Dr Richard Ratzan gives us a commentary on his poem “Congenital Glaucoma, published in BMJ Medical Humanities, and explains why he decided to write about this case using the sonnet form. This little girl – she was probably about 13 or 14; I don’t remember since it was about 10 years ago – was from […]
Category: Poetics
Reclaiming Reflection: Creative Writing and the Medical Humanities (3)
Reminiscence Bumps: self-mythology and the landscapes of the mind by Eleanor Holmes When I think about the landscapes of the mind, I recall the undulations of the brain’s surface. The ridges and valleys of cortex, the gyri and sulci I had learnt about in my neuroanatomy classes aged nineteen. Those white plastic […]
Reclaiming Reflection: Creative Writing and the Medical Humanities (1)
Poetry and Reflection: a powerful tool for learning This post is part of a series over the next three days on the theme of Creative Writing and Medical Humanities by Dr Eleanor Holmes (pen name Eliot North). As a GP Tutor I’ve delivered seminars on the patient centred medicine (PCM) component of Newcastle […]
Poetry Book Review: The Wound Dresser
Two poetry book reviews will be featured this week. The second review will appear on Friday. Jack Coulehan, The Wound Dresser (Albuquerque: JB Stillwater, 2016) Finalist for the 2016 Dorset Poetry Prize, selected by Robert Pinsky (Poet Laureate of the United States from 1997 to 2000). Reviewed by Barbara Salas The Wound Dresser […]
Poetry and Medicine: Prize Winners
In April I attended the 7th International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine where the 2016 Hippocrates Awards were announced. A fascinating day, the programme included critiques on Philip Larkin’s The Building, Celia de Freine Blood Debts, Mary Kennan Herbert’s Skin Man series, as well as a presentation on Poetry, Psychoanalysis and Ageing, and a discussion around the evidence for the benefits […]
PCMD Medical Humanities Conference 2016
Ian Fussell Community Sub Dean UEMS In 2002, The Peninsula Medical School (now Peninsular College of Medicine and Dentistry (PCMD)) became the first UK medical school to integrate the medical humanities as core curriculum. Every year since, year four students engage in a six-month project alongside and mentored by an artist. The culmination […]
The Reading Room: Short-list for the 2016 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine
Fragility of the human form: short-list for the 2016 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine 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. Poets from New York […]
Ayesha Ahmad: Introduction to Global Humanities—Through Creation, Violence Will Die
Against the backdrop of violence, I have been examining through my research the qualities of our human condition that perpetuate both our survival and our spirit. As an introduction to an ongoing series on Global Humanities, I will be discussing ways we can counter the dominant narrative of violence. Our globalised world, or rather, the collective […]
5th International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine at the Royal Society of Medicine, Wimpole Street, London on Saturday 10 May 2014
Reflections from the 5th International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine by Clare Best This year’s Symposium invited us to focus on how we might begin to define the term ‘medical poetry’ and asked if that is even a useful aim. Michael Hulse started the day with a thought-provoking talk proposing that the Romantic ego […]
Guest Blog Post by Poet and Writer, Clare Best, Part 2: On Scars and Memories
Guest blog for BMJ Medical Humanities by Clare Best Recently I’ve been thinking about cutting/editing and scars/memories. In two linked pieces for the BMJ Medical Humanities blog, I take a look at my own relationship first with knives and cutting and then with scars and memories. Part two: Scars and memories If […]