Shortlisting will take place next week for the inaugural international medical poetry award the Hippocrates Prize.

More than 1,600 entries have been received from 30 countries including Colombia, Mexico, Fiji and Finland.

The Hippocrates Prize is being organised by a joint team from the University of Warwick’s Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies and the University’s Medical School.

The judges, broadcaster and journalist James Naughtie, NHS Medical Director Professor Sir Bruce Keogh and poet Dannie Abse, will meet on March 10 to decide the short list for the prize for which there is a £15,000 award fund.

The Hippocrates Prize is split into two categories: an ‘open’ category which anyone can enter, and an ‘NHS’ category open to National Health Service related employees and health students. The first prize for the winning poem in each category is £5,000.

The winners will be announced at the International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine, being held at the University of Warwick on Saturday 10 April.

Professor Donald Singer, Professor in Clinical Pharmacology at Warwick Medical School and President of the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, has set up the prize along with poet Michael Hulse from the University of Warwick’s Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies.

Professor Singer said: “This is the first year for the Hippocrates Prize and we have had a tremendous response. We have had entries from poets, patients, health professionals and members of the public from 30 countries and six continents. We are really pleased with the response and look forward to seeing the shortlist.”

Michael Hulse said: “The high level of interest in the Prize and the Symposium shows that there is substantial interest in the crossover between medicine and poetry. It’s very exciting to see an unusual venture being rewarded with such enthusiasm.”

All winning and commended poems will be published in a book to be launched at the prize-giving event at the Symposium. The highest ranked 300 entries will also be published electronically.

The 2010 Hippocrates Prize is being supported by the Institute of Advanced Study at the University of Warwick and by the national Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine.

Notes to editors

For more information contact Kelly Parkes-Harrison, k.e.parkes@warwick.ac.uk, 02476 150483, 07824 540863

Hippocrates Prize website: www.hippocrates-poetry.org

More on the Symposium: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/cpt/poetry/symp