The 10th annual International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine�and the 2019 Hippocrates Awards Ceremony�will be held on Friday 17th May 2019 at the Life Science Centre, Times Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4EP
Poets who attend will be invited to read their shortlisted and commended poems during the Awards Ceremony.
Shortlist for the 2019 FPM-Hippocrates Open Awards
Mara Adamitz Scrupe, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA����Excision
Claudia Daventry, Kincaple, St Andrews, Fife, Scotland � �for my Valentine in an fMRI scanner�
Simon Rae, Llandrindod Wells, Powys, Wales� � �The Wheelhouse
Michael Swan, Didcot, Oxon, England� ��Advice to a medical student
Commended�in the�2019 FPM-Hippocrates�Open�Awards
Fran Castan, Greenport, New York, USA � �To Zoster
Natalie Crick, Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, England � �The Mouth That Did It
Paul Crichton, London, England��� Generic GP
Nicola Healey, Buckinghamshire, England��� Disarticulation�
Nicola Healey,�Buckinghamshire, England��� What we call depression
Natalie Ann Holborow, Swansea, Wales � �Gestalt Therapy
Rosie Jackson, Frome, Somerset, England � �The artist's view of surgery�
Lorraine McArdle, Dublin, Ireland � �A farewell to hips
Sue Norton, York, England��� Anne tries to explain how Chronic Fatigue feels �
Anne O'Carroll, Beara, Cork, Ireland � �Chemo
Kyle Potvin, Derry, New Hampshire, USA � �The Hard Work of Dying
Hessom Rassavi, Perth, Australia����Blister pack
Hessom Rassavi, Perth, Australia � �Mabu Liyan
Yiskah Rosenfeld, Albany, California, USA � �Learning the Essentials
Lesley Saunders, Slough, Berkshire, England� The Silent Teachers
Faith Shearin, Northampton, Massachusetts, USA � �I Will Not
Marjory Woodfield, Christchurch, New Zealand � �In the Physic Garden
Steve Xerri, Cambridge, England � �Worried Well
Fran Castan (photo by�Mia Santa Cruz)�is author of The Widow’s Quilt (1996), a poetry collection, and Venice:� City That Paints Itself (2010), a collection of her poems and of paintings by her late husband, Lewis Zacks. Both are Canio’s Editions, Sag Harbor, N.Y. �Fran has won the Poetry Society of America’s Lucille Medwick Award; an Academy of American Poets and New York University joint award; fellowships at The MacDowell Colony and The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; and a teaching fellowship at New York University.� She was named The Long Island Poet of the Year 2013 by The Walt Whitman Birthplace Association.� Though Fran worked happily as a magazine editor, a freelance writer and a teacher of writing and literature, she always wanted to be a medical doctor. �She has an M.A. in Creative Writing from New York University and another in Languages, Literature and Communication from Columbia University.�Her poems have appeared in such periodicals as Poetry Magazine, Ms. Magazine and Paterson Literary Review as well as anthologies, including From Both Sides Now:� Poems of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath (Scribner); Seasons of Women (Norton) and On Prejudice:� A Global Perspective (Anchor/Doubleday). Her freelance work has appeared in The New York Times and on The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
�She said:�“The inspiration for the poem, To Zoster, occurred shortly after I experienced shingles and learned that Varicella Zoster, the virus that caused it, had lived inside me since childhood when I had had an unforgettable case of chicken pox.� I decided to yell at it!”
Natalie Crick, from Newcastle in the UK, has poems published in various journals including The Interpreter's House, The Moth, The Manchester Review, The Lonely Crowd, Banshee, Strix, Bare Fiction, Lighthouse, New Welsh Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Crannog, Poetry Salzburg Review and elsewhere. She is studying for an MA in Writing Poetry at Newcastle University and will commence an MPhil in Creative Writing at Newcastle University in October 2019. Natalie has read her poetry at local poetry readings in addition to more prestigious events like Newcastle Poetry Festival. As well as other successes in competitions, her poetry has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize twice, shortlisted for The Anthony Cronin international Poetry Award 2018 and one of her poems was a runner-up in the PBS & Mslexia Women's Poetry Competition 2018, judged by Carol Ann Duffy.
