In mid-2021 The Sciku Project teamed up with the Literature and Science Hub at the University of Liverpool to run the ‘Research in Verse Poetry Competition’, open to staff and postgraduate research students across the university to submit poems about their research subject. The competition saw poems addressing all sorts of topics, ranging from gravity to slavery to life in the lab.
Dr Alex Stockdale’s poem ‘Public Health’ was praised by the judges as a notable entry:
Public Health
In a long corridor wailing
Bite
The virus knuckles and grasps
Enters cells
At birth was I living with him
His genome nestling in mine
Now fluid fills the belly
Tumour fills my liver
Hope left this station
Staring out the window
At a blue calm sky on a roaring hot day in Malawi
Too late they said
Too hard
Nothing more to say
I don’t have much time left to live but I want you to know
It could have been prevented
Background
This poem is about my research into liver disease in Blantyre, Malawi. We found that over 70% of liver cancer is caused by hepatitis B. Infection can be prevented by vaccination starting at birth and by antiviral treatment for pregnant women. Currently, vaccination starts at 6 weeks of age and my research is exploring whether this is sufficient to prevent transmission. This poem draws attention to the many people who present with late stage liver cancer in Malawi, for whom median prognosis is only 6 weeks at diagnosis, and for whom hepatitis B infection remains a preventable disease.
Dr Alexander Stockdale is a clinical researcher at the University of Liverpool with a focus on viral hepatitis and HIV in sub-Saharan Africa.