Catherine Wang from Hong Kong has been awarded the 2016 Hippocrates Young Poet £500 Award for Poetry and Medicine for her poem Six pills.
Catherine is currently a sophomore at Chinese International School, Hong Kong. Her creative achievements include placing 2nd place in the 2015 Hong Kong Top Story awards and being shortlisted for the 2010 and 2013 Hong Kong Young Writers' Awards.
Catherine Wang
About her poem Six Pills she said: "I was diagnosed with Lupus, an autoimmune disease, when I was eleven. At the time, I understood little about my body and even less about what was wrong with it. In 'Six Pills', I wanted to capture the intimate landscapes of both experience and the unknown, and how the two converge in times of change. For me, this change was the point in treatment when the pills, fevers, and medical terms became inseparable from being. Writing this poem was an attempt at leaving fear behind.”
Also competing for the £500 Young Poets award were
Mia Nelson, from Denver, USA for love under the scalpel, Audrey Spensley, from
Avon Lake, USA for 3 poems: Dissection, Requiem for a Surgery Scar and
Variations on a Craniotomy, and Amy Wolstenholme from Salisbury in England for
words in the bone.
The awards were announced by Leslie Morgan OBE, DL and Tony Ahearne, patrons of
the healthy heart charity the Cardiovascular Research Trust, which is
supporting the 2016 Hippocrates Young Poet Award.
Leslie Morgan said: "We are very
pleased that the Cardiovascular Research Trust is supporting
this year’s Young Poet Award in the Hippocrates Prize for poetry and medicine.
This Young Poet Award is an excellent way to encourage young people from around
the world to take an interest in their health through poetry and I am delighted
that we shall continue our support for this major award in 2017 and 2018.”
Back row from left: CVRT Patrons Leslie Morgan OBE, DL, Prize organisers Donald Singer and Michael Hulse, and CVRT Patron Tony Ahearne.
Front from left: young poets at the awards - Amy Wolstenholme and Norviewu Dzimega.
Honorable
mentions were awarded to 5 young poets: 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 Dzimega
from Orpington, England for I am and Naabil Khan from London, England for My
Scars.
This year’s awards were judged by poet Siân Hughes. who 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.
More
on the 2016 Hippocrates Young Poet shortlist and honorable mentions.
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 Hippocrates Young Poet 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.
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.