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Student being recognized

William Carlos Williams Poetry Competition Winners Named

National contest thrives at Northeast Ohio Medical University
Thirty-four years ago, a faculty member from a new medical college in Rootstown wrote to the son of world-famous poet William Carlos Williams to ask a favor: Could her school use his father’s name for a new, national poetry competition?

The answer was an emphatic and enthusiastic yes, and this year, nearly 300 students from around the country entered the annual William Carlos Williams Poetry Competition held by Northeast Ohio Medical University. Winners will be invited to a campus event Friday, April 22, at which Matt McCarthy, M.D. – an assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, an assistant attending physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and the author of Odd Man Out, a New York Times bestseller – will be the guest speaker. The event takes place during National Poetry Month.

Humanities from the start
How and why does a medical university have such a long-lived and popular event, named for a famous poet –dead, but still taught in literature classes (think “The Red Wheelbarrow’’)?

The questions pop to the surface like cornstalks in the field that were plowed under to build NEOMED’s campus 43 years ago.

“Humanities were built into the curriculum right from the beginning,’’ says Delese Wear, Ph.D., a professor of family and community medicine at NEOMED. She credits Glenn Saltzman, Ph.D., a professor of behavioral sciences, with making sure of that. Dr. Wear says Martin Kohn, Ph.D., the first director of the University’s Human Values in Medicine Program, started the poetry competition because Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine (as the school was then named) believed the humanities were integral to the medicine curriculum.

If Dr. Kohn thought NEOMED would benefit from a poetry contest in general, then why William Carlos Williams in particular? Because he was a practicing physician, in addition to being a well-known poet, says Dr. Wear.

“Williams chose to work as a general practitioner in Rutherford, New Jersey, a community with many working-class people and immigrants,’’ she says. Williams, born in 1883, died in 1963, 10 years before NEOMED opened its doors. So Dr. Wear wrote to his son, William Eric Williams, M.D., who had continued his father’s practice in Rutherford, to ask permission to use his father’s name for the contest. Although he had no prior connection with NEOMED, he wrote to give his warm endorsement.


Dear Ms. Wear,

By all means use my father’s name as a title for your poetry competition.
It will not be necessary to go beyond this license which I hereby grant you.
There are other cultural endeavors currently which bear his name, but a little
repetition only enhances his image. After all fellows like Washington, Kennedy
and Shakespeare have had their names kicked around a bit without seeming hackneyed.
Seriously, I’m sure Dad would be happy, not to say proud, to think that there are 224 embryo medices out there sufficiently interested in poetry to submit their work to be judged. I like the tone of the whole thing. Puts me in mind of Robert Coles up in Boston barking up the same tree.
Continued success in your most worthwhile endeavor.

Very truly yours, W.E. Williams M.D.


More Than Psychology
Joseph Zarconi, M.D., currently a professor of internal medicine at NEOMED, was in the first class of physicians to graduate from the institution in 1981. He’s a believer in the power of the humanities in the medical curriculum.

“There’s always some proportion of students who come to the humanities kicking and screaming. It’s often described by people like that as a ‘soft’ science. But what we’ve found over the years is that with those naysayer students, the power of the value of the humanities comes to them later, when they have richer life experiences,’’ says Dr. Zarconi

He points to Dr. Glenn Saltzman as a key influencer in NEOMED’s early years: “Behavioral sciences in medical school are usually about human psychology. Dr. Saltzman thought it was important to broaden the curriculum to include the humanities as well as the social sciences.’’ His belief led to the Human Values in Medicine curriculum that continues today. Together, doctors Zarconi and Wear developed a Reflective Practice course that is one aspect of the four-year curriculum. Reflective Practice includes reading novels, short stories and yes, poetry.

One invaluable aspect of the humanities training at NEOMED is narrative practice, Dr. Zarconi says. He co-wrote a book, Narrative in Health Care, that helps students learn how to guide patients in making ethical decisions within the narrative contexts of their own lives.

If that sounds like heavy lifting relative to a poetry contest, consider the field these students are entering. No less than the life and death will be in their hands. And look at the titles of their poems. For every “Lilacs” there is a “Burying Ground.’’ For every “Sweeter than a Watermelon,’’ there is a “Totentanz” (Dance of Death).

Poetry Flourishes
If the enduring popularity of the William Carlos Williams Poetry Competition is any indication, students are embracing poetry as an outlet. NEOMED itself seems to be heating up as a bit of a poetry hub. In December 2015, alumnus Amit Majmudar, M.D., a radiologist who graduated in 2003 (and former participant in the contest), was named by Governor John Kasich as Ohio’s first Poet Laureate. Dr. Majmudar’s two-year term includes public engagements around the state. Since graduating, he has been back to NEOMED to engage in poetry readings and book discussions. Chances are good he’ll be asked back again soon.

In keeping with the national scope of the competition, final judging this year was by Richard M. Berlin, M.D., a psychiatrist and poet from The University of Massachusetts Medical School, following initial selections by the Wick Poetry Center at NEOMED partner school Kent State University. This was the first time in contest history that a NEOMED student has been a top winner.

Next year, the competition will return and students in the U.S. and Canada will step once more into the metaphorical ring. In the meantime, medical students at NEOMED will never be far from the power of the written word.

A complete list of winners follows.

34th William Carlos Williams Poetry Competition Winners – 2016

First Place
Ileana Horattas – M2
Northeast Ohio Medical University
Rootstown, Ohio
Poem:  “Lilacs”

First Place
Phoebe Prioleau – M3
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
New York, N.Y.
Poem: “Totentanz”

Second Place
Catherine Tran – M3
University of Nebraska College of Medicine
Omaha, Neb.
Poem:  “They Buried Him in California”

Third Place
Jennifer Hu – M2
University of Rochester School of Medicine
Rochester, N.Y.
Poem:  “Burying Ground”

Honorable Mention
Reem Azem – M3
Northeast Ohio Medical University
Rootstown, Ohio
Poem:  “Sweeter than a Watermelon”

Angela DelPrete – M3
University of Central Florida College of Medicine
Orlando, FL
Poem:  “July 6th, a Sunday”

Molly Fels – M2
Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
New Brunswick, NJ
Poem:  “It’s always so heavy to lift them”

Peter Laub – M3
University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences
Buffalo, NY
Poem:  “GPS”

Walter Schiffer – M2
University of Texas Health and Science Center at Houston
Houston, TX
Poem:  “Pied de Grue (Foot of a crane)”

Nancy Yan – M1
University of Minnesota
Twin Cities, MN
Poem:  “Inheritance”