Rheuma / William Gee

Poetry Book Society Winter 2020 Pamphlet Choice

“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. 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

“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 taking screenshots of poems to show friends. A vulnerable and tender exploration of masculine frailty and health. I will return to it again and again and again.” Abi Palmer

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.

PAPERBACK      ISBN: 978-1-913268-10-7     PUBLISHED 3OTH JULY 2020