Announcing the BMP project – “Being Macmillan People” – Publishing Project to_raise_money_for_Cancer_Care
Feb 26 '04 (Updated Mar 18 '04)
The Bottom Line Please read this if there's any chance you can contribute to this project to raise money for Cancer Care.
Announcing the BMP project – “Being Macmillan People” – Publishing Project to raise money for Cancer Care
This is just to get a feel for how many people might be interested in getting involved in this project. I recently reviewed an email from Petra, who saw from my profile that I have occasionally written for the UK Small Press. She has a friend who is a cancer sufferer and also a musician, and wondered if I might be able to get him some publicity. And then a couple of days later, in response to a poem I’d written for The Peoples Poet, a gentleman named John Whitmarsh, who I’ve known through that site for a couple of years now, emailed me to tell me how much this poem had meant to him as a cancer sufferer himself. I was surprised it had affected him so much and told him so. But in further correspondence with him, an idea began to germinate in my mind. (Contrary to popular belief I do have one of those.)
TPP Press, who publish The People’s Poet anthology, also published a book called See Me, Hear Me in aid of the Manic Depression Fellowship. The Editor, Paula Brown, is someone I’ve known online since before TPP started, and finally met in person at the launch for See Me, Hear Me at the Poetry Café in London. She’s someone passionate about good causes and in fact has several charity-related books in mind. I emailed her recently to give her the idea for another one.
Although nothing at all is set in concrete at the moment, what I am proposing to do is collect together various writings by cancer sufferers, their families, and Healthcare Workers and hopefully publish them in a book through TPP, with the proceeds going towards Macmillan Cancer Relief. At the moment I work for 2 Macmillan Nurses as well as Orthopaedic Oncologists, and this has led to me seeing much more about the emotional impact that cancer has on people as well as the medical side. Many people that the Macmillan Nurses help can only be given palliative care – that is, their symptoms can be treated to an extent but the disease itself is there for good until it kills them – this is one of the harshest truths anyone can be told about themselves or one of their family members. My friend John Whitmarsh, mentioned earlier, is in this position himself – he does not know how much time he has left. But he has decided that, rather than feel sorry for himself, he will make the most use he can of every single day. He is a fantastic poet and I know he has touched the life of many people, and I very much hope to meet him in person at the book launch for The People’s Poet 2005 – and he might not know it, but his emails and heartbreaking honesty have had a profound effect on me. Petra’s friend, though I don’t know him, has also been inspirational – due to his treatment he had a very long wait before he could complete his musical project started years previously.
The point is, people like John and Petra’s friend make use of every second and refuse to give up. Apart from raising funds for Macmillan, a worthy cause in itself, the real reason I want to do this and make it a success is to celebrate the lives of people like this.
I intend to fund the publication through corporate sponsorship and advertising (I haven’t got the money to do this myself), which I will start to organise when things move into the real planning stages and I know what kind of support I’ve got. What I would like to know from the eps members reading this (or anyone else, for that matter) is, would you like to be involved in the project in some way? What I’m going to be looking for (please don’t send me anything just yet, I’ll let you know when I’m open for submissions) is:
* Poems written by cancer sufferers / Healthcare Workers involved in cancer
* Experiences of cancer sufferers / families of cancer sufferers
* Latest research projects?
* Facts & figures?
The last 2, obviously, I will collect myself if I decide that it’s the sort of thing I want to be in the book. I’ve also got a working title – “Being Macmillan People” – which is meant to convey the idea that we don’t need to actually be working in Cancer Care to provide care and support to cancer sufferers. I’d like to know what you think of the title.
One final thing is, to those with websites / epinions accounts, would you be willing (when the book is available) to link to the website / info page on TPP (I may just code a new section of that site but will probably build a dedicated site too) on your own website / profile page? It will need as much publicity as possible to succeed and paying for that publicity out of the raised funds seems to me to be counter-productive.
Well that’s about it for now. I can’t make any promises as to when it will happen, but even if I end up having to self-publish it and ebook and hope people will put aside their dislike of reading from a computer screen for the sake of a good cause, it’s going to happen.
Very best regards to all,
Dave
Update 1 – 29th February, 2004
Update 2 and Call For Submissions
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