Audrey is a published author with no less than six novels under her belt. When she became sick, she turned to poetry as a means of expression. Here Audrey herself describes the genesis of the poem:
"The Cancer Queens" I started writing when we were travelling by hired car though Italy. I couldn't talk because of the awfulness of my voice against the noise of the car was such that I couldn't really endure [it] and John couldn't hear me. So I had to do something inside my head to keep myself from dying of boredom - except when the scenery was really lovely - and I found bits of rhyme coming along - different rhythms, different sorts of rhymes - and gradually, as the journey went on, I realised that what I seemed to have was the beginning and bits and pieces of quite a long poem, with the very important verse in it that kept being repeated, slightly varied, namely, "While we live, we win". And the more I thought about that the more important I thought it was to say it, and so I kept saying it, and that's how the poem grew.'
Here are more poems that Audrey wrote while she was in Trinity Hospice. One of the side effects of her sickness was that she regularly became hoarse and breathless; "The Pause" was written after a therapeutic breathing session that did her a power of good. The latter is a song of praise that tells its own story.
To a motorcyclist seen from a car
see also "anecdotes" : Audrey's travel tales