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A poetry book documenting the stories of cancer patients, survivors and families who have lost significant ones to this illness has just been published by Glen Calleja. Despite the poignancy of the subject matter, the author describes the book, Kull flgħaxija kif mal-għabex tnin u tmut saħħet il-Jum, a book of love poetry, adding that it is far from being “a compedium of nightmares”.

The more lyrical poems verge on the religious and devotional while the bolder pieces synthesise narratives to lists – nouns very often – which inevitably acquire a symbolic status. Humour gets a cameo appearance every few pages but the visual references always lead back to a feeling of intimacy, be it through a reflection on how deep a cancer penetrates one’s body and soul or on humanity’s problematic relationship with mortality and beyond.

Calleja’s imagery is colourful, as are the voices and tones he creates. In one instance, one sees a Marlene leaning over the bath, soaping her hair, nape exposed, ready for decapitation. In another, a sprightly figure, Irene coming out of radiotherapy with luminous dust, freckles, on her smiling face.

War imagery is also very present in the book and a quarter of is titled Il-Ktieb tal-Kampjonat (The chapter about the championship).

“I couldn’t avoid or ignore it: the heroes, fighters, survivors... the imaginary trenches, the bloodshed, the angel of death...” says Calleja. “There is an obsession with fighting cancer in the media and public imagination.

“So I started asking the people I interviewed: if there is a world war going on against cancer, does it make everyone one of us soldiers of some sort? Is there some moral duty to fight in this war? How does one do that? And cancer is not monolithic or homogenous, so who is the enemy really and truly?”

In Kull flgħaxija kif mal-għabex tnin u tmut saħħet il-jum ironies abound, filling the book with unspoken authorial reflections about the politics of cancer; the dissonant environments of home and hospital; the incomprehensible medical terminology versus the patients’ need to verbalise their experience at least to themselves and the emotional and financial burden that the diagnosis brings with it. On the other hand, proper names populate the writing, giving faces and an increased sense of intimacy to the work.

Patients’ routines and observations are integrated verbatim alongside a dense and eclectic constellation of images. There is also an abundance of direct speech which gives the work a sense of crisp immediacy which subtly suggests to the reader, this could be you speaking.

Kull flgħaxija kif mal-għabex tnin u tmut saħħet il-jum is available in bookshops and stationers around Malta and Gozo. The project Fawwara can be found on www.facebook.com/cancermalta.