When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005 at the age of 38, I had already begun writing poetry through a course at Deakin Uni. What I hadn't realised was how important it would be for me to write poetry about my breast cancer experience.
I wrote many poems during and after the year of diagnosis. Somehow it was cathartic and transforming to be able to turn a painful experience into a poem. When I turned 40 a friend, Monique, offered to turn my poems into a book to celebrate the occasion. It was very moving to be able to give my poems to family, friends and my breast cancer group. I had cried writing some of them, and some people told me they cried reading them. I think the poems allowed me to communicate things about my experience that I could not communicate in any other way.
I am now working on a poetry manuscript with the hope of commercial publication.
At the end of 2005, I happened to hear about a 'Moving Galleries' project to put poetry and art onto Melbourne's trains. I submitted a little poem which came from my experience of finding a seashell from the summer before diagnosis:
winter - forgotten seashell
in my japara pocket
spills sand
I was thrilled when it was accepted. The launch, even in the haze of chemo fatigue, was a kind of coming back to life for me. Since then, I have had poems in each of the Moving Galleries seasons. For me, creative work in both poetry and music has been a way of giving to other people, transforming my experience, and experiencing the fullness of life.
--Cathy, Victoria
