In August of 2023, we released our fourth open call: How might we reimagine healing and transformation with cancer through poetry, art, letters, and stories? This post will share a transcription of an email interview with Clay Matthews, a winner of this open call, whose submission, “The Waiting Room,” will be published in Issue 4 of the LIGHT Magazine. A special thank you to Clay for sharing his LIGHT story with us.

Clay Matthews – The Waiting Room

Q: Tell us a little about your submission and why it relates to reimagine healing and transformation with cancer. Why did you choose this medium (i.e. art, letter, story, poem)?

A: “Poems, and poetry, are generally my default medium. My brain feels at once static and extremely fragmented–like some mangled form of cubism, I suppose–and poetry “feels” like the genre I generally exist in.”

Q: What motivated you to submit this work to our open call?

A: “The call for cancer work, initially, but after reading the mission of LIGHT, I realized that cancer is just one of those conversations that often seems to remain hidden, unspoken, even taboo at times. I think it’s important to bring more awareness–light, as it were–to some of these collective experiences.”

Q: What inspired this work?

A: “I was inspired simultaneously by Elizabeth Bishop’s famous poem, “The Waiting Room,” and also sitting in several waiting rooms having a similar sort of epiphany of waking up to my place in the world as a mortal body.”

Q: What is one word to describe the process of creating your work for this open call, and why did you choose that word?

A: “”Voice,” I suppose. Waiting rooms are often terribly quiet, even though we often have so much in common and so many of the same worries and fears. The unknown exists, always, behind those doors we wait on the other sides of. I just wanted to vocalize that experience, for myself, with hopes that it might also speak for some of the others there with me.”

Q: Why do you think creativity matters in public health space / in the health fields? 

A: “Humans are complex beings with complex problems. Much of medicine, I think, and science, to a degree, has tended to look for a sort of collective experience within a data set (and understandably so); however, we’re each unique patients with unique problems and needs. Approaching issues, like cancer, creatively, can not only help a patient feel seen, but it might even save their life.”

Q: How does your submission reflect your artistic style or personal voice?

A: “The “speaker” in this poem is more or less a version of me–a person I was on that particular day. I tend to be drawn to narrative and the attempt to unify the fragments of my life in literal, figurative, and fabricated ways in order to get at something that feels “authentic” to my experience in the moment of composition.”

Q: What do you hope to achieve or communicate through your work being selected for publication in LIGHT Magazine? What impact or impression, emotions or thoughts, do you intend to make on the audience or viewers with your submission?

A: “I suppose just to highlight the fact that, one way or another, we’re all in the waiting room of life. I hope the experience might bring us together rather than isolate us.”

Q: How do you envision your piece contributing to healing and transformation of those affected by cancer?

A: “I’m part of a cancer group at my church. We’ve lost some members over the years, which is a sad reality of cancer we all know. There’s something lovely about our very small community, though, and I hope everyone with cancer can feel accepted and loved. It can all feel a bit isolating to walk it alone.”

Q: How do you anticipate your work contributing to the larger context or conversation within the public health community?

A: “Sometimes I feel like we make a lot of noise as humans. I often wonder about my voice and whether or not I’m just adding more noise to the sea of text. But then I realize how much I love to have conversations about big human issues–like cancer, or poetry. Conversation, I think, is maybe the first step to community. I’m glad to be a part of it.”

Q: From your perspective, what is the best way to encourage others to use creativity to disseminate/share health information concerning healthy spaces and places or other public health topics and/or issues? 

A: “Just to speak about some of them. I’ve known some fellow patients who’ve kept their illness a secret, whether because they feared speaking it out loud might make it “realer” or cause it to spread, or because they don’t want to be a burden to those they love. Both of these are things I struggled with, too, and continue to, but I’ve found it’s healing to sit around a table with others and talk about these things out loud. It’s been a great comfort to me, and I hope that comfort might be encouragement to others.”

Q: How has LIGHT provided you with a platform or space to express yourself through creativity or process personal experiences?

A: “By creating a unique journal with the mission it has and following through with that mission by supporting authors and artists as a lovely platform.”

Issue 2 of the LIGHT Magazine is now available for purchase in our shop!

LIGHT is currently looking for donors and sponsors to help us keep our project going. If you are interested in supporting our publication, please email us at info@light4ph.org.

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