prize since its launch in 2009.


The Healthy Heart Charity the Cardiovascular Research Trust, founded in 1996, which promotes research and education for the prevention and treatment of disorders of the heart and circulation. 

2014 Hippocrates Open, NHS and Young Poet Prize for Poetry and Medicine awarded in London

The £5000 2014 Open International Hippocrates first prize has been awarded to UK-based poet Jane Draycott. The second prize was won by UK poet Ailsa Holland and the third prize was shared by New York poet Stephanie Gangi and South African poet Karen Nel. 

Jane Draycott with Philip Gross ©Hippocrates Prize

The Hippocrates Prize is one of the most valuable poetry prizes in the world, with a yearly purse of £15000. Jane Draycott’s winning poem The Return concerns the many sanatoria around the world left standing very much as the day they were abandoned decades ago, remaining as if on stand-by for whenever their time comes again. The International Hippocrates Open Awards were presented by poet Philip Gross at an International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine at the Royal Society of Medicine in London.
More on the 2014 Hippocrates Awards 

Ellen Storm with Robert Francis QC ©Hippocrates Prize

The £5000 2014 Hippocrates NHS first prize has been awarded to trainee paediatrician Ellen Storm from Liverpool for her new poem Out of Hospital Arrest. The second prize was won by Valerie Laws from Tyne and Wear and the third prize went to Belfast poet and dentist Paula Cunningham. The Hippocrates NHS Awards were presented by barrister Robert Francis QC at an International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine at the Royal Society of Medicine in London on Saturday May 10th

Now in its 5th year, winners for the 2014 Hippocrates NHS and Open Prize for Poetry and Medicine were selected by judges poet Philip Gross, barrister Robert Francis QC and Mumsnet Editor Sarah Crown from over 1000 entries from 31 countries. 

Philip Gross, Robert Francis & Sarah Crown ©Hippocrates Prize

The judges also agreed 20 commendations in the NHS category, and 21 in the Open International category, from England, Ireland, Scotland, Norway, the USA, New Zealand and Australia.

Judge Philip Gross said: ‘Reading the stronger poems in the Open and the NHS categories, I see how many of their qualities they share. Dedicated poet or health professional – maybe each needs the same disciplines of observation and exactness, care and a right handling of emotions, the ability to get up close and yet step back and see it whole.’ Judge Sarah Crown commented: ‘We think of healthcare first and foremost as a scientific arena; a realm of dosages, diagnoses, instruments and odds. The real pleasure of these poems for me was the way in which they made the case for the place, within this arena, of the personal and the beautiful, too.

‘Reading them awakened me to the stories behind the science, and I found myself in tears on more than one occasion. Congratulations to everyone who submitted a poem, and particularly to the winners.’  Judge Robert Francis QC remarked "What a celebration of the partnership between patients and those who care for them and their shared will to overcome the frailties which we all have to face!”

Donald Singer, Hippocrates Prize co-founder and President of the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, the major patron of the Hippocrates Initiative said "The FPM is delighted that in its 5th year, Hippocrates Open Awards continue to reach out to poets, health professionals and the public around the world.

Hippocrates Prize co-founder poet Michael Hulse added: “The Prize’s first five years have shown how extraordinarily illuminating the complementarity of the disciplines of poetry and medicine can be.” 

Conor McKee has been awarded the inaugural 2014 International Hippocrates Young Poets £500 Prize. 18 year old Conor studies English literature at Sidney Sussex College at the University of Cambridge in England. 

Philip Gross with Conor McKee ©Hippocrates Prize

This new International Hippocrates Prize for Young Poets is for an unpublished poem in English on a medical theme by poets aged 14 to 18 years. The 2014 Prize attracted entries from England, Ireland, and Scotland, Israel, Italy, Nigeria, South Africa and the USA. It is one of the most valuable poetry awards in the world for young poets.

Commenting on the inspiration behind his poem, I Will Not Cut for Stone, Conor said: “ this poem expresses my own fears about the life of a surgeon and my interest in understanding the mechanics of the human body."

The Hippocrates International Young Poet Award and three Young Poet Commendations were presented by poet Philip Gross at an International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine at the Royal Society of Medicine in London on Saturday May 10th.

This year’s poems were judged by adult and children’s author, and winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, Kit Wright.

Kit Wright

Kit said of the entered poems: ‘It was a remarkable experience to judge these poems, highly various in their approaches, both stylistically and in their choice of subject. The world of medicine is an extraordinarily rich one for the writer, and these young poets have produced some extraordinarily assured and compelling responses to it.’

Donald Singer, Hippocrates Prize co-founder and President of the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, the major patron of the Hippocrates Initiative said "The FPM is delighted with the success and international reach of this second year of the Hippocrates Young Poets Award. 

