Winner of the Disabled Poets Prize for Unpublished Pamphlet 2025
 
Imagine having to convince a computer of your name. 
 
Just a little tweak, at first. It only takes a few moments to spell it out, to wipe the page clean — but it’s so often that you start wondering if you could, indeed, rock Roy. You make a shopping list on the bus, and your elderly neighbour asks why you haven’t included bananas. 
 
Meet Rue. She’s got a bouncing, baby dragon by the name of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and she’s a writer who can’t write. Or speak. She’s lost her voice, and she wants it back. Disability has left her eavesdropping on her own life, and wrestling with the reality of a body that’s falling to pieces.
 
This raw, honest chronicle of loss and longing will have you holding your breath. Tender, irreverent, and determinedly dismantling the box, this poetry is punctuated with grief and joy — and self-aware software.
 
 
"A joyous and visceral integration of myth, embodied struggle and triumph.” - Kate Fox, Poet & Broadcaster
 
“Rue presents us with an enrapturing series of poems on the tense edge of identity, and closes on the beautiful gratitude of a body that keeps trying.” - Kathryn O’Driscoll, UK National Slam Champion and World Slam Finalist 
 
"Collinge crafts a folk-realism where the disabled body can speak uninterrupted and uncorrected from a place of truth and power.” - Carmen Marcus, Award-winning Author of How Saints Die 
 
"Dragon taming through a lens of pain, joy, love and avocados. Rue's pamphlet left my whole body fizzing in recognition and awe.” - Lisette Auton, Disabled Activist & Award-winning Writer
 
"Wrestling with an unpredictable, unreliable body-mind and the beast of constant pain takes a skilled tamer indeed; to turn that struggle into such a tremendous flight of generous, entertaining poetry is the very definition of “uplifting”.” - Kirsten Luckins, Director of Tees Women Poets & Dramaturg