Samuel Tongue

and then dying from cancer is well trodden ground in a sense.

But each individual poet who's writing along these lines and across this ground brings their own perspective and brings their own heart to the endeavor.

When we were discussing this in the group, we were struck by the title first off.

It sets us straight into the scene.

There's no dilly-dally.

The title, In the Chemo Room.

I wear mittens made of ice so I don't lose my fingernails, but I took a risk today to write this down.

Gives you all the information you need.

We're immediately there.

We're in the chemo room.

And then the

very striking image of wearing mittens made of ice so that the poet doesn't lose their fingernails but still taking the risk to write and that kind of encapsulates the energy that's behind this poem that although the poet is going through dire straits of course going through chemotherapy they still need to write and that's what the energy that drives this poem forward

So with that title setting the scene so strikingly, as we went through, we realized that this is an exploration of dying, an exploration of death, exploration of a terminal diagnosis, but also there was so much joy and honesty and love throughout the poem.

There were so many kind of great quotable lines that you could pull out and that struck people differently in the group.

One of the ones for me was the couplet that says, wasn't it death that taught me to stop measuring my lifespan by length, but by width?

And quite a few of the couplets end with questions like,

And although sometimes this can be making a demand on the reader, almost as if it's kind of answer me in a kind of that the poet is demanding answers, here they're open enough to bring in the reader, bring in the listener into this conversation, into these conversations that are going on all the time.

One of the participants raised the interesting point that actually the structure of the poem and the way it looks on the page

in these couplets and kind of almost quotable lines that you can you can pull out this could be actually due to the practicalities of writing in mittens with mittens made of ice that this form speaks to something of how the poem was written

that it's written in kind of ideas that are placed together, that are explored, kind of unfolding narrative, but also a standalone.