loss – Merrilyn Thomas

In Poetry Every Word Counts

Posted on January 12, 2019 by Merrilyn ThomasJanuary 12, 2019

Misprints in poetry I was reading an article in the magazine of the Society of Authors the other day about the extra care that is needed to avoid misprints in poetry. ‘In poetry, every word counts,’ wrote the poet John Greening. Misprints can be brought about by the need to transcribe a poet’s hand writing or, these days, by an over enthusiastic spellchecker. John Greening’s article struck a chord with me. When my daughter died at the age of 32 I took on the task of transcribing her poetry, mostly handwritten, contained in a scruffy old folder. Subsequently I published … Read more …

Cancer of Unknown Primary Awareness Week 2018

Posted on September 17, 2018 by Merrilyn ThomasSeptember 17, 2018

Many people do not know that you can be diagnosed with cancer and yet doctors cannot tell you what type of cancer you have. This is known as Cancer of Unknown Primary (CUP). A charity is working to raise awareness of this form of cancer and promote research in order to improve diagnosis and treatment.

Megan Young Poetry Prize

Posted on July 24, 2018 by Merrilyn ThomasFebruary 4, 2020

A poem about a blue tit by Daisy Godbold, a Year 7 pupil at the Stephen Perse Foundation school in Cambridge, has won the 2018 Megan Young Poetry Prize

Should we stop talking about the battle with cancer?

Posted on May 15, 2018 by Merrilyn ThomasMay 15, 2018

When my daughter Megan was dying of terminal cancer, she was adamant that at her funeral no-one should talk about her brave fight or use phrases such as ‘she died after a long battle with cancer’. This is not a battle, she told me. I am dying. A cancer charity says that the perceived idea that people need to fight cancer can have a negative effect.

Exmoor Ponies

Posted on November 15, 2017 by Merrilyn ThomasJune 18, 2018

The other weekend I met up with an eclectic group of people who had one thing in common – Exmoor ponies. Given the chance many of them would have spent the whole day sitting there chatting about Exmoor ponies, telling their personal stories about this fascinating breed. We were there because a woman who shares this Exmoor pony passion in spades has spent the past few years collecting some of these stories together and has just published them in a book – The Exmoor Pony Chronicles. Sue Baker has been deeply involved with Exmoor ponies for much of her life. She caught the bug when she researched the ecology of free-living Exmoor ponies for her PhD in the late 1970s.

Cancer of Unknown Primary

Posted on September 29, 2017 by Merrilyn ThomasJune 21, 2018

It is a traumatic moment for most of us when friends or family are diagnosed with cancer. Very often, one of the first things we will ask is this: what type of cancer do you have? By this we mean is it breast cancer, liver cancer, lung cancer and so on. But sometimes the answer to that questions is: I don’t know. For the last ten years a small charity has focussed its efforts on making people aware of a type of a cancer where it proves difficult and sometimes impossible to identify the site of the primary tumour. That’s when the answer to the question is: I don’t know. Why does this matter? It matters because …

Megan Young Poetry Prize Winner Announced

Posted on July 26, 2017 by Merrilyn ThomasJune 18, 2018

A poem about green tomatoes has won the Megan Young Poetry Prize. The winner, Ayshe-Mira Yashin, aged 14, is a pupil at the Stephen Perse Foundation school in Cambridge. The award was launched in 2014, in memory of my daughter, Megan Young, who was a pupil at the school and who died aged 32, four months after being diagnosed with cancer. Megan was an equine veterinary surgeon, but she was also a poet having expressed herself through her poetry throughout her life. Some of her poetry has been published in Wordsmith: The Gift of a Soul …

Cancer of Unknown Primary – Don’t Die of Ignorance

Posted on June 7, 2017 by Merrilyn ThomasDecember 7, 2017

What does it mean when doctors tell a patient that they have cancer but, unfortunately, they can’t tell you what kind of cancer you a suffering from. How can they not know? Why don’t they know? This is what happened to my daughter Megan Young seven years ago. What it means is that the medical experts are unable to locate the primary tumour. And what this means – in turn – is that treatment will be a very hit and miss affair because most cancer treatment is targeted at specific tumours whether that be breast, colon, lung and so on. …

Sharing Grief Through Poetry

Posted on June 22, 2016 by Merrilyn ThomasJune 21, 2018

I will never forget the lady behind the Post Office counter. Meeting her was such a reminder of how little we know about the people we meet in the course of our day to day lives, of the things we carry with us, the depths of our feelings, our hidden talents, the grief that many of us share but which we rarely talk about. Sharing grief can happen in unlikely places. …

A Political Anthem

Posted on January 22, 2016 by Merrilyn ThomasDecember 7, 2017

The 1945 bombing raid on Dresden and the poem that Megan Young wrote about it has attracted more interest than any other post. She wrote the powerful poem, Annihila, on the 50th anniversary of the raid. When you read it, you can feel the intensity of Megan’s ability to relate to the suffering of others and transform that into the written word. This is the voice of a young woman who cared deeply about justice and who felt the pain of the world. …