Cancer – Jay Whittaker

Cancer, How I came to write ..., Practice / Craft, Publications, Sweet Anaesthetist

Egg Case

Dried-out whelk case in close-up — Whelk egg case, beach-combed some years ago

My long prose poem sequence Egg Case was originally published in Sweet Anaesthetist. I’m thrilled that a recording of me reading it is now available on the excellent Iambapoet (Wave Ten)

I started writing Egg Case when I found a dried-out common whelk egg case on Sandeels Beach on Iona – not that I knew what this desiccated husk was, but I was fascinated and pocketed it. This was summer 2018 when I faced further surgery to remove my ovaries and Fallopian tubes, a procedure initially planned as a risk-reducing measure (given my family history of cancer), but more urgent when pre-surgery checks revealed an ovarian cyst that needed to come out.

I found the egg case sparked a rich variety of connections. I birthed a knotty lump of secrets and miscommunications, family secrets, the guilt of mothers and daughters onto the pages of my notebook. Egg Case is a very personal piece, albeit (as always) lightly fictionalised. It draws on the story of how my mother took diethystilb(o)estrol (DES) in good faith to prevent miscarriage, which left us both with a whole series of unforseen complications and consequences.

Hopefully you’ll find some belly laughs, too.

In Sweet Anaesthetist, Egg Case sits at the end of the collection, glossing and throwing additional light onto some of the earlier poems. But it was always intended to stand alone. It’s a bit long for most readings, so I’m delighted to share it in Iambapoet. I’m hugely grateful to Iambapoet’s editor and curator, Mark Anthony Owen, for his work in bringing this (relatively long) piece to your ears.

Cancer, How I came to write ..., Practice / Craft, Publications

We were all agreed …

When I saw the call for submissions for Hair Raising, a fund-raising anthology of poems in support of Macmillan on the theme of hair, I knew the poem I wanted to write, on the intersection of dementia and cancerland.

Like some of the poems in Wristwatch, We were all agreed is a poem about visiting my late aunt Lillian in her nursing home, set during the time I had lost my hair to chemo. Lillian and I were close, and she spent her final years in an Edinburgh nursing home near me. During my cancer treatment she was my nearest family member, and this poem is a tribute to the support she unwittingly gave me. I chose not to tell her about my cancer, which led to some interesting moments. I have only recently felt able I could write about this in the way I wanted – connecting with the humour latent in the situation, which was absolutely in keeping with Lillian’s personality (and my own!).

Selfie of Jay and her aunt Lillian, laughing heartily, in 2015. Hair poet’s own.

Instead of a launch event, Nine Pens has created a launch page where contributors to Hair Raising to video ourselves reading our poems. A video of me reading We were all agreed will appear there soon – alongside several excellent contributions from other poets. Please do buy this fine anthology, and support this great cause.

Cancer

Annual scanxiety

Pink elderflower blossom, East Lothian July 2021

My annual mammogram now falls in July. Eight years out from diagnosis of breast cancer and the ensuing year of treatment, I’m still in annual follow up, still taking tamoxifen. I’m keeping well, and side effects are manageable. Mostly these days I look forward and not back, but there’s nothing like the appointment letter and psyching myself up for the waiting game that follows. I tell myself these days, I’m more worried about secondaries, bone liver or brain mets, and those won’t show in the mammogram. Even so, stepping back into the hospital for a scan that might just reveal a recurrence or a new primary cancer always requires a deep intake of breath.

Maybe it’s not surprising that I’ve written poems about this. Here’s one from Wristwatch, written when these sensations were new.

Annual check-up

The Pentlands have been wheeled closer.
Inigo Jones couldn’t have devised a better fancy:
the sun picks out Caerketton’s every crevice,
vivid grass ices Allermuir’s softer slopes.

These hills are always there, in the gap
between church and trees, sometimes hazed
by cloud, haar, or my own distracted gaze.

Here’s a later poem from Sweet Anaesthetist.

Back in the waiting room

Another fork in the road.
One route loops back to needles,
bad news, pain. The other stretches
to foothills; its end hidden
under low-lying mist.

Truth is, we’re already set on a path.
Our bodies have already chosen to blossom,
wither in their own season.
Eyes, don’t register what’s ahead,
feet, keep on walking.

As they say on the telly, if you’ve been affected by any of the issues in these poems, I recommend Breast Cancer Now as a source of information and support.

Bereavement, Cancer, Events, LGBTQ+, Practice / Craft, Publications, Round-up

An Illustrated Guide to the Ruins

Maybe you’ve read my poems, and you share some of my approach to the mundanities of life and / or the horrible shit that can happen. Maybe, like me, you read or write poetry as a way to navigate, reimagine and attempt to make sense of the world.

An Illustrated Guide to the Ruins is a new offering for my readers.

It’s also the title of a key poem in Wristwatch, one which ends the Risky breasts sequence about my cancer treatment, leading into the new-life-and-love part of the story. It’s about rebuilding your life after disaster, and although it’s deliberately wry and self-deprecating, it’s ultimately positive.

