William Carlos Williams Poetry Competition
Humanities in Medicine
The 41st annual William Carlos Williams poetry competition drew submissions from nearly 300 students of allopathic and osteopathic medicine in the U.S. and Canada.
Three winners, selected by judges from the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University, were recognized during an awards ceremony held in March 2023 at the Health Humanities Consortium Conference, co-sponsored by Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine.
In addition to a monetary award, the top three prize-winning poems will be considered for publication in the Journal of Medical Humanities.
First place was awarded to Brian Zhao, a third-year medical student at Brown University and previous William Carlos Williams Honorable Mention (2020 and 2021). His poem, “Resection,” is a stunning meditation on the mysteries and paradox and, ultimately, hope revealed through medical practice.
Bessie Liu, a second-year medical student at Johns Hopkins University, was awarded second place for her poem “After The Surgery,” a reflection on the strangeness of being back out in the world after receiving an unexpected diagnosis.
Third place was awarded to Sarah Phillips, a third-year student at Eastern Virginia Medical School, for the poem “Grief Grows Here,” a tribute to those who are hurting and healing from gun violence.
Submissions for the 2024 competition will be accepted through December 31, 2023.
First place
I had spoken to her a few hours ago, knew
what street she lived on, the names of her
three grandchildren. Now she was a blue-edged
window of scalp, flattened into an anonymous,
convenient dimension. When the skull is broached,
the bone shard falling away to let through its first
photon, there comes a sense of increase, of static
along ion channels, of the ineffable crossing thresholds.
Our fingers spider over dura mater, collating the
topography of this mother’s life. And then this too
is broken apart, a path opening before us, cortex
unfolding soft and wetly. Everything that brushes by
is a wonder, each pale patch of vein and tissue a well
of its own, a world circulating back upon itself—
every inimitable thought and way of knowing accounted for.
Just below, the tumor is unsuspecting, that distorted embodiment
of a life’s germinal hunger. Deeper than any memory,
that hunger. I remember now the quest we are here for:
to kill and to cure. The Bovie hisses, electric extinguishing
electric. A sad, necessary combustion, each wisp the ghost
of a neuron and all its implications. Through this grey curtain, I peer,
trying and failing to perform that final translation, something
breaking down in the sequence of nucleus to myelin, memory
to peptide, depolarization to diction, solid becoming smoke
so quickly. All I can do is fill the air with the insubstantial.
Like hope—that she returns to Ash Avenue, gets fed a
gummy worm by her littlest one, regains a full head of hair.
When she awakens, I pray nobody will know what she’s lost.
Brian Zhao is a third-year medical student at Brown University. He also studied applied math and biology as an undergraduate at Brown. During his senior year, Brian decided to take a poetry class and has been writing ever since. In his free time, Brian enjoys taking pictures of fungi after a rainy day and rehabilitating forgotten orchids. He is from Queens, New York.
Second place
We sit outside under the asymptotic sky
as little red termites crawl onto the spokes of my wheelchair.
I don’t think about my tumor, oxidized and
bleeding in the hospital basement, as the pathologist gives it
a grade for how well it ate
a hole through my entrails, made me fold
into myself.
You ask me about going under
the knife, and I say it’s the fi rst time I’ve had
general anesthesia. I was out before I could imagine what it’s like
to die.
When one cell shifts in its grave, others
may end up following. The sun is too bright for things like this to happen
without me noticing. At the time of diagnosis
I became
aware of my own
erosion the way a dying
tree becomes aware of
baby termites. A body half-opened
and arching, terrifi ed
in the sudden
cold.
I’m afraid to tell you it somehow hurts
to lose something I’ve held inside
for so long.
After the surgery, I go home and sit
in the garden, watch my childhood pets peek through
the swollen dirt. They are turning into tulips
before my eyes.
Bessie Liu is a second-year medical student at Johns Hopkins University. She was born in Singapore and raised in Irvine, California. As an undergraduate she studied molecular and cellular biology as well as bioethics at Johns Hopkins and has been deeply grateful for the chance to stay in Baltimore for medical school. Outside of school, she spends time pursuing narrative medicine related projects and volunteering as a text line crisis counselor.
She hopes to eventually work in either primary care or psychiatry. Her poem is a reflection on the strangeness of being back out in the world after receiving an unexpected diagnosis and was inspired by conversations she remembers having with friends while recovering from surgery in the summer of 2019.
Third place
How sick
are we
to soak
in the blood
of school children
only sorry
seeping from our lips.
Say something
so silence
won’t singe
our ears
and char
the hurt.
We stop still
and stare
at our garden bed
shot by Evil
and choked by its stems.
Losing people
like petals
plucked
before promise
of a glorious blossom in spring.
How long will we stand
the wreckage
of our garden
ripped by root
before it has bloomed?
Sarah Phillips is a third-year medical student at Eastern Virginia Medical School. Attending the University of Virginia for her undergraduate studies, Sarah’s global public health and bioethics education showed her the beautiful blend of science and humanities found in narrative medicine. She believes listening to patients’ stories, being welcomed into lived experiences, and providing support on journeys toward well-being are the gifts of being a physician.
Sarah’s poem is a tribute to those who are hurting and healing from gun violence.
