Rheuma

William Gee's breathtaking, disruptive debut is written in the language of the body. A song from somewhere deep within, it sings of what the body remembers, how it rebels. These are dizzying poems, opening up and obscuring, primal and elusive. To read them is to understand the precariousness and the violence of love, of living with secrets, of being in a body that won't conform.




"I am winded by this pamphlet. Can't cope almost with how good a debut it is. William Gee's poems are somehow slow-burning and lit up immediately - you read them and feel yourself waking up to what a poem can do. They syntactically twist themselves into a depth of hard articulate pain, but also into a kind of tense hymn about being alive. Rheuma is a riot in and of the body, a flickbook of human want, a distant voice coming closer to tell you secrets you already knew." Wayne Holloway-Smith




"RHEUMA! What an incredibly visceral and tight debut. I devoured it quickly but it kept repeating on me, landing on my organs, my teeth, my skin. I kept finding myself taking screenshots of poems to show my friends: - by the time I was finished I had photographed the entire pamphlet. A vulnerable and tender exploration of masculine frailty and health.



My body is full of RHEUMA. My phone is full of RHEUMA. I will return to it again and again and again." Abi Palmer