Poet Transforms The Breast Cancer Journey

Art & Entertainment | Book Reviews | Education | Entertainment Video | Health | Lifestyle | Sport | Sport Video | /" style="white-space: nowrap">Search

Simpson reading (Photo/Supplied) Jane Simpson’s new poetry collection, Imagined Scar, takes on the forbidding subject of breast cancer, both within her family and for women around the world.

Dr Simpson joins the few breast cancer survivor poets who have produced a full-length collection spanning the time being investigated, diagnosis, surgery, treatment and the family history of this disease. More than a medical journey, the book reaches beyond, to history, science and art.

Writing during the extreme isolation of lockdown, she found the early poems shifting from the bleak and lyrical to the quirky and humorous. Much to her surprise, the poems themselves transformed her cancer journey, which stretches back to her English ancestors and embraces the hope held out by genomics.