Cancer – Tom Raworth’s ‘lost’ book – was originally to have been published by Frontier Press in 1973. After Frontier’s funds ran out, the typescript was returned to its author, and its opening section, ‘Logbook’, was published as a standalone volume by Poltroon Press in 1976. Revised versions of Cancer’s other two sections were published separately in the 1980s; the original versions of both – the ‘Journal’ as written in the opening months of 1971, and the letters Raworth sent to Edward Dorn in the spring of that year, during his residency at the Yaddo artists’ retreat in Saratoga Springs, New York – are published here for the first time.