ABSTRACT
This retrospective reviews the first 13 years (till the death of co-founder Professor Donald Singer) of the Hippocrates Initiative for Poetry and Medicine, which was established in 2009 to explore the interface between the two disciplines and to reward poetry on medical subjects with an annual competitive prize. The history of the Hippocrates Prize is traced, with some account of winning writers and poems and of its distinguished judges. The history of the annual symposium is also traced, which heard papers from literary scholars on medical poetry and from health professionals on the uses to which poetry may be put in medical contexts. The Initiative aimed to evolve an understanding of what is meant by medical poetry and to increase awareness of this strand in received and contemporary poetry worldwide, and this it did effectively. Its second aim was to gather data on clinical uses of poetry. A third aim, to compile an authoritative anthology of poetry on medical subjects from historical and international principles, remains unfinished, but a similar anthology published in 2015 provides some of the intended signposting. This retrospective also describes books that appeared from the Initiative’s publishing wing, The Hippocrates Press.
