The “Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine”, is now accepting applications for the 2011 entry and invites both national and international submissions.

Established in 2009, the competition represents the growing body of poetry that is being included in a variety of prestigious medical journals. An article published in the Lancet this year discusses the relevance of poetry for the physician and as a medium for recording our reflections on Medicine.

The role of medicine through societies and histories has always been integral to respective meanings of life and human experience. Contemporary medicine, however, is of an unprecedented nature. Technological advancements coupled with the development of different languages about the human body, such as molecular biology or neuroscience, have embraced the metaphysical aspects of the beginning and ending of our individual human existences more closely than ever before. The boundaries and definitions of the beginning and ending of life are fluctuating alongside our insights about the nature of the human body.

Thus, a poetic soundboard for such philosophising of medicine is very relevant and as many of us would argue, necessary, for the growth of a sophisticated medical practice.

The link for the poetry competition is :

http://www.hippocrates-poetry.org/

The article, “Poetry, Medicine, and the Hippocrates Prize” by Donald RJ Singer and Michael Hulse” :

The Lancet, Volume 375, Issue 9719, Pages 976 – 977, 20 March 2010; can be found at :

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)60427-8/fulltext