Keele University will host an evening to explore the benefits that poetry can provide for cancer patients later this month.

The event is aimed at students, tutors and health professionals but is also open to anyone in the wider community who has an interest in the benefits of poetry to patients with cancer.

The evening, which will take place on 25 July, will welcome Wendy French, a poet and professional tutor working with the Macmillan Cancer Centre. As well as reading her own poetry, influenced by her work with Macmillan, she will share her experience of the benefits of poetry to patients with cancer, and to their families and health professionals. 

Wendy will be supported by poets Dr Roger Bloor, Honorary Clinical Lecturer in the School of Medicine at Keele, as well as Karen Schofield and Iora Dawes, who are all award-winning medical poets. 

Dr Bloor said: “In getting together poems for this event I have been struck by the resilience and fortitude of the poets we have selected and the strength that can be drawn from reading their responses to their illness.

“I am pleased that Professor Michael Hulse from Warwick University, a noted academic and poet in his own right, will be introducing the evening. 

“His knowledge of medical-related poetry is outstanding and he is one of the organisers of the International Hippocrates Prize for Medical Poetry in which all four of the poets reading have had successful entries.”

Complimentary wine and refreshments will also be provided. 

Please book your place by contacting Penny Gilchrist at p.a.gilchrist@keele.ac.uk