Meeting special people is so special, right? Yes, I know that’s repetition, but it deserves repeating! Often its unexpected, and that’s really special. 

Back in March Stevie and I attended the States of Independence Literary Fair, hosted by De Montfort University, here in Leicester. We had a stand to promote Ruler’s Wit writing and Publishing services, and we also both attended some interesting workshop/talk sessions.  

At the stand we spoke to many people, but one stood out. Roland Woodward, a retired chartered forensic psychologist, diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2019, showed interest in our services to help others to self-publish. He told us he had already published several books of poetry, having written poetry all his life. He’d used an American company but he wasn’t entirely happy with the way they’d communicated with him and he had niggles about the results despite the feeling of achievement in having got his work out there available to all on Amazon.  

I worked with Roland to edit his latest collection, ‘The Cancer Years: Ordinary Brave,’ the fourth in a series of collections of poems documenting his fight with prostate cancer. Stevie designed the cover to Roland’s brief and prepared the text for publication.  

The first of the series ‘ The Cancer Years: So Far’ was reviewed in The Lancet and described as “a raw and powerful collection of…candid poems reveal(ing) the day-to-day emotions of a man who feels the helplessness of his condition and repeatedly rallies against it… refus(ing) to let it rule his life.’  

Roland, who has a YouTube channel and also writes a blog, offers fellow sufferers ‘an empowered position towards illness that they may find hard to come by on their own,’ but ill or not, his wry wit and his mastery of words full of emotion invite his readers to laugh and cry with him, and appreciate the value of living every moment of life. Ordinary Brave is a description that matches him perfectly in his eyes; Roland is just a man facing a dilemma in the way that many do and so that is part of ordinary life… but the way he communicates what is happening in the ordinary days of his life is perceptive and thought-provoking in a way that resonates not just with people facing similar challenges, but with everyone, and that, to my eyes, is special indeed.  

His work is available on Amazon, published by Ruler’s Wit.  Amazon.co.uk : roland woodward