“When you have a terminal illness diagnosis, the world ceases to treat you like the complex individual you have always been – that you still are – and just treats you like a patient; as if you should be grateful you are still included in the world … it is a bizarre thing,” says Luke Icarus Simon.

“Given poetry is such a highly-controlled art form – and as I had no control whatsoever over my illness – it allowed me, for the duration of the writing, an illusion that I was still in control,”

For close to three years, writer Luke Icarus Simon underwent multiple chemotherapy treatments for Stage 4 Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma only to be advised to get his affairs in order. His view on the world, and those around him changed significantly.

“It felt as if everything was being taken away from me: my humanity, my job, my hair, my body, my looks, my income, even friends and family who somehow expected me to be the person to tell them everything was going to be all right,” he says with candour.

His honesty is as much overwhelming as it is frank. He’s forthright about what cancer did and meant to him and what it still does today. But it’s not about being outspoken; it’s about being honest.

The openness about the disease is translated into his anthology The Transit of Cancer. The poems in this book were mostly written during this period of his treatment when Simon was unable to leave his home and cancer had taken control of his body.

“Given poetry is such a highly-controlled art form – and as I had no control whatsoever over my illness – it allowed me, for the duration of the writing, an illusion that I was still in control,” he explains of his decision to write poetry to try to make sense of his world.

This is not a self-help book for people suffering from cancer, it is like all books: it is about love, wanting love, wondering if we are worthy of being loved, of finding the kind of love we seek, the love we think we need, it is about self-esteem, it is about seeking external validation, it is about being stereotyped and shaped by the experiences of our childhood, it is about wanting to be part of a loved family, it is about grieving for the things we will never have (e.g. a child, as chemo poisons sperm) it is about trying to be happy against the odds, it is about the kind of life dreams we all have.

“Ultimately it is about language, about finding solace in the beauty of language, in the rhythm of words carefully selected, so when read out loud, like good poetry should be, it soothes our souls in the same vein as music does and brings us comfort,” he says.

But also adds that it may bring solace and hope to cancer patients in some cases too.

“The poems may offer some hope that even when the experts are convinced your time is done there are always exceptions and unexpected miracles, not in a religious sense as such, but medical miracles.”

He says the cancer-themed poems were spawned during a period where he was basically stuck at home, unable to climb the seven steps to his loft bedroom, he says he was “simply waiting to die”.

“As a highly-energetic creative person who had had three successful careers by 26, I was incredibly frustrated by my loss of control, loss of job, income, status, ability to manage life well and admittedly the loss of close loved ones.

“All of my life, and life in general, suddenly seemed like theatre then to me and felt incredibly fraudulent,” he says with an honest abandon. “I withdrew in order to not cause others pain or make them feel uncomfortable. The consequence of this withdrawal though is once you cross over to that place it is subsequently incredibly difficult to rejoin the theatre of life in real time.

“Years later, I am still working towards bridging this huge gap back to normal life. I am not Freud but I recognise I can’t seem to have an intimate relationship as this fear of death and hurting my loved ones is pertinent most days still.”

He says being from a big Greek family all he craved was loved ones around him. Most of his extended family are still living in Cyprus where he was born. He migrated to Australia after the 1974 Turkish invasion. Still in primary school, Luke remembers the time vividly in the mid-’70s after migrating and the hardships he faced.

“I was so desperate to speak Greek,” he remembers. “I walked around the playground asking dark-haired kids if they spoke Greek: they told me to ‘f*ck off’.”
He remembers an Australia very different then from now.

” There were no support systems for recent arrivals, no assistance, no free English classes for my parents, not even for me at school as that area had zero migrants.

“The principals used to pat me on the head to indicate they were tolerant of my ‘kind’. Once on the bus Mum told us to be quiet in Greek and other passengers castigated her for not speaking English straight away and called us ‘wogs’.”

As a writer, he’s also captured the themes of leaving a war-torn country as an 11-year-old and arriving in Australia in his short story collection Lost In The Last Divided Capital, which is due out in late March.

But now, Luke says with it all, he “still feel[s] like a ghost”.

“I still don’t quite believe I have made it through the tunnel of cancer and still feel like a complete outsider to life, a self-conscious observer not fully engaged with others; I have not been able to get over the tremendous shock and the feeling that I am no longer going to die tomorrow.

“I feel it is unlikely I am ever going to bridge that gap and rejoin the healthy who presume it is their entitlement to make plans for their retirement as if they have a guarantee, an expectation that it is their right to live to a ripe old age.”

The Transit of Cancer is published by Palmer Higgs. The paperback is available online from palmerhiggsbooks.com.au at $14.95 as well as at Amazon and from all major online retailers. The eBook version is also available from Amazon, Kindle et al.
For more information on Luke Icarus Simon, visit www.facebook.com and search Luke Icarus Simon.