When poet Rose Drew landed in America for a new job, she’d barely touched down before a devastating diagnosis threw all her plans to the wind.

Reacting as only a poet can, Rose wrote FrankenTit, a frank, funny and harrowing anthology charting her experiences from diagnosis to mastectomy to reconstruction and radiation therapy.

‘I have dense boobies, that have had a lot of cysts, so I’m always checking myself,’ says Rose.

‘A week before I left for my dream job on the Chippawa Reservation in Minnesota I was checking myself and I went “Oh dear god – what is this lump?”.’

The dream job was as a forensic anthropological archaeologist. As well as running York’s famed all access poetry open mics, and helming successful indie publishing company Stairwell Books, Miami-born Rose is a world renowned expert on ancient human bones. Something which has always given her a unique perspective.

With her new role in a reservation heritage office about to start, Rose lost no time in visiting her doctor in Connecticut as soon as she arrived Stateside. A very recent mammogram in the UK had shown nothing amiss, but she was certain the lump was significant.

‘I saw my OBGYN on the Monday, and I had the scan early on the Tuesday. They did the targeted ultrasound and I’m like, “Wow that’s so weird, it looks like a mouse.” And the woman said, “That’s not a mouse.”

‘So the radiologist comes in; he leans back on the desk, folds his arms and he goes “Yeah, I’m pretty sure you’ve got a tumour”.’

Rose was stunned.

It was her birthday.

‘I got the news every single woman, deep in her heart of hearts thinks she will eventually hear,’ she says. ‘And I’m by myself. My husband Alan is 4,000 miles away, and Stairwell Books is about to have five or six festivals. I didn’t ask him to stop and come away. I just couldn’t. So I was feeling a little alone.’

After just one day in her new role, Rose was thrown into managing a whole new normal, around biopsy, mastectomy, reconstruction and radiation therapy. Anyone’s world might be thrown off its axis, but her earlier life experiences – as well as all those human bones she has examined – gave her a different outlook to most.

‘I’ve had my worst day. My first daughter died when she was three weeks old, of cot death. I think after that your standards change.

‘Also, I have worked as a forensic anthropologist on murdered toddlers. I’ve dealt with people who died rather dramatically on the Mary Rose – one died with a broken leg as the ship went down. So my thought at that time, was you know what? I’m not in a back alley, cornered by a gang. I am not in Ukraine, I am not in Gaza. I am surrounded by competent medical professionals. This is a first world problem.

‘And to that end, you know, I’ve gotten tearful a time or two, but I’ve never cried.’

Rose did the motherlode of her crying, decades earlier, for Sarah.

‘I cried a lot for her,’ says Rose, who went on to have her much-loved second daughter, Emily, a year later. ‘Some of my best poems I can’t read publicly because I’m sobbing. My opinion is if you’re sobbing through your poem it’s not a poem; it’s your diary. And sit down now.’

In 2024 her only hysterical moments were mirth – especially when it came to the process of reconstruction after the mastectomy.

‘When I saw the scar I laughed – and that’s where the poem FrankenTit comes from. Because it was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. It was like Jack the Ripper had come at me with a rusty spoon.’

The implant took the comedy to a whole other level.

‘They showed me different sizes, which were “You’re kidding”, “Oh dear god, no” and “Dolly Parton”. I said: “Where’s the 64-year-old golf ball in a sock? I’m in my 60s and hopefully most people who get breast cancer are my age, so you should have the ancient crone version!”.

‘So I don’t like it – it’s way up high and the other one doesn’t match. I look like a Picasso. But I didn’t want to go flat so I said sure, go for the implant.

‘And now the part of Rosie’s left breast will be played by a stand-in for the remainder of the run.’



FrankenTit is published by Carcazon.

Typically, Rose is launching it at an open mic where she’s inviting others to share their poetry or flash prose on topics ‘awkward to read elsewhere’. You can join her, and get a signed copy of FrankenTit, from 7pm on Thursday 12 November at The Golden Ball in Cromwell Road, York.