We Are The Winter People is the Collected Poems of Jenny Rowbory
This book is the next big push in Jenny’s Herculean fundraising attempt for life-saving surgery in the US, which is not available to her on the NHS, nor privately in the UK.
More details on what exactly the fundraising is for can be found at www.gofundme.com/savejenny
We Are The Winter People launched on 8th September 2021
Buy the Book
There are print, ebook and audiobook versions of We Are The Winter People.
The audiobook is also available on Audible, iTunes, Downpour and the Google Play Store.
Print Book ISBN: 978-1-3999-0047-8
Proceeds will go to Jenny’s life-saving neurosurgery in the US: www.gofundme.com/savejenny
The audiobook was produced by Elliott Frisby of Monkeynut Audiobooks and narrated by Angharad Price (@aejprice) an actress who also has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Angharad read Jenny’s poems at the November 2020 fundraising event.
What people have said
“This is a vital, fluent, sometimes funny, sometimes heart-breaking collection about the reality of suffering, by a poet whose energy and grace are always salted with wryness.”
Martyn Halsall, poet and author of ‘Sanctuary’, writing in the Church Times
“Absolutely loved it!”
Adrian Plass, bestselling author of ‘The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass, Aged 37 3/4’ and more
“These are poems for you, especially if you are going through some very deep waters. Her words are brutally honest, at times playful, even in her disappointments. But they are full of life and encouragement. I was going through a deep place myself and I found her poems a wonderful encouragement to finding God’s love in the midst of excruciating and incomprehensible pain.”
Wayne Jacobsen, bestselling author of ‘He Loves Me!’
Any reader finishing the book is left with a sense of hope and resilience because, despite everything, Jenny Rowbory has a deep faith in God. Although she sometimes flails out at Him, ‘Can’t You Be A Magician, Lord?’, and sometimes questions her relationship with Him, ‘Let Me In’, she has faith that God is always there for everyone.
Clare Dudman, award-winning author of ‘Edge of Danger’ and ‘A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees’
“Full of raw beauty and rare insight, these are poems that bypass your mind and go straight for the solar plexus. Her poetry will instantly resonate with anyone who has experienced loss and lostness. I heartily commend her poetry as a wise and empathetic companion in the face of all kinds of suffering.”
Tanya Marlow, disability campaigner and author of ‘Those Who Wait’
Reading by Angharad Price
Here you can see video of Angharad Price reading one of the poems in Jenny’s collection:
Biography of Jenny Rowbory
Jenny Rowbory was born in 1986 in Ashford, Middlesex, and currently lives in Wales. During her first year at university in 2004, she became ill with a virus that caused severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (inflammation of the brain and spinal cord), causing Jenny to become bed-bound and acutely ill for the last sixteen and a half years.
In May 2015, after genetic testing, Jenny was also diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. This genetic disorder causes the body to produce faulty collagen. The biggest problem for Jenny is that the faulty collagen causes the ligaments and connective tissue in her neck to be lax, which means that it can’t support the spine or skull. So the vertebrae and skull move around and subluxate (subluxation is like dislocation) and blood flow is severely reduced, causing increasing numbness. This became life-threatening and Jenny had to have an operation in January 2020 to try to fuse her neck in place to save her life, as well as a decompression surgery for Chiari Malformation. Unfortunately the fusion surgery was not a success and Jenny became a lot more disabled and it’s too dangerous for her to move her neck or head at all. The only neurosurgeon in the world who specialises in fusion (and fusion revision) surgeries and invasive bolt traction testing to determine the correct fusion position for highly complex Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome patients, is in the USA. Jenny is clinging to life by the skin of her teeth and has been trying to hang on for over a year while trying to fundraise enough money for the three surgeries that this neurosurgeon has said Jenny needs to have a hope of staying alive and regaining some sort of quality of life. The money raised by the sales of this audiobook will go directly towards this goal of getting Jenny to America to have the life-saving surgeries she desperately needs, which aren’t available on the NHS. If you would like to donate further, you can do so through her fundraising page, which is GoFundMe.com/SaveJenny. Jenny would very much like to stay alive and is very grateful for any donation you’re able to give.
Jenny hasn’t been able to move her head off her pillow since the unsuccessful fusion surgery. She can’t look down, up or side to side. Only a patch of ceiling directly above her is within her field of vision. The only part of her body that she has seen since the operation are her hands, because she can’t look down to see anything else. She’s unable even to look at the screen of her phone, even if she tries to hold it up directly above her to put it in her field of vision, because doing so damages her neck more. So she has been completely cut off from the world and from other people. Her only solace has been audiobooks. So this audiobook to raise the funds for her surgeries is particularly fitting.