Stephen C. Pollock (“Steve”) is a poet, essayist, eye surgeon, neuro-ophthalmologist, business executive, and inventor. His debut poetry collection, Exits, was awarded 1st Place for Poetry, 1st Place for Interior Design, and 1st Place for Book that Feels Like a Work of Art in the 2025 Firebird Book Awards. The book has also received eight other honors, including 1st Place for Poetry in the 2024 North Street Book Prize competition. The twenty poems in Exits were written and edited over a period of twenty years. Designing and formatting the book required an additional two years.
Steve began scribbling poems on shirt cardboard at age nine. All of those early poems rhymed. (Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss was a huge influence!). Steve’s interest in writing intensified at Amherst College, where he took several courses in modern and contemporary poetry, penned a long poem over a period of five weeks, and received the Rolfe Humphries Poetry Prize.
Trained as a physician, eye surgeon, and neuro-ophthalmologist, Steve was recruited to Duke University as Chief of Neuro-Ophthalmology in 1987. He ultimately achieved a rank of Associate Professor with tenure. His clinical practice consisted of evaluating and caring for patients with complex ocular manifestations of neurologic diseases. He also trained ophthalmology residents and fellows, and he served as Residency Program Director for a number of years. He has published 30 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters in the medical literature.
After seventeen years in academic medicine, Steve left Duke to become chief executive of CEC, a nationwide company that provides vision benefits to individuals and their family members. Following the sale of CEC in 2019, he retired from the company.
Though not an engineer, Steve has always had a penchant for designing novel devices. As a medical student, he collaborated with another student in the development of a unique variable-focus lens. Steve drafted the patent and the associated illustrations. In 1984, the Patent Office granted U.S. Patent 4,477,158, Lens System for Variable Refraction. Steve subsequently designed an instrument used to biopsy inaccessible tumors in the brain and behind the eye.
For the last twenty-six years, Steve has struggled with the spinal cord variant of multiple sclerosis (MS). The disease has resulted in partial paralysis of both legs, and it has made it necessary to use a rolling walker in order to ambulate.
The gratification Steve derives from writing springs from a variety of sources: fascination with language; the whimsy of wordplay; the thrill associated with creating something utterly new; and awe at the infinite ways in which words, well chosen, can capture and intensify human experience.
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