Date/Time: Friday 17th May, 9.30am to 7.00pm
Venue: Centre for Life, Newcastle, NE1 4AD

The conference will include Owen Lewis, USA, on the poetry of addiction; Anthony Daniels, UK, and Michael Salcman, USA, on doctor poets; Élise Brault-Dreux, France, on medical themes in poetry; Luz-Mar Gonzalez-Arias, Spain, on campaigning Irish poet Dorothy Molloy. There will also be a symposium on Julia Darling: Changing the Vocabulary of Pain: the life, work and legacy of Julia Darling - contributors include Cynthia Fuller, poet and co-anthologist with Julia of The Poetry Cure; poet, writer on health, and breast cancer survivor, Catherine Ayres; artist and long-time collaborator with Julia, Emma Holliday; and poet, Sean O’Brien.
Click here to Register for the Conference and for the 2019 Hippocrates Prize Ceremony
10th International Poetry and Medicine Conference
Newcastle Centre for Life, 17 May 2019
Draft programme
9.00
Registration, coffee
9.20
Introductory
9.30
Emma Storr: ‘The factory child: industry and
poetry in 19th century England’
9.50
Julia Rose Lewis: ‘Disease, identity, and
the history of the haibun form’
10.10
Elise Brault-Dreulx: ‘When the hospital bed
becomes a poetic sign’
10.30
Round table/plenary discussion
10.45
Coffee
11.05
Emma Trott: ‘“All the old familiar words are
under attack”: poetry, metaphor and heart disease’
11.25
Luz Mar Gonzales-Arias: ‘“They’ve taken my
liver down to the lab”: illness and representation in Dorothy Molloy’s cancer poetry’
11.45
Round table/plenary discussion
11.55
Andrew Dimitri: ‘Iraq, Médecins sans Frontières
and poetry’
12.15
Reading: Paula Cunningham, Wendy French,
Owen Lewis
12.45
Lunch
13.50
Michael Salcman: ‘How the anthology Poetry in Medicine was built’
14.10
Theodore Dalrymple: ‘Illness as inspiration:
the poetry of medicine and disease’
14.30
Round table/plenary discussion
14.40
Changing the vocabulary
of pain: the life, work and legacy of Julia Darling
Christy Ducker (chair), Catherine Ayres, Cynthia
Fuller, Emma Holliday, Sean O’Brien
15.40
Coffee
16.00
Owen Lewis: ‘The poetry of addiction’
16.20
Eleanor Holmes: ‘Reclaiming reflection:
reading poetry aloud and writing for ourselves’
16.40
Round table/plenary discussion
16.50
Short break
17.00
Hippocrates Prize awards ceremony
18.00
Reception with launch of Prize anthology, Winter in Northern Iraq by Andrew Dimitri, and Illness
as Inspiration. The Poetry of Medicine and Disease by Theodore Dalrymple
18.45
End