The Body as Seed (and other poems)
Conference:
Talk Code:
1G.6
Presenter:
Louise Younie
A seed is planted on the earth
Dull, brown, of what worth?
The life within is yet unknown
What will it be when fully flown?
Not the hair or curve of breast
Not eyelashes or scars on the chest
Not the space where ovaries were
And neither memory lost in the air
More than disease or suffering can steal
More than death would put to ill
More than yet is seen or known
What will it be when fully flown?
This presentation involves a series of cancer poems exploring the embodied and particular sufferings and hopes of a clinician mother who journeyed through cancer after the birth of her daughter.