Cancer – Tom Raworth’s ‘lost’ book – was originally to have been published by Frontier Press in 1973. After Frontier’s funds ran out, the typescript was returned to its author, and its opening section, ‘Logbook’, was published as a standalone volume by Poltroon Press in 1976. Revised versions of Cancer’s other two sections were published separately in the 1980s; the original versions of both – the ‘Journal’ as written in the opening months of 1971, and the letters Raworth sent to Edward Dorn in the spring of that year, during his residency at the Yaddo artists’ retreat in Saratoga Springs, New York – are published here for the first time.

‘Language is a foreign landscape but somehow, for some — for very few — it’s a native tongue where everything suddenly stands alive and becomes as clear as lightning. Tom Raworth brings to us what is breathing in the gaps between words. He is a dark, joyful and unique master of all forms. With him, we can see and hear what fairy tales won’t say.’ — Claude Royet-Journoud

Tom Raworth was born in southeast London in 1938. Between 1966 and 2015 he published more than sixty books and pamphlets of poetry, prose and translations. He gave readings of his work internationally, and collaborated and performed with numerous musicians, painters and writers. His graphic work has been shown in Europe, South Africa and the United States. In 2007, in Modena, Italy, he was awarded the Antonio Delfini Prize for Lifetime Achievement. Tom Raworth died in Hove, East Sussex, in 2017.