Plenary Sessions

Dr Alan Bleakley is Emeritus Professor of Medical Education and Medical Humanities at Plymouth University Peninsula Medical School UK, and past President of the Association for Medical Humanities. He has a background in zoology and psychology and worked for many years as a psychodynamic psychotherapist. He was head of the clinical education research group at Peninsula Medical School (Universities of Exeter and Plymouth) where he also set up an innovative medical humanities curriculum development and research unit. He has an international reputation as a scholar in the fields of medical education and medical humanities and has published 20 academic books and many articles and book chapters. He is also a widely published poet with seven collections. He lives near Land’s End with his wife Sue who is a visual artist.Alan is passionate about the sea. He began surfing in 1964 age 15 and at 75 still gets in the water but with much less agility!

Alan’s most recent books are: The Bio-illogical (poetry) (2024, Artel Press); Handbook of Medicine and Poetry (edited with Dr Shane Neilson) (2024, Routledge); Medical Humanities: Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics (2024, Routledge); Psychotherapy, the Alchemical Imagination and Metaphors of Substance (2024, De Gruyter); Poetry in the Clinic: Towards a Lyrical Medicine (with Dr Shane Neilson) (2021, Routledge).

Peter Wallis is a Hawthornden Fellow, three times winner of the Thetford Open Poetry Competition, winner of the Living with Dementia Poetry Competition, and of the Barnet Poetry Competition. His poems have been shortlisted in the National Poetry Competition, and shortlisted three times for the Bridport Prize. He won publication of a pamphlet, Articles of Twinship, in the Bare Fiction Debut Poetry Collection Competition 2015. A couple of unusual prizes have included the Richard Boswell Bowl, awarded by the National Poetry Foundation, and the opportunity to read his work on Radio 4’s Poetry Please (as a winner in the BBC’s Gardeners’ World poetry competition).

His poems appear regularly in print and online journals including Magma, Poetry News, Poetry Salzburg Review and The New European. Until Covid called a halt, he ran a monthly poetry workshop for people living with dementia in a local care home. He is now Allotment Poet in Residence for his Town Council and is Submissions Editor for the U.K. charity Poems in the Waiting Room. Half Other, described by Michael Hulse as “a triumph of the human spirit”, is his first full collection.