An illustrated guide to the ruins

This bombed-out husk (established 1968),
roof sheared by the initial blast,
internal fittings razed by subsequent fire,
appears as derelict as a structure twice its age.
The shell remains serviceable.

Further excavations reveal pervasive rot
spreading through timbers.
An extensive course of damp proofing
reinstates the original look and feel,
but note: joists permanently weakened.

And of the future? The occupier,
once tempted to abandon to lichen,
ivy, has realised the space
(no longer fit for its former purpose)
has fabulous potential for parties.

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Cancer, Events

Reading at Maggie’s Edinburgh

I’m joining my fellow Other Writer Angus Ogilvy in a reading at Edinburgh’s Maggie’s Centre on Thursday 16 November, 1800-1930. I’m planning to read the whole Risky Breasts sequence – not something I usually do, but it seems appropriate in the safe, welcoming place where I went on courses, retreated to wait for appointments and results, and where I’ve met so many other people affected by cancer. Do join us!

maggies

Cancer, Wristwatch

Risky breasts

It has not escaped my notice that my debut collection Wristwatch, which contains a sequence of 16 poems about my breast cancer treatment, launches in #BreastCancerAwareness month (October).

Risky breasts is the title poem of the sequence. I wrote it because I was told that my family history and a few personal factors mean I have what’s known in the medical profession as “risky breasts.” The phrase tickled me, and a poem followed.

There is no pink in this post. It’s really not my colour. But please, everyone, including men, keep an eye on all your dangly, wobbly bits. Be breast aware.

Cancer, Wristwatch

Baring all – writing poems about breast cancer

There are three sequences of poems in Wristwatch, and the central sequence, Risky breasts, contains sixteen poems about my treatment for breast cancer in 2013-14. As I’ve written elsewhere, my cancer diagnosis followed the death of my late partner Morag with brutal speed. I was reeling.

Some of these poems were written at the time. I’m a compulsive journal-keeper, so I was writing daily for my own sanity and this spilled into my creative writing. I realised I wanted to write honest, unsentimental poems about what was happening to me and how I was changed by it. I was too feeble to do much else. So I wrote about waiting for pathology results, about guidewire insertion, my first chemo, hair loss, anaphylactic shock, hormone treatment – and all the long hours in-between. It proved to be strangely uplifting. That was the unexpected thing about incapacitating illness. I came to appreciate the simplest things. The title poem of the collection, Wristwatch, is about exactly that.

I honed these poems in the months of recovery that followed. I wrote other poems long after treatment ended, drawing on my diaries and also my changing perspective as time passed.

I know some people must think “But don’t you want to just put all that behind you? Why keep raking it up?” Ah, I’m one of those people who works things out by writing. And I wanted to transmute this awful, rich experience into something else. To quote Audre Lorde, whose Cancer Journals were an inspiration to me during treatment, “I had known the pain and survived it. It only remained for me to give it voice, to share it for use, that the pain not be wasted.”

As I prepared the sequence for publication, I realised these poems are simultaneously mine, of me, and a sign I have achieved some detachment from that terrible, revelatory time. Although I wish these things had never happened, I would never want to unknow what I learned. I want to retain this knowledge, the insights I gained. After all, one day I may well find myself in treatment again.

Cancer, Wristwatch

Permission and Audre Lorde

alcovers I’ve spent the last couple of months intermittently chasing permission to quote the late, great Audre Lorde as an epigram to one of the poems in Wristwatch.

My poem Possibility (you’ll have to wait for the collection to read it) is a direct response to the epilogue of A Burst of Light (1988, now collected in I am your sister). Lorde, facing death, urges engagement with every hour of life. I want to quote and acknowledge Lorde partly to give my poem context, but also because I hope it will send more readers to her original writing. I find her as necessary in 2017 as she ever was. Read her poem Who said it was simple.

At the start of my chemo (2013) I remembered Lorde had written extensively about her own cancer treatment, and there, waiting for me on my bookcase were The Cancer Journals and A Burst of Light. Struggling to make sense of my own illness and mortality, I found her words were incisive, challenging, fierce, particularly about the intersection of breast cancer, race, and sexuality. Lorde doesn’t mince her words. She also faces her disease and prognosis with courage and dignity. I’m proud to call her a role model. How old fashioned that sounds!

So began my quest to identify the literary estate of Audre Lorde.

I initially emailed Harper Collins, the publishers of my (now out of print) UK edition containing Burst of Light, using the format recommended by Jane Friedman. I was referred on to a literary agency, which referred me back to Harper Collins. The trail went cold. I was issued with a letter from Harper Collins saying I could use the quotation at my own risk.

I tried another tack. As lapsed librarian, I suspected that the archives holding Lorde’s papers might be able to help. After some googling, I emailed the archivist at Spelman College. By return she put me in touch with Lorde’s literary executor and within 24 hours I had the permission I need. Another pre-publication job done.

And today I am once again engrossed in my Audre Lorde books. They are as powerful as ever.

UPDATE March 2020. For permissions requests relating to Audre Lorde, please contact the Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency. The contact information is on their Information page.