Thomas Rabies
Nonsense writer.
Thomas Rabies is a nonsense writer in the spirit of James Joyce, known for distributing zines that revel in sound, rhythm and linguistic mischief. Inspired by Hausmann, Blonk and Ratkje, his work explores the playful side of language—growls, shrieks and invented glossolalia spill across the page in bursts of phonetic play. Each zine is a celebration of language unbound, where meaning takes a back seat to sensation. Rabies sees words as raw matter, pushing past conventional form to rediscover the primal force of expression. His pages don’t just speak—they roar.
Thomas Rabies is an avant-garde nonsense writer working in the tradition of linguistic play. His zines are shaped by the invented language of Finnegans Wake, as well as the wild vocal experiments of artists like Jaap Blonk and Maja Ratkje.
Rather than follow conventional narrative or meaning, Rabies focuses on the raw sound of words. His writing brims with growls, shrieks, tongue-twisters and made-up glossolalia. The result is a heady rush of phonetic invention—language unloosed from its usual rules.
For Rabies, sense is optional. What matters is the pleasure of turning breath into strange, expressive utterances. Each zine invites readers to experience language not as something to decode, but as something to feel—visceral, rhythmic and alive.
His work pushes back against the tidiness of everyday speech and writing. Through nonsense and abstraction, Rabies opens up new terrain, where words can be wild again. It’s not about clarity. It’s about freedom.