Hippocrates Prize co-founder poet Michael Hulse added: “We are delighted that the Hippocrates Prize for Young Poets is having a growing international impact in inspiring a new generation of poets.”

Of the inspiration for his poem Nothing Happened, commended Young Poet Joseph Davison-Duddles remarked: ‘My poem seeks to place silences and utterances in a narrative of childhood and illness’.

Joseph is sixteen and studies at Queen Elizabeth College in Darlington. In 2013 he received both a Foyle Young Poets commendation and Young People First Place in the Ledbury Poetry Competition.

Commended Young Poet Molly Garbutt said of her poem, Cadaver: ‘It stemmed from discussion with my Biology teacher about medical school, and dissecting cadavers, and from my love of writing about the supernatural.’

Molly studies at Hereford Sixth Form College and hopes to study Veterinary Medicine. She has been shortlisted for several poetry awards, including the COMPAS Schools Prize for Poetry.

Commended Young Poet poet Talin Tahajian is at school in Massachusetts in the USA. Her poem ‘Dream …’  was inspired by her grandfather’s experience of lymphoma.

Her poetry is published by PANK, Hobart and The Adroit Journal. In the autumn she plans to attend Sidney Sussex College at the University of Cambridge where she will study English. 

Notes to editors

For photos of all NHS and Open International Young Poet finalists, biographies and extracts of their poems, contact 0759 0478078, 07447 441666 or 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 - hippocrates-poetry.org

About the Hippocrates Open Prize winner

Jane Draycott  is a UK-based poet with a particular interest in sound art and collaborative work. Her collections include No Theatre (Smith/Doorstop) and from Carcanet Press, Prince Rupert's Drop, The Night Tree and Over, short-listed for the 2009 TS Eliot Prize.  Nominated three times for the Forward Poetry Prizes, she was a PBS 'Next Generation' poet 2004 and second prize-winner in the National Poetry Competition 2012.  Other collections, from Two Rivers Press, include Christina the Astonishing, co-written with Lesley Saunders, and Tideway with images by Peter Hay. Her translation of the medieval dream-elegy Pearl (2011), was a PBS Recommended Translation and winner of a Times Stephen Spender Prize. She lives in Henley on Thames.

About the Hippocrates NHS Prize winner

Dr Ellen Storm is training in Paediatrics and Child Health in Liverpool, and is the mother of three-year-old twin girls. Ellen has had poems published in magazines including Assent, The Interpreter’s House, The Reader, Frogmore Papers, Orbis and The Warwick Review. She has one forthcoming in Obsessed with Pipework, has recently contributed two to the online collaborative arts project The Egg, The Womb, The Head and The Moon (weeks 27 and 30), and will be contributing to the forthcoming Writing Motherhood project. She was commended in the 2013 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine. 

About the Hippocrates Young Poet Winner

Conor McKee comes from Kent and studies English literature at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Poetry has been a significant force in his life since childhood when his parents frequently read to him. He was first encouraged to write poetry at the school creative writing society. In 2012 he won the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award and was subsequently commended in 2013. He also gained second prize in the Young Persons section of the Ledbury Poetry Competition in 2012. His critical interests are focused on late medieval and modernist verse.

The Hippocrates Prize judgesPhilip Gross’s The Water Table won the T.S. Eliot Prize 2009, I Spy Pinhole Eye Wales Book of The Year 2010, and Off Road to Everywhere the CLPE Award for Children’s Poetry 2011. Deep Field (2011) deals with voice and language, explored through his father’s aphasia, and a new collection, Later, was published by Bloodaxe in Autumn 2013. He has published ten novels for young people, including The Lastling, has collaborated with artists, musicians and dancers, and since 2004 has been Professor of Creative Writing at Glamorgan University. 

Robert Francis QC is a distinguished barrister who specialises in the NHS and medical negligence. He has been a Queen's Counsel for 21 of his 40 years at the bar. He has been involved in many inquiries into the NHS, both as barrister and as chair, most recently chairing the inquiry into the Mid Staffordshire Hospital. According to Peter Walsh, chief executive of the patient safety charity Action against Medical Accidents, Robert Francis has a "passion for justice in healthcare and improving healthcare more generally". 

Sarah Crown is editor of http://www.mumsnet.com/. She was editor of the guardian.co.uk/books from 2007 to 2013. Previous poetry awards for which she has been a member of the judging panels include the Forward Prizes and the Picador Poetry Prize.

Hippocrates Young Poet judge

Kit Wright is the author of more than twenty-five books, for both adults and children, and the winner of awards including an Arts Council Writers' Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award and (jointly) the Heinemann Award. After a scholarship to Oxford, he worked as a lecturer in Canada, then returned to England and a position in the Poetry Society.  In June 2014, to mark his seventieth birthday, Kit Wright publishes a new collection of poems, Ode to Didcot Power Station, with Bloodaxe Books.

