Six young poets have been shortlisted and a further 5 young poets awarded honorable mentions in the £500 Hippocrates Young Poets Prize for Poetry and Medicine, one of the most valuable poetry awards in the world for young poets.Competing for the £500 Young Poets award are Mia Nelson, from Denver, USA from love under the scalpel, Audrey Spensley, from Avon Lake, USA for 3 poems: Dissection, Requiem for a Surgery Scar and Variations on a Craniotomy, Catherine Wang from Hong Kong for Six pills and Amy Wolstenholme from Salisbury in England for words in the bone.
Honorable mentions have been awarded to Cara Nicholson from Oundle, England for An Unwanted Visitor, Alana McDermott from Oldham, England for Letters Upon The Sea, Ally Steinberg from New York City, USA for The Jacks, Norviewu Dzimegam from Orpington, England for I am and Naabil Khan from London, England for My Scars.
This year’s awards are being judged by poet Sian Hughes who will announce the winner at an Awards Ceremony in London on Friday 15th April.
Judge Siân Hughes said: “Reading a young writer's work is always a huge responsibility. Misunderstanding someone, missing the point, is such an unkind, unfriendly thing to do, especially to the young, and no one is more exposed than when they open themselves to the page.
“These young writers take on stories of illness, fear and loss, staring into some of the hardest words in the language with honesty and courage. What struck me about all of these mentioned, was that they showed a love of words as well as a love of life.
“Those who tackled the subject of mental illness - self-harm, eating disorders, hallucination - took on a challenge as brave as those who grappled with the technical language of cancer treatments. I was moved by words about the agonies of acne and the madness of first love as well as by stories of hospital corridors and waiting rooms.”
The international Hippocrates Prize for Young Poets is for an unpublished poem in English on a medical theme by poets aged 14 to 18 years from anywhere in the world. The 2016 Prize attracted entries from Canada, England, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Scotland, South Africa, Taiwan and the USA.
Register for the
Awards Ceremony from 3.30 pm - 6.30 pm on Friday
15th April, at the Medical Society of London,11 Chandos Street, London W1G 9EB.
Honorable mentions have been awarded
to Cara Nicholson from Oundle, England for An
Unwanted Visitor, Alana McDermott from Oldham, England for Letters Upon The Sea, Ally Steinberg
from New York City, USA for The Jacks,
Norviewu Dzimegam from Orpington, England for I am and Naabil Khan from London, England for My Scars.
Judge Siân Hughes said: “Reading a young writer's work is always a
huge responsibility. Misunderstanding someone, missing the point, is such
an unkind, unfriendly thing to do, especially to the young, and no one is more
exposed than when they open themselves to the page.
“These young writers take on stories of illness, fear and loss,
staring into some of the hardest words in the language with honesty and
courage. What struck me about all of these mentioned, was that they
showed a love of words as well as a love of life.
“Those who tackled the subject of mental illness - self-harm,
eating disorders, hallucination - took on a challenge as brave as those who
grappled with the technical language of cancer treatments. I was moved by
words about the agonies of acne and the madness of first love as well as by
stories of hospital corridors and waiting rooms.”
Previous winners:
- 2013
inaugural Hippocrates Young Poets Prize - Rosalind Jana from
Hereford Sixth Form College in England, for Posterior Instrumented Fusion
for Adolescent Scoliosis;
- 2014 Hippocrates Young Poets Prize
Conor McKee, Sidney Sussex College Cambridge for I
Will Not Cut for Stone;
-
2015 Hippocrates Young Poets Prize
Parisa Thepmankorn from New Jersey, USA for Intraocular pressure
Notes for editors
For photos of finalists, biographies
and extracts of their poems, call 07447 441666 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.
2016 Hippocrates Prize for Young Poets
judge Siân Hughes
Siân Hughes' first
collection "The Missing" (Salt, 2009) was long listed for Guardian
first book of the year, and won the Seamus Heaney prize for a first
collection. Her sequence of poems about her mother's breast cancer won
second prize in the first Hippocrates awards, and she and her mother Eleanor
Cooke continue to write a shared book about this illness as treatments
continue today. In 1998 Siân set
up the Young National Poetry Competition when she was working for The Poetry Society
and she continues to promote young writers and to work with the National
Academy of Gifted and Talented Youth to support the teaching of creative
writing. Siân has been poet in residence in Youth and
Community Centres, a Youth Theatre, a Health Centre, and a sandwich shop, and
is and is currently poet in residence in a Birmingham school when she is not
teaching part time for Oxford University.
Hippocrates Prize founders
Professor Donald Singer is a clinical pharmacologist. His interests include research on discovery of new therapies, and public understanding of drugs, health and disease. He co-authors Pocket Prescriber, the 8th edition of which will published by Taylor & Francis in the Summer of 2015.
Professor Donald Singer is a clinical pharmacologist. His interests include research on discovery of new therapies, and public understanding of drugs, health and disease. He co-authors Pocket Prescriber, the 8th edition of which will published by Taylor & Francis in the Summer of 2015.
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.
2016 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.
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