Think of a person from your past, someone you wish you'd gotten to know better and have always remembered. Think about why you wish you'd gotten to know this person better—did he or she do something that intrigued you, did he or she have a particular way about them, did you share an important moment together? Write a poem to this person, exploring what it was about him or her that has remained with you, even though the person hasn't. 

P&W-supported spoken-word artist Mike Sonksen, author of I am Alive in Los Angeles, blogs about poetry and activism.

Whether MFA candidates, avant-garde scribes, spoken-word artists, or traditional poets, there are more bards alive now than ever before. But, what exactly does it mean to be a poet? I think of a quote from Los Angeles poet Kamau Daaood. Daaood told Erin Aubry Kaplan in the L.A. Weekly, "When people run to open mics these days, it's mostly about ego–getting fifteen minutes... I [see] it as a jam session, swapping ideas, getting inspiration from other people."

In 2005, Daaood's The Language of Saxophones was published by City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. Daaood never pursued being published because he was too busy working in the community. Daaood has performed for more than four decades at festivals, galleries, jazz clubs, churches, schools, prisons, or wherever duty calls.

Another poet with the same commitment is Lewis MacAdams. MacAdams studied with Robert Creeley at the University of Buffalo in the 60s and hung with New York School poets. MacAdams became an environmental activist/poet in Bolinas, California, during the 70s and was a fixture at the San Francisco State University's Poetry Center. In 1980 MacAdams landed in L.A. There he discovered the Los Angeles River, and was outraged by the concrete channel housing the watershed. He decided to begin a forty-year performance piece dedicated to returning the river to its natural state.

One night in 1986 he performed a suite of poems dedicated to the Los Angeles River while being dressed up as a totem of flora and fauna specific to the river. This was the birth of the Friends of the Los Angeles River (FoLAR). Twenty-five years after FoLAR's founding, the River has had several stretches restored back to its natural state. MacAdams started the river's resurrection with poetry. His new book Dear Oxygen, published by the University of New Orleans Press collects forty-five years of his life's work. MacAdams like Daaood has spent a lifetime using poetry to improve his community. Their work reminds me of the benchmark for which poets should aim.

Photo: Mike Sonksen. Credit: Chris Felver.

Major support for Readings/Workshops events in California is provided by The James Irvine Foundation. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

Just ask William Carlos Williams (or Jenna Lê), medicine and poetry have long fed one another, but perhaps it takes a little competition to draw the poet out of the physician.

Yesterday the New York Times Well blog reported on the noteworthy response to a poetry contest held last spring for students of the Yale University School of Medicine and the University College London (UCL) Medical School.

The response by would-be physicians in the two sponsor programs exceeded the expectations of the judges, a panel of doctors of medicine and the humanities who anticipated receiving a handful of entries—more than one hundred sixty entries came in. “It was rare in my generation for doctors to write poems," contest organizer John Martin, who teaches cardiovascular medicine at UCL, told the Times, "but I think there’s a new interest in poetry and how it can arise from what we do."

There's no doubt the fifteen-hundred-dollar first prize, funded by a donation from an anonymous patient, provided an added dose of inspiration. Impressed by the caliber of submissions, the judges—with the help of an additional prize contribution from one of their own—chose to award the prize to two poet-physicians, UCL students Gabrielle Gascoigne for "Mastectomy" and Daphne Tan for "Apices." Noah Capurso of Yale received a three-hundred-dollar runner-up prize for "Aphasia."

The Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, based in London, also runs a poetry contest for physicians and medical students in the United Kingdom, but with a second "open international" competition for poems on a medical theme written by anyone from anywhere in the world. The Hippocrates Prize, first given in 2010, awards five thousand pounds (approximately $7,800) to a winner in each category, as well as publication in an annual anthology.

Entries are now open for the 2012 Hippocrates Prize, and the deadline for submissions is January 31, 2012. More information is avaialable on the prize website.

And each spring, Bellevue Literary Review, based at New York University's Langone Medical Center, holds its annual poetry (and fiction, and creative nonfiction) contest for works on health and healing. Stay tuned for more on the BLR Literary Prizes in 2012. In the meantime, be well and write strong!

Indian American oncologist and author Siddhartha Mukherjee is honored for his "anthropomorphism of a disease" in The Emperor of All Maladies (Fourth Estate), which has won the Guardian First Book Award. According judge Lisa Allardice, Mukherjee, who began the part-memoir, part-biography in an effort to contextualize cancer for one of his patients, "has managed to balance such a vast amount of information with lively narratives, combining complicated science with moving human stories. Far from being intimidating, it's a compelling, accessible book."

The only nonfiction title on the shortlist for the award, The Emperor of All Maladies, which also took the Pulitzer Prize this year, beat out four novels for the ten-thousand-pound prize (roughly $15,700). Also competing for Guardian First Book Award were American Amy Waldman's post-9/11 novel, The Submission (William Heinemann); Down the Rabbit Hole (And Other Stories Publishing) by Juan Pablo Villalobos of Mexico and translated by Rosalind Harvey; The Collaborator (Viking) by Mirza Waheed of Kashmir; and Pigeon English by British novelist Stephen Kelman (Bloomsbury), whose debut was also shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize.

"You never write books to win awards—they are immensely gratifying but unexpected," Mukherjee said. "In recognizing The Emperor of All Maladies, the judges have also recognized the extraordinary courage and resilience of the men and women who struggle with illness, and the men and women who struggle to treat illnesses."

In the video below, the author discusses the origins of the book, and how it evolved into a biography of a disease.

Browse the greeting card section of a local store, looking for an occasion card or one with an image that attracts you. Based on the image or the occasion of the card, write a letter from one imagined character to another. Send the card to its intended recipient, c/o your address. When you receive it in the mail, use it as the entry point to a story.