Wristwatch – Jay Whittaker, Edinburgh-based poet

Cancer, How I came to write ..., Wristwatch

“Tamoxifen 20mg tablets” – a poem about a common hormone treatment for breast cancer.

It’s ten years since I was diagnosed with breast cancer in Edinburgh’s Western General Hospital (sitting in the hessian chair mentioned below). It’s a big anniversary – I’ve been up and down emotionally as a result – but I was buoyed this weekend by a reunion of the good friends I made in an online forum for those who started chemo in June 2013. Eleven of us met in Cambridge, and it was celebratory, sad, defiant – many of us are still living with the aftereffects of our treatment – but we are alive, and having lost some dear friends, we know that is the main thing.

I’ve been taking Tamoxifen for almost ten years, too. My side effects have been tolerable. When I wrote this poem, it was still early days; at time of first publication in Wristwatch the number of pills I’d taken was a mere 500. When I perform this poem at readings, I always update the number – and I’ve done the same here.

Tamoxifen 20mg tablets
	
(Take one daily for ten years.)

3,285 of you down the hatch so far — 
I pop you from green film,
oval crevice on one side
inscrutable as a cat’s iris.

I no longer read your potential, 
spelled out in minuscule print, 
and folded into every box. 
I know well what you do to me:  

skin thins, cracks; the hot seethe
rises through me exactly like terror 
of hospital ceilings, the doctor’s serious face, 
the box of tissues, the worn hessian chair.

Reviews, Wristwatch

Saltire Society Scottish Poetry Book of 2018

At the Saltire Literary Awards, 30 November 2018 (pic: E. Rowan)

It was a huge honour – and very exciting – when Wristwatch was shortlisted for the Saltire Society Scottish Poetry Book of the Year in October. Given the strength of the other poetry collections from Scotland and Scottish writers this year, I was thrilled and surprised to learn the outcome at the awards ceremony on 30 November. It was a face-clutching moment to hear Wristwatch named Scottish Poetry Book of the year.

The judging panel said: “The unexpected vicissitudes of human life are grafted into the natural world – animate and inanimate – creating a deeply personal and moving collection. The poems are alert and humane, even humorous when least expected. For a first collection this is very assured, mature and coherent piece of work.”

I’m very grateful to the Saltire Society, to the panel of judges, to Cinnamon Press for taking a chance on an unknown, and to everyone on the Scottish scene (and beyond) who has supported me along the way.

Practice / Craft, Wristwatch

Performing poems about grief and trauma

The good people of Poetry AF have pulled together a series of interviews with poets and spoken word performers about strategies for standing up on stage and sharing this material. There’s a broad spectrum – bereavement, holocaust survival, mental health, illness. I found something fascinating and something to learn in all the other responses.

Shamelessly I will link to mine, but please do read the whole set.

Events, Publications, Wristwatch

Putting it out there – reflections on launching Wristwatch

I’ve written a guest blog over at Cinnamon Press about the Wristwatch launch back in October …

“I had written a collection of poems wrung from personal experience, many in response to the death of my late partner and my own subsequent treatment for cancer. Even as I celebrated the news that Cinnamon Press would publish Wristwatch, back in January 2016, I had a classic post-cancer reaction — will I live long enough to see it in print? … Even though many of these poems were previously published, and I’ve read many of them at open mic or at readings, this was a very public statement of what happened to me and the sense I tried to make of it. A celebration of resilience (mine and others) and of life. With bonus nuns and a selkie.”

Bereavement, Practice / Craft, Wristwatch

Oh Hippopotamus

utility_piece

Utility Piece is a poem addressed to an ugly sideboard that was part of my life for years. I’m not talking about a mid-century modern sideboard, the sort you see in lifestyle mags or boutiques in Leith or Bruntsfield. This sideboard was utility furniture, and belonged to my late partner’s parents.