About the inspiration behind her commended poem she said: "The mouth that did It attempts to get inside the head of an individual suffering from an eating disorder; bulimia. I wanted to make my poem as authentic to the illness as possible, which was a challenge as I have no personal experience of this disorder and could only imagine the feelings of a sufferer. In writing the opening lines of my poem I felt it was important to discuss the mouth itself to physically accentuate the difficulties encountered by a bulimia sufferer. The mouth is dominant. Thoughts of food are ever present. Lately I have enjoyed writing short sequences of poems about eating disorders, which I plan to include as part of my MA Writing Poetry portfolio assignment (Newcastle University). The often surreal language in my poems on this theme is inspired by the visceral poetry of Selima Hill."
Claudia Daventry�has studied languages, poetry and psychology and worked as a writer, translator and teacher in France, Spain and the Netherlands before moving to Scotland, where she now lives. Her poetry and essays have appeared in various publications including The Dark Horse, The Island Review, the Irish Literary Review, Magma, Poetry London, Poem, Raum, Measure, Versal and �anthologies from Bloodaxe, Five Leaves, Smokestack and Luath. Her work has won several awards and commendations, including Arvon, Philip Larkin and McLellan prizes, and was placed first in the inaugural Ruskin prize and Bridport Prize. She is interested in looking for ways to translate poetry other than linguistically, and working with composer Rory Boyle has recently written libretti for the Glasgow Commonwealth Games and Songs from the Marshes, a cycle of folk songs for the JAM on the Marsh music festival, performed last year on BBC Radio 3. Her solo chapbook, which won a Templar award in 2016, is The Oligarch Loses his Patience.
She said:�"for my Valentine in an fMRI scanner�was inspired by the colours shown up by neuroimaging subjects with PTSD and TBI as the brain reacts to different stimuli, and seeing the beloved in a new light. Formally it’s a nod to a kind of scrambled love sonnet which has two halves set as if magnetically drawn to one another, a sestet between the two quatrains, and I had fun playing with the Latin and Greek terms for areas of the brain, their functions and the images they conjured up, either via etymology or just the music of the words. In its essence it’s about the ’subject’ as a human being, and, more, loving someone who may be termed ‘disordered’ from the outside, but whose brain on the inside lights up in glorious technicolour – and whose trauma makes them beautiful."
Nicola Healey’s poems have been published in The Poetry Review, The London Magazine, The Spectator, The Dark Horse and (forthcoming) PN Review. She won the Seren Christmas Poetry Competition 2018 and was commended in the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine 2017 and the Resurgence Poetry Prize 2015. A PhD graduate of the University of St Andrews, she is the author of Dorothy Wordsworth and Hartley Coleridge: The Poetics of Relationship (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and several essays on the Coleridge family.
She said: "Disarticulation�explores both the limits of language in communicating distress and how anorexia nervosa is often, paradoxically, a survival mechanism – a (futile) striving for a personal integrity, in the senses of both wholeness and honesty, that is under threat. The poem also contrasts the complexity of the disorder with how wellness is commonly judged on appearance."
She added: "What We Call Depression attempts to delineate many of the frequently overlooked symptoms and effects of depression – what William Styron called ‘a true wimp of a word’ for such a destructive and dangerous condition – such as the loss of the senses. I hoped to illustrate how, for many sufferers, depression is experienced as a wholesale elimination of self and being-in-the-world, rather than a state of lowness.”
She said: "I wrote Gestalt Therapy�after a particularly challenging therapy session in which I had to imagine the person who upset me sitting in an empty chair and talk to it as an empathy exercise. The symbolism of that person's absence, and the tumult of emotion that seemed to bubble from nowhere, drove me to silence so I instead wrote 'Gestalt Therapy' on the back of a receipt in tears in the hospital car park. For me, writing and creativity are the the greatest forms of therapy of all – it's an act of reconnecting with the person you are beyond the words in your medical notes."
