Safi Alsebai, a fourth-year student at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), won first place in the prestigious William Carlos Williams Poetry Competition, earning top honors among more than 250 submissions from medical students in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada
Named for the 20th century American poet and physician, the contest honors writing that reflects the humanistic, patient-centered values that defined Williams’ work.
Alsebai’s winning poem,“The Passion According to a Citizen of Geneva,” draws inspiration from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s political treatise, “A Discourse Upon the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind.” In the poem, the narrator reflects on how doctors speak to patients, exploring how people come to imagine the suffering of others.
A Little Rock native, Alsebai studied politics, ethics, and aesthetics at Bard College at Simon’s Rock before pursuing medicine. His writing began with essays, later expanding to short stories and then poetry in medical school.
For Alsebai, writing is essential to becoming a thoughtful physician.
“Even if it’s not creative writing, I take as much pleasure writing a patient note as I do writing a poem,” he said. “Particularly in medicine, writing is a way to process and make sense of what’s happening around me, as well as to complicate and recontextualize it against other narratives and processes.”
Alsebai is part of the Medical Humanities Honors Track in the UAMS College of Medicine, one of six honors tracks offered by the college. In medical humanities, students study literature, ethics, history, and the creative arts alongside their medical training. Medical humanities help students better understand the lived experience of illness, strengthen communication skills, and develop a more holistic, patient-centered approach to care.
Alsebai has published two poems and one short story, with an additional 10 poems accepted by literary journals. He is enrolled in the Medical Humanities Honors track at UAMS, where he studies history and literary criticism alongside his clinical training.
He will continue his training in internal medicine at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia after graduation in May.
In March, Alsebai read his award-winning poem at the Health Humanities Consortium Annual Conference, hosted by the Medical Humanities program at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio.
For him, poetry fits naturally into the rhythm of medical training.
“I’ll write lines in between classes or patient visits, then arrange them later,” he said. “Poetry works with the day I have and the physician I want to become.”
Angela Scott, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of Pediatrics and Medical Humanities at UAMS, said Alsebai’s work exemplifies the value of integrating humanities into medical education.
“Safi came to us with a strong background in the humanities and critical scholarship, so it was natural for him to view medical education and practice through that lens,” she said. “It’s been a privilege to work within him in the Humanities Honors Track where his work on clinical “wish statements” (“I wish things were different”) has become a rare example of a project with both immediate, practical application for teaching, as well as theoretical depth for examining the role and limitations of the physician. Within the small group discussions in the honors track, we all learn from each other, and Safi has been an outstanding teacher.”
Scott added that interest in the program continues to grow, reflecting a broader interest among students who want to explore the human experience of illness.
“I’ve heard our students talk about the track as a ‘home away from medicine,’ but I think it’s best described as a home within medicine, a protected space to explore big picture issues in healthcare and their own professional development with a trusted cohort of likeminded students and mentors. It’s been more meaningful to all of us than we anticipated, and the students have exceeded our expectations in scholarship and creativity. We hope to find ways to offer this kind of experience to more of our students and would love to hear from other interested faculty.”