I wrote it when I realised (some years after Morag had died) that there was no need for this piece of furniture to stay in my life. I sat down with my notebook aiming to write a letter to the sideboard (yes, I love all such self-therapy) and ended up with a poem instead. The early drafts were pure invective, but later versions calmed down somewhat, and it’s become a meditation on my relationship to the stuff I inherited – and the shared history bound up in said stuff.

Utility piece

It’s time to rehome you,
Hippopotamus,
squat in the corner
scuffed veneer
the colour of the eighty a day
you absorbed for decades.

I never liked you.
I can say that now.
You came when I married
the youngest daughter.

No-one else had room for you
so we took you home,
fed you a terrible diet —
crammed you with board games
a tangle of connectors, adapters, chargers.

You belch booze-reek when I open your doors.

And now I’m widowed.
I wonder why I tend you,
oxpecker-busy.
You were part of her childhood, not mine,
yet you’ve outstayed flat-pack and two sofas.

Oh Hippopotamus, handles chipped,
bulbous gnarly legs, too heavy to lift –
do you remember
after her funeral, in our home for the first time,
her brother said, outraged
How did YOU get that?

And I, the unhappy inheritor,
retold our story.

I enjoy reading Utility Piece at open mic and readings, and I’m delighted people respond so positively – it’s fun to find myself at the bar having chats about other legendary, sometimes resented items of furniture.

Bereavement, Events, Wristwatch

To absent friends

I’m looking forward to the To absent friends festival on 7 November, when I join other poets and storytellers taking part in the Marie Curie event Telling stories to keep memories alive. I’ll be reading some of my poems written in response to the death of my late partner (there’s a whole sequence in Wristwatch) and more importantly, I’ll be chatting to people about writing to celebrate and commemorate their dead.

To absent friends sets out to be a Scottish version of the Mexican Day of the Dead – I love this idea! As the website says, “People who have died remain a part of our lives – their stories are our stories…” Which is exactly what my poem Utility piece is trying to say.

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.

Reviews, Wristwatch

Advance praise for Wristwatch

From Jane McKie –

Jay Whittaker’s debut sizzles with feeling: feelings explored, and feelings held in check. In poems that explore love, bereavement, the survival of breast cancer and many other aspects of life, she is brave, astute, compassionate, and — where needed — witty. Throughout this debut, she demonstrates a keen eye for the natural world, a fine ear, and great sensitivity to our strengths and foibles as human beings. The result is a delightfully ambitious and humane read.

From Roselle Angwin –

Courageous and engaging, Wristwatch maps Jay Whittaker’s journey through some of the biggest transitions we can make: death of a lover, her own experience with cancer and its drawn-out treatment, and loss of parents and other relatives being core to the themes. Somehow, Whittaker manages to make these poems beautiful, and not depressing.

And then there is breakthrough: new life, love, hope.

Throughout, the natural world carries the themes; in and for itself, and also as metaphor. This gives grounding to the subtle nuances of Whittaker’s writing. Some poems are fiery, edgy (‘Risky Breasts’, ‘Baited’, ‘Thank You, Vera’); some are poignantly delicate (’Sea Defence’, ‘Singing Bowl’, ‘Wide local excision’, ‘What the Hare Knows’). All of them are compelling.

Events, Wristwatch

Wristwatch – Edinburgh launch

Wristwatch is a poetry collection about transition and transformation – about being widowed at 44, then getting a cancer diagnosis at 45. It’s about coming through all that and what the world looks like on the other side. It’s moving, funny and true.

The Edinburgh launch of Wristwatch will be on 12 October at Summerhall. More information and (free!) tickets available here via Eventbrite. For every copy of Wristwatch sold at the launch, I’m donating a third of the cover price (£3) to Maggie’s Centre Edinburgh, a cause dear to my heart.

You can buy Wristwatch online from Cinnamon Press. Please do order direct from the publisher – rather than one of the big online booksellers – to support this indy press.

wristwatch front cover — Cover of Wristwatch, by Jay Whittaker, Cinnamon Press 2017