A review by foggy_rosamund
The Following Scan Will Last Five Minutes by Lieke Marsman

4.0

This short book contains 10 poems, one long essay, and a series of letters from Sophie Collins, the translator, to Lieke Marsman, the author. Each element is very strong: the poems evoke the fear and despair of being diagnosed with an illness -- in this case, cancer -- and explore disability as a politcal issue. It's rare to read work the centres the political implications or disability and ableism, and Marsman writes about this in an insightful way. She touches on similar themes in her essay, which is in part a memoir of her diagnosis with a rare form of cancer at the age of 26. She discusses the way in which the disabled body becomes a political pawn, and the ways in which ableist society cannot empathise with disability. Collins' letters add an interesting dimension to the discussion -- they discuss the female body in pain, and what it means to be a woman translating a woman. I liked this book very much, but I wanted it to be longer, and my only frustration with it was that it felt too dense, and I wanted the issues raised to be explored more fully. Still, I recommend this.