Released February 28th, 2022 // 42 pages // 978-1-915079-87-9
 
*FIRST 40 COPIES SIGNED BY AUTHOR*
 
Cancer [+Pop Punk] is the debut pamphlet from working class poet Dean Rhetoric. The pamphlet is a meditation on teenage angst, loss and alienation, backdropped by the music of Rhetoric’s formative years. Cancer [+Pop Punk] is full of poignant, often devastating poetry, told through forms which cleverly navigate the overlap between words and music, where ‘black octaves’ are ‘blooming under the skin’. Rhetoric is a poet with a big heart, proud to pin it to his shirtsleeve, in these beautiful, sad and deeply moving poems.
 
 
PRAISE for Cancer [+Pop Punk]:
'Dean Rhetoric’s Cancer [+ Pop Punk] is a deeply poignant pamphlet exploring illness and the subsequent grief of losing a loved one. The author uses music to signpost the poems with personal and lyrical significance, intelligently connecting the reader to the struggles contain within. Rhetoric explains that “there are times when the words we don’t use hum a chorus too loud to ignore”  In doing so, Cancer [+ Pop Punk]  builds to an emotional crescendo, one that cannot fail to reach the heart. A luminous debut.'
   — Stuart McPherson, Waterbearer