Hippocrates Prize founders

Professor Donald Singer is President of the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, the main patron of the Hippocrates Prize. His interests include research on discovery of new therapies, and public understanding of drugs, health and disease. He co-authors the drug prescribing guide Pocket Prescriber, the 7th edition of which was published by Taylor & Francis in May 2014.

Michael Hulse is a poet and translator of German literature, and is Professor of creative writing and comparative literature at the University of Warwick. He is also editor of The Warwick Review. His latest collection of poetry, Half Life, was chosen as a Book of the Year by John Kinsella.

2014 Hippocrates Prize is supported by:

The Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, a national medical society founded in 1918 and publisher of the Postgraduate Medical Journal and Health Policy and Technology, has supported the Hippocrates Prize since its launch in 2009.

The Healthy Heart Charity the Cardiovascular Research Trust, founded in 1996, which promotes research and education for the prevention and treatment of disorders of the heart and circulation. 

More on the 2014 Hippocrates Awards 

Hippocrates Society for Poetry and Medicine launched

The Hippocrates Society forPoetry and Medicine provides an international forum for people from anywhere in the world interested in the interface between poetry and medicine. To find out more about the Hippocrates Society, email the organizers.

Activities

Activities of interest to members include an annual international symposium on poetry and medicine, workshops, readings, and reduced cost of publications by the Hippocrates Press. Members also have discounted registration for the awards for the annual Hippocrates Prize which has 3 categories: an international Open category, an international Young Poets award, and a UK NHS category.

Membership

The annual membership subscription of the Hippocrates Society for Poetry and Medicine includes

- one free copy of the current year's Hippocrates Prize Anthology

- 20% discount on Hippocrates Press publications

- 20% discount on registration for Hippocrates initiative events, including the annual International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine, Hippocrates Prize awards, workshops, readings and other events.

Pending events eligible for 20% discount on registration include 

- Hippocrates in Venice workshop 21st - 22nd September 2013

- 5th International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine: May 2014

- 2014 Hippocrates Prize awards: May 2014

Subscription: 1st July 2013 - 30th June 2014

Standard membership - £40

Student - undergraduate or PhD - £30

Retired - £30

Hippocrates in Venice: workshop on poetry and medicine

Hippocrates in Venice

Weekend of Saturday 21^st – Sunday 22^nd September

Venue: 15^th Century Palazzo Ca' Pesaro Papafava
For more information: email the organizers.

15^th Century Palazzo Ca' Pesaro Papafava

Aims of the workshop

This workshop is designed as a scoping and networking event to take forward the work of the Hippocrates Initiative for Poetry and Medicine.

The four annual International Symposia on Poetry and Medicine held since 2010 by the Hippocrates Initiative have shown that there is a substantial wish for an international umbrella association that would serve as a switchboard for the gathering, coordination and dissemination of information in the field, and to institute activities that further an understanding of relations between poetry and medicine.

The Venice workshop will principally be a two-day exchange of views aimed at establishing the priorities an umbrella association ought to have, identifying focal interests for potential research groups and working parties, and identifying interests for exploration in subsequent workshops.

There will be a small number of talks but the emphasis will be on discussion and consultation. Themes to be considered by speakers and during break-out sessions and round table discussions will include historical perspectives, epidemics of infection from the plague of Athens to syphilis, tuberculosis and HIV-AIDS, and modern non-infectious epidemics, from obesity to heart disease, psychiatric disorders and cancer.

Other themes may be added arising from suggestions from workshops participants.

The Venice workshop offers a key opportunity to be part of the planning process and to help shape a significant new aid to workers and researchers in a growing field.

Palazzo Pesaro Papafava is a few minute’s walk from the Rialto Bridge and Ca’ d’Oro.

It is located on the Canale della Misericordia, opposite the Scuola Grande della Misericordia, with views towards the Grand Canal and the Lagoon.

Poet and doctor Dannie Abse awarded Honorary Fellowship by Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine

Dannie Abse has been made an Honorary Fellow by the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, announced at the FPM's 3rd Annual Summer Event on 24th June, 2013.

FPM President Donald Singer with new Hon. FPM Fellow Dannie Abse

His book of poetry, Running Late received the Roland Mathais Prize in 2007. The Presence was the winner of the prestigious Wales Book of the Year award for 2008. In 2009 Abse brought out a volume of collected poetry. In the same year, he received the Wilfred Owen Poetry Award. Abse was a judge for the inaugural 2010 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine.

He was awarded a CBE in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to poetry and literature. 
See more 

Dannie Abse at the FPM for the 2010 Hippocrates Prize judging