NA: I am so excited to be talking with you about your book, Whistle What Can’t Be Said, and your project, Whistlewords, which works primarily with women who are cancer patients and survivors. I thought we might begin with an excerpt from your page of Acknowledgements in which you describe the impetus behind writing Whistle What Can't be Said?
CM: When I was first diagnosed at the age of 39 with Stage Three Breast Cancer, I was given a hefty notebook to help me navigate all that I was going to experience in the months and years to follow. But something was missing. I hope that the poems in this book might serve to fill the void for others who live in the territory of cancer. I also would like to thank the many, many people who held me in the light during treatment—especially my children, Emma and Garland.
NA: I’d ask you to talk about Whistlewords, but I think providing a link might be simpler. It’s such a beautiful website with so much information about you, your great work, and the film-maker Betsy Cox.
CM: Whistlewords.org
NA: How did you meet the filmmaker, Betsy Cox? She decided to do a film of your work?
CM: I met Betsy through my yoga studio. I knew she was a filmmaker and I initially asked if she might be interested in producing a short film to help me gain entry into cancer centers to run workshops. One of her good friends was in treatment at the time, and after Betsy read Whistle What Can’t Be Said, she immediately felt there was a powerful story to be told. Of course, I agreed. She’s a social issue documentary filmmaker, and has done quite a bit of work in the area of women’s health. So together we launched the project with the idea being that the workshops and the work that results will be the subject of a documentary – and that ultimately, we’d create a replicable package (a facilitator’s guide with workshops plans, the film, and anthology) so that anyone anywhere can offer this program. Of course, the film will hopefully also have a life of its own, through festivals, broadcast and on-line distribution.
NA: I really love your poem, “The Greatest Show on Earth,” and the film Besty produced of it. I was so startled by your comparison of seeing a circus to receiving a cancer diagnosis. Would you be willing to talk about that?
CM: Sure. The poem describes watching the circus animals unload in the city streets of Washington, D.C. where I grew up. The animals came in on the train and were unloaded a few blocks from Arena Stage. My father stopped the car and we watched it happen. It was stunning, in the literal form of that word, stun being a shortening of the word astonish, to turn to stone, to be dazed and stupefied. I felt almost scorched by what I saw. I was eight and the sight of an enormous giraffe bending her neck to fit through the train door and walk down a steel ramp dazed me. I had the same exact feeling when the oncologist put up my mammogram on the light board and pointed out where my cancer was. I was dazed and transformed. I would never be the same.
NA: I also love the title poem, “Whistle What Can’t Be Said,” and I am wondering if you might be willing to post the poem here and then describe the experience that inspired the poem?
CM:
Whistle What Can't Be Said
During radiation nothing gives—
all that steel and glass and plaster,
the machine closer and closer until
it’s an inch from the absent breast.
Why can’t I say what happened?
I’m trying to—but I’ve been instructed
not to move, not even a millimeter,
or the radiation will reach my heart.
All I want is to hear my neighbor
call his cows home at dusk,
to see him touch their bellies,
feel the fur that swirls between their eyes.
Radiation is stark, the room all machinery and walls. It creates a feeling of suffocation and claustrophobia. Also, the patient must be utterly still or radiation will go where it should not. One time after the technicians had left the room to begin the procedure, I coughed. That made an alarm go off and they had to abort what they were doing. So, while I lay there each day I would imagine in my mind places of spaciousness and expanse. Having spent some very happy years on a cattle farm, I tended to go to that place to find a way to find peace during the procedure.
NA: In our conversations, you described how chemotherapy changed your mental state, and in your poem, “Chemo Brain,” you talked about wanting to hide in a space “where no one can/force me to complete/my sentences.”
I wondered if you could elaborate?
CM: Hard one. I guess I would say that diagnosis and treatment for stage three cancer made me a bit fragmented. Like an incomplete sentence, I still harbor a senseof uncertainty. Nothing is for sure in this life. Losing my mother taught me that. And undergoing treatment taught me to live it.
