At the Student Poetry Reading

Any Good Poem

Richard Berlin, MD, shares the poem "At the Student Poetry Reading" by Kim Stafford. Stafford is an Emeritus Professor at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon. He writes, teaches, and travels to raise the human spirit through poetry. In 1986, Stafford founded the Northwest Writing Institute, and he has published a dozen books of poetry and prose. He has taught writing in dozens of schools and community centers, including events in Scotland, Italy, Mexico, and Bhutan. In 2018 he was named Oregon’s 9th Poet Laureate.

Dr Berlin has been writing a poem about his experience of being a doctor every month for the past 26 years in Psychiatric Times in a column called “Poetry of the Times.” He is instructor in psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts. His latest book is Tender Fences.