Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine now open

The annual Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine is one of the highest value poetry awards in the world with a £5,500 prize fund for its Open International and for its UK NHS Awards. Awards are for a single unpublished poem in English of up to 50 lines on a medical theme

Deadline: 31^st January 2016 

The Hippocrates Prize is awarded in an Open category, which anyone in the world may enter; and 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.

Awards will be presented in April 2016 at a ceremony in London. Winning and commended poems are published in the annual Hippocrates Prize Anthology.

Since it was founded in 2009 by clinical professor Donald Singer and poet Michael Hulse, there has been interest in the awards from over 60 countries and widespread press and broadcast media coverage. There have already been entries for the 2016 awards from 25 countries and territories from Australia to Zambia.

If you wish to take part or to let poet friends know about the awards there is still just time: entries for the 2016 Hippocrates Prize International and NHS awards close at 12 midnight GMT 31st January, 2016. 

Visit here to find out how to enter for the 2016 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine.

Poet Wendy French, Harvard physician and poet Rafael Campo, and Gareth Powell, Secretary of the Methodist Church, will judge the 2016 Hippocrates Prize for poetry and medicine international and UK NHS awards.

Hippocrates Prize organiser and Clinical Pharmacologist Donald Singer said:

"Engaging with health through poetry can provide valuable support for patients and their families."

Poet and Hippocrates judge Wendy French said:

"My experience as poet in residence at the MacMillan Cancer Centre shows how patients undergoing palliative care can find helpful support from engaging in poetry.”

The Prize is run by the Hippocrates Initiative for Poetry and Medicine, which received the 2011 Times Higher Education Award for Innovation and Excellence in the Arts for its work on the synergy between medicine, the arts and health.