About Laura Gilpin

Laura Crafton Gilpin (1950-2007) was an American poet and nurse. She won the Walt Whitman Award in 1976 with her collection of poems The Hocus-Pocus of the Universe, where "The Two-headed Calf" is from. Her second collection of poems, The Weight of a Soul, was published in 2008 after her death. After becoming a registered nurse in the 1980s, she founded with other colleagues Planetree, a non-profit organization dedicated to developing and implementing a care in hospitals that is centered around patients.