Vincent J. Kopp
Vincent Joseph Kopp is a writer and poet who is also a medical doctor certified in pediatrics and anesthesiology, as well as an Episcopal priest.
His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in journals as varied as Crescent Review, DoubleTake, The Journal of Medical Humanities, Southern Cultures, Anesthesia and Analgesia, Christian Century, JAMA, and the North Carolina Literary Review, to name a few. In November 2023, The Curious Wife (Trefoil Press, 2023), was published as a limited edition of 100 copies for circulation among family and friends to mark 45 years of marriage to his wife Katherine Craft Kopp.
As a student at UNC-CH from 1969 through 1973 he helped start the undergraduate literary magazine that became Cellar Door, the first issue of which was published in Fall, 1973 after he graduated and which continues to operate to the present day.
Returning as a special student in 1975 to prepared for medical school, his first poems appeared in that journal in 1975 and 1976. In 1976 he shared the Jesse Rehder Prize for Poetry (judged by Fred Chapel) with Roxanne Henderson. In medical school and afterward he turned his attention away from poetry toward mastering medical sciences, but not for long. While faculty at UNC Chapel Hill he taught a course called “Medical Ethics and Literature” and was a Chapman Fellow at Institute for the Arts and Humanities. He also helped students start two other journals focused on how medicine and the humanities intersect, iris and Health Humanities Journal.
After retiring from medicine in 2016, he attended The University of the South (Sewanee) before being ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church in 2018. Subsequently he served in a variety of North Carolina parishes until retiring in 2023.
In retirement he devotes his time to gardening, publishing poems, and volunteer work with the aged. In 2024 his poem “Not a Night Without a Line,” was awarded 1st Prize in the James Applewhite Prize for Poetry, an honor accompanied by a Pushcart Prize nomination. He lives in Chapel Hill with Katherine.
Contact: Vincentjkopp@gmail.com
Participation at the 2016 West End Poetry Festival
- Healing and Poetry | Saturday, October 15 | 3:00 to 4:15 pm | Carrboro Century Center
- For a full schedule and descriptions of all sessions, see the festival schedule.