What Does it Mean to be Human?

By Christina Hernandez Sherwood

When Jude Tochukwu Okonkwo completed his major clinical year at VP&S—after the sad hours with ovarian cancer patients, the heart-racing moments before emergency surgeries, the long nights in the psych ward—he processed the experience in the best way he knew how: by writing poetry.

One resulting poem—“Escape!”—which Mr. Okonkwo wrote to honor “all those who yearn for an escape from illness, inequality, and/or fear,” won first place in the 2024 William Carlos Williams Poetry Competition, a national contest for medical student poets established in 1982 at Northeast Ohio Medical University. In 27 lines packed with sometimes brutal imagery and passing references to medicine, Mr. Okonkwo explores themes of race and identity.

“My poem was a tribute to that universal experience of everyone trying to do better,” Mr. Okonkwo says. “Do better for themselves, do better for their families, and do better for their communities.”

A poet since writing his first couplets for an eighth-grade assignment, Mr. Okonkwo didn’t take a formal poetry class until his second semester at VP&S, when he enrolled in a seminar taught by Owen Lewis, MD, clinical professor of psychiatry in the Department of Medical Humanities & Ethics, author of three poetry collections, and winner of the International Hippocrates Prize in Poetry and Medicine. During the six-week intensive, part of the narrative medicine program, students learned the fundamentals of poetry and produced several pieces to share with the class.

Dr. Lewis, who peppers his speech with literary allusions, says the poetry course and others in the narrative medicine program use storytelling to help future doctors reflect on patients’ conditions, not just treat them. “Once upon a time, the main tool doctors used to diagnose their patients was eliciting their story,” he says. “They’d get an idea not only of the patient’s current circumstance, but his or her entire life. They might know the extended family, the cast of characters. The fabric of a patient’s life would come to be well known.”

When Dr. Lewis was a medical student, it wasn’t obvious to him how literature and medicine could inform each other. While he knew of historical physician-writers, such as Anton Chekhov and William Carlos Williams, Dr. Lewis says he lacked contemporary role models. That’s why he now offers ongoing mentorship to medical students, like Mr. Okonkwo, who want to continue pursuing poetry. “The poet physicians I know are better physicians because of their poetry and better poets because they’re physicians,” says Dr. Lewis.

After Mr. Okonkwo received an honorable mention for his poem, “Fragments of a Shattered Buffalo Eclipse,” in the 2023 Williams competition, Dr. Lewis encouraged him to enter again this year with a new work. “Recognition is very important to a young poet,” Dr. Lewis says. “It’s important to know you’re on the right track and that your work is appreciated.”

This time, Mr. Okonkwo’s submission was a standout, says Cait Young, a graduate fellow at the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University and one of the competition judges: “The depth to which Okonkwo employs power and vulnerability culminates in this rich, raw poem where themes of frustration, isolation, and identity become palpable. By giving voice to the internal struggle and societal pressures Black men face, Okonkwo compels us to confront these issues and work toward creating a world where escape isn’t the only solution, but where healing and thriving are real possibilities.”

Mr. Okonkwo grew up in Louisiana, the oldest of his Nigerian immigrant parents’ five children. After Hurricane Katrina, the family moved north, settling in Dix Hills, New York, when Mr. Okonkwo was 7. With a nephrologist father and obstetrician-gynecologist mother, Mr. Okonkwo was exposed to medicine from an early age and accompanied his parents on medical missions. During a holiday in Nigeria, on the way to Christmas Mass, Mr. Okonkwo recalled seeing a man bent at the spine from kyphosis and asking his mother why he never noticed the condition back on Long Island. “We started having conversations about the lack of accessibility to health care that exists in certain settings,” says Mr. Okonkwo.

Following in his parents’ footsteps, Mr. Okonkwo became an active volunteer, offering aquatics instruction to children with disabilities, helping out at a homeless shelter, and performing at nursing homes with a musical group. “It became very obvious to me that my desire to help people in all these different settings would be empowered by a medical career,” he says.

Drawing inspiration from physician-poets, such as Dr. Lewis and Rafael Campo, MD, of Harvard Medical School, Mr. Okonkwo continues to write poetry as he considers a specialty in orthopedic surgery. His poems have been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s Poetry and Medicine section and the VP&S literary journal Reflexions, among other outlets. He is working on a poetry collection, tentatively titled “Further Erosion.”

While continuing with medical school, studying for licensing exams, or playing basketball in the neighborhood, Mr. Okonkwo says his poetry writing process relies heavily on his iPhone’s Notes app. “I’ll jot down whatever fragment comes to mind or whatever interesting snippet springs out of nowhere,” he says. Later, when inspiration strikes, he compiles these fragments into a single document, beginning the puzzle-like exercise of fitting the pieces together to form a narrative. “It’s not the most regimented process, but it’s worked well for me, at least for these past few years.”

Medical school has paired well with his poetry, he says, because he cultivates skills that are useful in both careers. “Being a great physician is more than an understanding of the science or the technical aspects of doing surgery or administering medication. There’s an importance placed on your ability to accompany patients through their journey with illness. Attentiveness, communication, and bearing witness are traits that are important for a poet as well.”

Physicians and poets, Mr. Okonkwo says, are seeking the answer to the same question: What does it mean to be human? “As a physician, you’re trying to understand what it means to be human through biochemistry, pharmacology, anatomy. As a poet, you’re trying to understand it through philosophy, history, aesthetics. You’re wrestling with the same question, but different avenues.”