NA: There is a lot of mysticism and spiritual depth in your work, a quiet sense of beauty, faith, and longing in both this book and your collection, Still Enough to Be Dreaming. You told me once that cancer was a gift?
CM: Thank you for that reading of my work. I do feel grateful for each day in a way I never did before. I take very little for granted. What comes to mind are the words of Rachel Carson when she said “Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.” I feel as if living in a state of pretty much constant uncertainty is, in a way, dwelling among the mysteries of the earth.
NA: Could you talk about the anthologies and the film forthcoming from Whistlewords?
CM: We’re really excited about both! Over the 18 months since the project’s launch, a powerful body of work has been produced. We’re in the process of curating the first Whistle Words’ anthology, and will release it through Amazon later this summer. It will contain journal pages with writing prompts interspersed in each section – I think it’ll make a beautiful, thoughtful and hopefully inspiring gift for any woman facing cancer. We also hope it will help us grow the project’s following going forward and help us leverage funding for the film – and most importantly, empower the women who contributed!
Betsy has started filming, and it will begin in earnest this fall. Timing depends on fundraising, of course, and we’re approaching foundations and also looking for community support. We have a Founding Friends campaign which is lovely – you can give in honor of someone and both your names will appear in the film’s credits. We’ll also launch a kickstarter campaign in the fall.
NA: And you said you currently working on a memoir. I'd love a sneak peak!
CM: Here's a short excerpt:
Joe Early drove my school bus for ten years. His authority only grew the day a car barreled past the bus’s blinking lights and he launched a tire jack straight through that Volare’s back window. For a moment, everything stilled, the filaments of rear window defrosters waving, metallic spider webs in November’s air, metronome cadence of bus lights clicking. Because Joe made the littler kids sit up front and because the bus ride lasted 30 minutes, I’d clocked many an hour staring at the back of Joe’s neck. There was a crease in it, a fold of skin, supple and dark. I had the strongest urge to wedge a pencil in it horizontally, to somehow get that close to him. To this day, boarding a bus, I have to keep myself from looking behind the driver’s neck, hoping to find that same lustrous crease.
The day after the tire jack incident, my father died, suddenly and at work. He had a heart attack, a quiet one, in his chair. My father’s chin had dropped to his chest, what must have looked like a cat nap. The next morning, I got up, dressed myself and went to school. Because that is what you do during the week. And because Joe would be waiting for me at the bus stop. And here was a man I could trust, day in and day out, to pick me up and take me home. I kept the fact of my father’s death to myself all the way until third period Latin when I asked our teacher, Imogen Rose, if I could skip the conjugation quiz because my father had died the night before. The look on her face was such a peculiar mixture of disbelief and horror I can replicate it to this day. To get the full impact, one must understand just how Mrs. Rose ran a classroom. If one of us yawned, we were to leave the room, take a brisk lap around the building’s exterior, sleet of February no consideration. Yawning means one is in need of oxygen. When she entered the room we stood up until she lifted her right index finger in the manner of an orchestra conductor. This meant we were to sit back down. The day I wore my school uniform too long, the note she sent home read, Charlotte’s uniform unacceptable, appears as if she is in a ditch, please hem.
Charlotte Matthews’ most recent book Whistle What Can’t Be Said (2016) chronicles part of her experience with stage three breast cancer. In addition she is author of Still Enough to Be Dreaming (2007) and Green Stars (2005). Her honors include fellowships from The Chautauqua Institute and The Virginia Center for Creative Arts and the Adele F. Robertson Award for Excellence in Teaching. She holds an M.F.A from Warren Wilson College’s Program for Writers and a B.A. from the University of Virginia. She teaches in The Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies Program at The University of Virginia. She lives in Crozet with her husband, her two children, a black lab, and a hive of honey bees.
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