And we’ve got life. Real life.

Screaming and kicking and vital life,

Blue lights and white knuckles, fighting for life,

Doing and being and sick of your shit.

So when we talk you better listen.

’Cause there ain’t ever been nothing more punk than a cripple.

from ‘Fuck you if your legs work’

Katie (Tom) Walters is a young disabled poet who first caught our eye last year when we read their striking submission. My Body is a Resource I am Willing to Expend is righteously angry and softly comforting in the same moment. We are delighted to release this fantastic debut, pick up a copy and be absorbed in a world of sickness, love and acceptance.

In 2016, Katie (Tom) Walters caught fresher’s flu and never quite recovered and developed a severely disabling, incurable disease. This debut collection exposes the process of acceptance, reconfiguring their relationships and finding their place in an increasingly inaccessible world. From their bed, they rebel in a world of sprawling plants and transcendental tenderness, where righteous crip pride collides with rage, grief, and mourning.

My Body Is A Resource I’m Willing To Expend takes you into a surreal world that mirrors the mental discombobulation that can occur with long term illness. There is nearly scientific attention paid to symptomatic details involved in illness, but they manage to make the traumatic bloom into the poetic by it dual focus of the body’s machinations and the mind’s adaptation to survive. A truly difficult feat superbly articulated by this young writer of note.

Roger Robinson

Katie is an autistic and physically disabled writer who creates performance poetry and interdisciplinary poetic storytelling for theatre. They write complicated metaphors about serious things, like sickness, loss, and love. Their writing is highly political, with a queercrip and cripplepunk ethos, aiming to tell challenging and subversive stories that destabilise the nondisabled norm.

In 2014, Katie was a winner of the SLAMbassadors youth slam, and they’ve stuck to the stage ever since. They have performed at festivals including Greenbelt and Shambala, and worked on commissions for Homotopia and Theatre Absolute. In 2019, they co-founded the disability arts organisation Radical Body, where they produce radical new performances by and for disabled people.

katiewaltersthepoet.wordpress.com

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ONLINE LAUNCH: 16th MAY