Eat

Any Good Poem

Richard Berlin, MD, shares the poem "Eat" by Joy Harjo, an internationally renowned poet, performer, and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She served three terms from 2019-2022 as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States, the most terms of any US poet laureate in history. Harjo is the author of 9 books of poetry, several plays, children's books, and 2 memoirs. She is a chancellor of the ACADEMY of American Poets, Board of Directors Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and she is the first Artist-in-Residence for Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Bob Dylan Center.

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.