Rebel Blood Cells

"Jamie Woods' Rebel Blood Cells explores a cancer diagnosis with sensitivity and humour. Opening up the spaces of hospitals and wards, Woods juxtaposes cancer treatment and Star Wars, Blue Peter and blood banks. Here's a poet who can make you laugh and cry."
- ZO? BRIGLEY author of Hand & Skull, editor of Poetry Wales

Rebel Blood Cells is a poetry pamphlet that explores Jamie Woods' experience of acute leukaemia, the illness, the chemotherapy, and the PTSD that followed.

Raw and honest, the poems mix pop culture obsessions with medical side-effects, and find moments of humour, regret, sadness and relief in the most difficult time of Jamie's life.

This debut pamphlet contains poems that have featured in publications including Ink Sweat & Tears, Marble Broadsheet, The Wombwell Rainbow, and the Hippocrates Prize shortlisted Ring The Bell.

All publisher and author proceeds from sales of this publication are being donated to the charity Leukaemia Care UK, where Jamie is Poet in Residence.

"Jamie Woods writes with sensitivity, vulnerability and stark honesty about the complications of receiving a cancer diagnosis. A distinct and necessary voice in poetry."
- MARI ELLIS DUNNING author of Pearl & Bone and Salacia

"Jamie applies a deftness of form and tone to crack through a bleak shell, illuminating catching moments and tenderly reaching for what it means to be alive."
- JAMIE HALE author of Shield

"In Rebel Blood Cells, Jamie Woods brings difficult subject matter to life. In a collection that's equal parts expansive intergalactic blood battle and soft contemplative internal conflict, the poet takes readers across the highest of Roppongi landscapes to the last follicles of hair circling the drain of a Welsh hospital ward shower. Through a blurred but brutally honest lens, Woods explores the shock and hopelessness of an unexpected illness in a mind searching beyond its constrictions and yearning for the lifeblood of the dazzling Blackpool Promenade lights. Important poetry that refuses to make you comfortable, and instead, implores you to pay attention."
- DEAN RHETORIC author of Foundry Songs

"In a brave, emotionally-charged collection Rebel Blood Cells, Swansea-based writer Jamie Woods exposes us to the confusion, shock and desperate anger resulting from a diagnosis of Leukaemia. In these poems, we shuttle backwards and forwards through time and memories, through frantic and anguished reflections, as the writer makes repeated attempts to come to terms with a life-threatening illness and what it might mean for the future. With references to Star Wars, the Manic Street Preachers, and eighties television, this harrowing, yet witty collection, makes for a memorable read with its sensitive and creative insight into a situation which was suddenly forced upon him."
- MATTHEW M. C. SMITH author of The Keeper of Aeons and editor of Black Bough Poetry