What an amazing, moving and uplifting read.

Juliet manages to capture the experience of living with cancer with creativity, candour, humour and tremendous soul. So much of her writing resonates with my own experience of living through those final months with someone you love dearly. Juliet captures the rollercoaster of emotions, and there will be much in these pages to comfort both the living and the dying. True to form, Juliet’s writing offers support and gentle guidance for those on their own journey and leaves the reader with a sense of hope even in the most adverse times. A beautiful book.

Thank you for letting me read it!

Juliet Robertson’s collection, Blood Lines, is a poetic exploration of her terminal cancer diagnosis. Throughout the collection, Robertson’s resilience and positivity shine through: ‘I’m a dancer with my cancer / fabulous partners in crime’, she states. At times she uses startlingly original visual representations to respond to the processes surrounding her diagnosis; at others Robertson uses unusual imagery to transform the slow steps of her journey: it is a bus ride, a space trip, a road journey, a seashore. Heartbreaking and heartwarming, Blood Lines is a handbook for living and dying well, delivered with grace, fortitude and humour.

Blood Lines brings together the deeply personal and the broadly social. Each poem stands alone, and yet the collection is a whole narrative—it reaches far and wide in feeling and subject and in time and space. It is imbued with the natural world and with a passion for words and literature. In her writing, Juliet is the teacher we always wanted: fun, creative, honest, profound, challenging and full of original and independent thinking. In Blood Lines, there are many generous invitations—for example, to take ‘a pacifist approach / non-violent direct action’ or to ‘dance and play’ with feelings—lessons for everyone but, as the collection so powerfully reveals, particularly for those living and dying with cancer, and for those standing with them. At Flynne’s Barn we have felt this generosity and are immensely grateful to Juliet for the belief and support that she has shown us.

As someone living with a blood cancer, the resonance felt with this beautifully messy and creative means of communicating the harsh reality that is cancer is profound. How does one speak of the unspeakable? How does one make sense of that which makes no sense? Robertson generously provides an opening into the realities of cancer treatment through poetry, soundbites and diary entries, correctly making clear that we cannot know what this journey holds as we will undertake a lot of it alone. For who wants their loved ones to observe cancer treatment’s harsh reality? Roberstson does a beautiful job of sharing her experience while embraced in the unenviable task of coming to terms with her own mortality. A gift of wisdom, straight from the heart of the wound.

Blood Lines, despite the overarching and painful subject matter (the poet’s terminal diagnosis of acute myeloid leukaemia), is a beautiful book. A poetry collection wrapped in bright photography and captioned with journal notes, Juliet Robertson has created something complete and powerful—a document, a testament, a whole world contained inside its pages. The poems are accessible and playful (the traffic signs of ‘C Road Journey’); specific and harrowing (‘The walk of a sentenced woman’); yet universal and soulful (‘To pull clouds over the moon’). She allows the reader to experience devastating empathy without ever losing her way into clichés of self-pity. Everyone’s experience of cancer is different, of course, but as a former leukaemia patient myself, the black comedy of Robertson’s laughing hyenas and medical vampires, the threat of relapse and the very real sensation of ‘Scanxiety’ resonate hard and true to my illness too. Juliet’s writing is steeped in love, driven by a pursuit of understanding, and offers catharsis and acceptance. This collection is exactly what it needs to be: heartfelt, fragile and honest.

I applaud and admire anyone who faces up to a terminal illness. To write honestly and even lyrically about it is quite remarkable. Juliet Robertson has done just that.

In Blood Lines we meet Juliet exploring, chronologically, her myriad experiences of cancer and its treatments. But we also meet ourselves. Her poetry encourages us to put ourselves in her position. Her belief that ‘everything will be alright’ is perhaps a surprising—even challenging—conclusion.

Juliet’s poetry highlights the interdependent and collaborative aspects of her journey. She is being continually supported by her husband Mark, her family, her friends and innumerable healthcare individuals. This is not a poet seeking pity, but elucidating how loving relationships provide her with healing, hope and light, particularly when they are in short supply.

This is a poetry book, but it is so much more! It has a colourful Amish-esque quilt of care; a humorous map, with umpteen road signs, of Juliet’s journey; a surreal game of snakes and ladders and even a DIY Death Notice!

Juliet Robertson has gifted us a vibrant and heartfelt insight into how she is enjoying and enduring her confrontation with the ‘omnipotence of cancer’. And she ain’t done yet!

I think Juliet’s book of poetry, musings, advice and intense thinking is inspirational to the right reader who wants a companion, comfort and also a dose of reality on the most difficult journey of all. Juliet is quite incredible.

The varied styles of the poetry give a personalised and informal feel and are such a wonderful way to give an authentic voice to the writing. It’s almost unbearably real. I get the impression that writing it has helped Juliet, and it may well help others too. The images are sharp, they fall across the reader’s mind in a multitude of emotions and seem exactly what they are: feelings expressed in a high-level, articulate way that follow no pattern but Juliet’s own. She writes as the day demands in her mind with charts, thought bubbles, data and a context for each poem. The section divisions really help the sense of a journey. It’s fast, it’s painful but it’s beautiful in places too.

Some people in their final days, or going through long treatment, will certainly benefit from reading something so honest but also very well written with hugely effective word use and image making.

Thanks for the privilege of reading this.