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World Cancer Day 2023: From Pain To Poetry - giving a voice to bowel cancer survivors
3 February 2023
In July 2022, residents of Tower Hamlets who are bowel cancer survivors or carers joined together with university researchers and patient charities for a unique workshop using poetry as a way of expressing how bowel cancer had affected their lives.
The participants were of Bangladeshi heritage and Eeshita Azad, of the British Bilingual Poetry Collective, interpreted for non-English speakers allowing them to fully express their feelings.
The workshop inspired a warm but frank discussion which Eeshita used to write a bilingual poem about the participants’ experiences:
A Story About Pain - Eeshita Azad
Saidur Rahman
Khairul Anam
Rahima Begum
Shakila Khanom
Fatima, Nasima,
Shefali,
Alam.
This is a story of pain.
A story of list of names
Names that sometimes
Might sound the same…
It all starts with Intermittent,
occasionally severe abdominal pain
Every time you get hungry
you are, worried about the pain
The weight loss, the swelling…
You've become this
aching bloated being.
This is a story about impossible words.
The first words arrive in cold white paper
Letter headed, typesetted
GP stamped.
There’s no space to waiver
Then, a colonoscopy screen becomes a fortune teller
tells a story that no one wants to hear.
As your peripheral vision blurs
Your loved ones faces disappear
Anxiety takes over your whole
Your heart, your mind, your soul…
“Allahgo, are you there?
Saidur Rahman
Khairul Anam
Rahima Begum
Shakila Khanom
Fatima, Nasima,
Shefali,
Alam.
This is a story about loss
Not always just the obvious
it’s how you’ve stopped checking your phone
text notification pings scare you…
You are on your own.
But it can be a story about resilience
A story about indomitable strength
It might be hard but not impossible
We have so much to gain
If we let go of shame and choose life
If we seek help early and
Choose to fight.
Saidur Rahman
Khairul Anam
Rahima Begum
Shakila Khanom
Fatima, Nasima,
Shefali,
Alam.
This is a story about life,
as we choose to go on and survive.
Film Credit:
Written and performed by Eeshita Azad, filmed and edited by Kamau Kelly, inspired by the testimonies of a group of Tower Hamlets residents with experience of Bowel Cancer. In collaboration with the Wellcome / EPSRC Centre for Interventional and Surgical Sciences at University College London, Queen Mary University of London, British Bilingual Poetry Collective, and Bowel Research UK.
(CC BY-SA 4.0)
Poem credit:
By Eeshita Azad, inspired by the testimonies of a group of Tower Hamlets residents with experience of Bowel Cancer. In collaboration with the Wellcome / EPSRC Centre for Interventional and Surgical Sciences at University College London, Queen Mary University of London, British Bilingual Poetry Collective, and Bowel Research UK.
(CC BY-SA 4.0)
With a long history of major breakthroughs, UCL is home to one of the largest concentrations of cancer specialists to be found anywhere in the world. On World Cancer Day 2023, find out more about UCL’s world-leading research on cancer at the UCL Cancer Institute