In
Venice this weekend, a major international organisation was launched: the
Hippocrates Society for Poetry and Medicine. This launch marks the 5th
year of the hugely successful Hippocrates initiative, which has attracted
interest from 55 countries in its major awards and symposia.
Donald
Singer, Professor of Therapeutics and Hippocrates initiative co-founder said:
“Within the increasingly administered and technical world of medicine, patients
often find it difficult to engage with prevention and treatment of common and
serious medical problems.
“Poetry
provides a huge opportunity for patients to gain insight into their illness, as
well as to help health professionals to understand better the concerns of their
patients. Applications are welcome from anywhere in the world to join the
Hippocrates Society for Poetry and Medicine from health professionals and
patients, from poets and academics, and others who are interested in our aims”.
Poet and
Hippocrates initiative co-founder Michael Hulse added: “From the cancer patient
who found poetry restored her appetite to the Kiwi poet who woke up to see the
sea as a vertical wall, we had everything in Venice.
“This
interdisciplinary debate has attracted experts from around the world to help us
to identify and resolve new challenges in establishing the place of poetry and
medicine within health care and the wider world.”
This new
society has 3 major aims: establishing the place of poetry within core
treatment for acute illnesses and for long term medical conditions, the role of
poetry as solace and release for health professionals and for the family and
friends of people with serious medical disorders, and the place of medicine as
a major theme in poetry.
Delegates
from the UK, USA, NZ, and continental Western and Eastern Europe met in Venice
to chart the future of the new society for poetry and medicine. Themes
discussed included poetry as a route to empowering patients, tangible benefits
such as helping to improve appetite during convalescence and palliative care,
and important gains in well-being.
Alex
Josephy, poet and NHS Education Advisor, said: “When I was diagnosed with cancer, I felt
that my life was out of control on a metaphorical as well as a physical level.
I needed to confront this on both levels. Poetry was for me part of a
process by which I sought to adjust this disrupted relationship with words and
images.”
Public
health expert Damiano Abeni from Rome added: “Poetry
is also an important tool to engender humanity among health professionals, from
medical students to midwives and qualified health professionals.”
Hippocrates
Award winner, distinguished poet CK Stead from New Zealand said: “It is of course important to recognise that there will be sceptical views
from both doctors and patients about the idea of prescribing poetry, and from
some poets that medicine is merely a niche area.”
A key aim of the Society is therefore to establish
the strength of current evidence for the place of poetry in health care, and to
commission new research into key areas where poetry may have a role – from
easing experience of troublesome symptoms, to enhancing recovery from cancer.
A further important aim is to demonstrate to poets
the universal relevance of experience of life, from birth to death, as a major
theme for the best of poetry.
No comments:
Post a Comment