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Review:\u00a0Thinks Itself A Hawk<\/em>, Wendy French, The Hippocrates Press, 2016.<\/strong><\/p>\n by Rebecca Goss<\/p>\n On June 30th<\/sup> this year, I headed to University College London Hospital (UCLH) Macmillan Cancer Centre to listen to Wendy French read from her new poetry collection Thinks Itself A Hawk<\/em>. As I approached the revolving doors in the middle of the wide glass frontage, a woman was leaving the building via the doors\u2019 slow spin. She was wearing a headscarf, and carrying several plastic bags of what looked like shopping or bundled belongings. She was alone. She looked tired. She looked sad. And she looked ill. I have spent a lot of time in hospitals, but I have never come close to cancer. As the doors ejected us in opposite directions it began to dawn on me where I was going, and what I might see. My naivety overwhelmed me. I thought I was going to a building about<\/em> cancer, not a building that contained it.<\/p>\n In 2014, Wendy French became UCLH\u2019s first ever poet in residence at the Macmillan Cancer Centre. To quote from the foreword to Thinks Itself a Hawk<\/em>, French\u2019s resulting book, \u2018the residency\u2019s intention was to extend access to poetry and the spoken word and assist with improving patients\u2019 well-being.\u2019 French ran weekly creative writing groups for patients and wrote her own poetry in response to her time spent at the centre.<\/p>\n Throughout the book there are many references to walking and movement and \u2018openings\u2019 – the paths our lives take. An early poem in the collection is titled Cancer\u2019s Daily Walk<\/em>. Cancer itself \u2018will walk in the town, in the city,\/\/enter St. Paul\u2019s when doors are open,\/will walk\u2026\u2026where its feet take it.\u2019 But eventually the cancer enters \u2018distracted bodies\/whose cells are greedy for change\u2019 and then all routes will lead to those revolving doors. French is there to document the process of arrival as people \u2018try to shake off\/\/their fears as they shake\/their coats from the rain.\u2019 (The Waiting Game<\/em>)<\/p>\n Cancer\u2019s impact on daily life and family relationships is all studied here. A poignant stanza in Today\u2019s Appointment<\/em> shows how family \u2018outings\u2019 have been transformed with \u2018a wave of a dark wand\u2019. Rather than trips out with picnics the sick now carry \u2018bags of medication, nebulisers\/in a field of white coats.\u2019<\/p>\n In an environment at times harrowing and bleak, French is able to show us the real people who live with cancer. French sees the blatant effort needed to survive – \u2018blood is exchanged like currency\u2019 – yet we can also tell French got extremely close to these people. French respects them, utterly, as do the medical staff, but French is able to give them something not always prescribed. She gives them time. \u2018We sit together not talking but dawdling\u2026\u2019 (In the Wood<\/em>). \u2018She tells me that pain is unpredictable\/but there\u2019s refuge in books and music.\u2019 (This Girl<\/em>).<\/p>\n French accepts there is a world inside the centre, and a world outside it. Referring to a tunnelled walkway that connects the Macmillan Centre to the rest of UCLH, French writes \u2018down here\u2026time is marked differently\u2026We know we are unique we hold our heads high\/and picture the outside.\u2019 (Because<\/em>)<\/p>\n Illness can cut people off from the \u2018real\u2019 world, but French is keen to show that the Macmillan Centre does not just house patients. Behind its doors are patients\u2019 relatives, clinicians, volunteers, ambulance drivers, catering staff, Kingsley the \u2018concierge\u2019 \u2013 everyone is accounted for, and illness feels less isolating as a result. I remember hearing the broadcaster Andrew Marr in a radio interview about his stroke say that illness is nothing to be ashamed of. French\u2019s poems take the shame away from suffering by scattering light on everyone<\/em> involved. In Mammogram<\/em>, a witty but never crass depiction of a medical examination, we focus on a list of apologetic utterings from the clinician: \u2018Unfortunately I have to ask you to put your breast here\/Unfortunately this may hurt for five seconds\/Unfortunately we have to do this five times\u2019. To see the appointment from the medic\u2019s perspective highlights issues of identity in the book. The repetitive use of \u2018unfortunately\u2019 hints at the \u2018human being\u2019 behind the fa\u00e7ade of \u2018doctor\u2019.<\/p>\n The latter section of the book concentrates on the story of Zipora, aged 66 when French first met her, and suffering from aggressive ovarian cancer. Zipora died during French\u2019s residency. Before her death, Zipora shared much about her life as a Jewish woman coming from what the book\u2019s blurb describes as \u2018the darkest days of the twentieth century\u2019. It is a very moving sequence, interspersed with letters written by Zipora to her mother. These letters were never sent, but shared with French, and French mirrors each letter with a poetic response.<\/p>\n Guy Noble, Arts Curator at UCLH, writes of French\u2019s work \u201cIt touches on the challenges faced by people living with or facing a cancer diagnosis, and reflects upon the \u201ceveryday\u201d which perhaps many of us overlook.\u2019 I agree with Guy\u2019s statement, but something we also overlook is that severe illness can define a person. We have to remember that there was a whole life before illness set in. Zipora\u2019s story is a valuable addition to the book, as we learn of such a life. Through both French\u2019s voice, and Zipora\u2019s, we discover a family\u2019s lineage fractured by war, a child orphaned by the age of two and raised in a kibbutz, a marriage not always happy – it\u2019s all survival of a different kind. French\u2019s poems reflecting on Zipora\u2019s story are tender, wise and considerate, and we can only be grateful French was there to record it.<\/p>\n