She said: ‘When I discovered Barbara Hepworth’s hospital drawings of 1947-8, I wanted to write something that would capture their remarkable beauty, the way they lift surgery into a sacred act. The title is from Hepworth’s 1953 lecture of that name, where she draws parallels between sculptors and surgeons, and these links, along with Hepworth’s work and life, were my main inspiration.”
Lorraine McArdle’s poems have been published in The Interpreter’s House and The North, and she was selected for Poetry Ireland’s upcoming 2019 Introductions Series.� She was shortlisted for Poems for Patience 2019 and the Cuirt New Writing Prize in 2018. She has performed in the Dublin Fringe Festival as the alter ego Dorothy Darker, while Fishamble Theatre Company produced her short play 'The Naked Truth' as part of their Shorts festival. She lives in Dublin and works as the Marketing Director for her family business, which hires and sells cherrypickers. She had a full hip replacement in September 2018 at the age of 44, which was her 6th hip operation.
She said: "The poem�A farewell to hips�emerged from a meditation I did on the morning of my hip replacement surgery where I fondly thanked my hard working but problematic hip for all its efforts and sent it off on a dignified retirement. Being in control of my body helped in those anxious pre surgery moments to cope with feelings of loss. Rather than having something removed from my body, I had prepared an open space to welcome a new part. This poem is my respectful acknowledgement and letting go of the past, while keeping a hopeful eye on the future."
Sue Norton lives in York. In March 2019 she won 3rd prize in the York Literature Festival poetry competition. Her husband has had M.E. for 35 years and her daughter Anne has suffered it for 11 years.�
She said: "The poem Anne tries to explain how Chronic Fatigue feels was written after a conversation with Anne, with the aim of trying to help other people understand the hidden misery of this illness.”
Inspiration for the poem:�The Hard Work of Dying is a sonnet inspired by the loss of a friend I dubbed my “cancer mentor,” a champion during my own bout with breast cancer. While not literally in the room while she was dying, I followed her journey through her family and matched it with other experiences of loss.�
Simon Rae�is a prize-winning poet, biographer, broadcaster and novelist.�He presented Poetry Please! on Radio 4 for many years.�In 1999 he won the National Poetry Competition after twice coming runner-up. His collection, Gift Horses, was published in 2006. He has written novels for younger readers (Unplayable, Keras and Medusa’s Butterfly), and his first detective story, Bodyline, came out in 2015.�His latest crime story, The Pillbox Murders, is published by Nine Elms Books.� He lives in Wales.
He said: "The Wheelhouse came from the experience of caring for my mother in the last months of her life.� The image of her as an old sea-captain steering indomitably into a storm cast her daily struggles in a heroic light and reflects my enormous respect for her."
Hessom Razavi is a doctor and writer, born in Iran in 1976. He was raised in Tehran and Karachi, speaking Farsi and Urdu, before migrating to the UK and then Australia. He wrote his first poem in 2006, after a night of hospital shift work.� His poetry has since garnered prizes in Australia and overseas.
About the inspiration for Blister Pack�he said: "Three years ago, I contracted an illness that required pills for some months.� As a doctor who had never needed medicines, I became acquainted with the ritual of the blister pack - its strange reassurances and limitations.� And so, from a thermoformed plastic pocket, out popped a poem.”�
About Mabu Liyan he said: "Last year, a friend was admitted to a psychiatric unit in remote Western Australia.� At the height of her illness, she had the compassion to hug and befriend a fellow inpatient.� �It revealed a humanity, resilient with the chips down, that pierced me hard.� By extension, it illuminated our capacity for reconciliation, in spite of differences; a wellspring that is needed desperately, in Australian society and others.”��
He said: "Advice to a medical student�gave me the opportunity to express two long-held emotions: admiration and gratitude. I feel profound admiration for the remarkable people who are able to embrace and carry on this most demanding of professions. And I am deeply grateful to the individual surgeons, doctors, nurses and other workers to whose care and concern over the years I owe my life and health; and to the hundreds of thousands of researchers and practitioners, mostly unremembered, whose work over two millennia has built up the knowledge and skills that make today’s medicine and surgery possible.”