A fourth year student from the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS Medicine) has won the prestigious Prize in Poetry awarded by Annals of Internal Medicine, one of the most widely cited medical journals in the world. The prize is awarded to the best poem published in Annals each year.
Ms Faye Ng Yu Ci is the only undergraduate to receive the Prize since its inception in 2003. Her entry, titled “A Pink Crease”, was selected from among 23 poems published in the journal this year.
“A Pink Crease” was inspired by a patient Ms Ng met during her third year of medical training, during a General Surgery posting to a hospital. The patient was an elderly gentleman in his seventies who had peritoneal metastasis that had spread from end-stage colorectal cancer. The poem details her interactions with the patient, from his taciturn indifference and attempts to evade her gentle probing, to when he finally speaks and shows her his surgical scars.
Interspersed with fragments of Ms Ng’s conversation with the elderly man, “A Pink Crease” presents a tender and authentic image of the relationship between physician and patient. The elderly gentleman is addressed as “uncle” by the speaker, who reaches out into his past with questions of childhood and circuitry. “Uncle” is at once foreign yet familiar—a Singaporean colloquialism for any older gentleman but also one that carries personal affection. The patient, at first a stranger, is initially reticent and stoic. However, when he reveals his surgical scars, they paradoxically serve as markings of closed incisions, leading him to open himself up to the speaker.
The encounter reveals the elderly patient’s scars run deeper than the corporeal – the disease that plagues him carries with it a world-weariness and loneliness that burdens many patients of his age. Through it all, the physician speaker sits patiently by his bedside, lending a sympathetic ear. As the poem troops to its melancholic end, the speaker reflects poignantly on the way “we grow our tragedies like trees”, with our medical afflictions a natural part of nature.
“Ms Ng’s poem was deemed by the judges to be the overwhelming favourite among all of the poems published in Annals in 2021. Considering the impressive volume of poetry submissions we receive each year, just being selected to be published is an honour. To stand out among the elite that make publication is a triumph,” said Michael LaCombe, MD, associate editor of Annals of Internal Medicine and editor of the poetry section of the journal.
The winning poem can be found on the journal’s website: Annals.org/APinkCrease.
Read more in the press release here.
News Coverage
- “NUS medical student wins top poetry prize by international academic journal”, The Straits Times, 19 March 2022
- “Encounter with elderly end-stage cancer patient inspires NUS medicine student to pen award-winning poem”, The Straits Times, 21 March 2022