Why I Am Launching the Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology

Tomorrow night (Wed.), at 7 pm at The Sawdust Reading Series, I launch Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology edited by Meaghan Strimas and the late Priscila Uppal, from Mansfield Press. 

I use “I”, but I'm far from alone. I read with Anita Dolman, Rob McLennan, Blaine Marchand, Susan McMaster, Rusty Priske, Barbara Myers, Montreal's James Hawes and Cora Sire, and two other Ottawa poets.

I owe a huge thanks also to anthology editor Meaghan Strimas, Sawdust's director Jennifer Pederson and Mansfield Press publisher/editor Denis De Klerck for making all this possible.

Why do the launch? Cancer affects all of us, whether we see it or not.

My piece is about J.P. Craig, a chum of mine whom I hung out with extensively after university. I never even knew he had passed until about a few years later, told by a close friend, who also learned late about J.P.'s passing. My poem "At the corner of Pitt and First, where I Last spoke to J.P." .is an attempt to say goodbye. I dedicate my poem to him, fellow drinker and idea-seeker of truths. We were hanging out in post-university days, doing illicit things, trying to be ourselves or, alternatively, trying to find ourselves.

I've lost very special people to cancer, from my mother-in-law, Jacomina Iet Dolman (cancer of the esophagus, that spread quickly; her death and suffering I still grapple with through the lens of my fiction); to my high-school chum, Helen  (vulvar cancer) this Feb. 9 (sweet Jesus, what a bad day-before-my-birthday that was, a loggerhead to my stomach and soul). 

S.A. “Baz” Collins, for whom I recently did a beta reading of his speculative-fiction manuscript, Beware of Mohawks Bearing Gifts, after going through the gamut of chemo treatments, has been declared NED (No Evidence of Disease) by his doctor for a few months now. For this, I'm thankful.

As well, my older sister was diagnosed about two years ago with a rare form of lung cancer that non-smokers gets. It's incurable but treatable. For the treatable aspect, I am also grateful.

It is hard, and difficult to make sense of, so I fight it, with words, however I can. Because I must do something.

That's why I stepped up to launch the Mansfield Press anthology. My effort is also a tribute to late co-editor, poet, novelist and playwright Priscila Uppal who passed away Sept. 5 2018 “after a long battle with synovial sarcoma, a rare disease she once called “the Kick in Your Face Cancer.” ” (The Toronto Star, September 5, 2018). She was 43. 

Priscila Uppal, of  admirable work ethic, prolific writing, feistiness, and zeal to live and enjoy life, no matter what the future held, would, I think, approve of the launch.

And I'm happy to say that ten other anthology contributors, from Montreal and Ottawa area, are also joining me.