Call For Poetry for Disabilty Poetry Anthology

Poets Sheila Black and Jennifer Bartlett are putting together an anthology of
poets with physical disabilities. Below is their call for poems and essays.

We are ideally looking for poets with physical disabilities, although we are
not excluding submissions from abled-poets writing about a poet with a
physical disability. The format will be 3-5 poems and a short open-ended
essay (750- 1000 words). The essay should address how disability manifests
itself (or doesn't) in your work. The essay can also discuss identity or
anti-identity poetics.

Please send 7-10 poems, a short publishing biography (include your book
titles) and a one paragraph description of an essay you would like to write
to rejennifer@gmail.com AND sheilablack@hotmail.com.

Deadline July 1st. Also, email with any questions.

Please see the request and description below:

Yet our goal is not to produce a book that is strictly polemical but rather
one that looks at poetry first. The spectrum of poets writing on the topic,
especially today, articulate disability in specific and surprising ways. While
the poets who make up this proposed anthology are poets whose aesthetic lens
has been torqued or shaped by their bodies, the group is eclectic as fits
the topic—for not only is each disability unique, but even within a single
person the *experience *of disability is a dynamic one. Some poets we plan
to include, while forethinkers in the poetry world, are not known as
“disability poets.” Rather, they came to have bodily differences later in
life. Some are activists and heavily entrenched in Disability Studies.
Others, while not activists, write about their singular experience, in ways
that are formally and philosophically challenging. In addition, the poets
included represent many different modes and movements in modern poetry. Part
of what is so energizing about considering the current landscape of disability
poetry is the degree to which thinking about disability enlists or engages
viscerally many of the core concerns animating other poetry movements from
the New Formalists to the New Sincerity to the Gurlesque. The mediations on
the body and commodification, and on the very nature and being of beauty,
that drive many of the poets in this collection are concerns that are not
only universal, but also acutely urgent in our times.

A Map of This World

Occasionally it is useful to look back at how far we’ve come – or haven’t come. When A. J. Baird placed the first call for poetry by writers with disabilities in an issue of Kaleidoscope in 1983, his intent was to replace the pity-filled and patronizing poetry that turned people with disabilities into poster children with “Tough-mind poetry grounded in physical fact.” Now in 2010, when poets like Sheila Black or Laurie Clements Lambeth write nuanced poetry that is not only artful but explodes the older patronizing images of disability, it is easy to forget that their work rests on some intermediary writers whose poetry may not have been quite as sophisticated but which was never the less barrier-breaking. One of the most impressive of these was Dara McLaughlin, whose book A Map of This World, now almost out of print, should probably be required reading for any poet who thinks she has something new to say about disability.

Any reader opening McLaughlin’s book does not even have to get as far as the first poem to realize that this writer is out to change some perceptions about disability and that she is not going to be subtle about it. The first heads up comes table of contents announces such titles, "The Exact Color of My Pubic Hair," "Twenty-Two Stupid Things to Say to a Crip," and "Yes, the Paralyzed Girl Can Have Babies." She also makes a point of politicizing the dedication, “Dedication: For Santo, Marla, Daina raised by a wheelchair mom and we did fine.”

McLaughlin works in two directions. The first, as the titles suggest, is in content. She is not offering easy solutions. There is no glossing over the realities of depending upon a wheelchair rather than her legs, but she also avoids platitudinous images.


Some mornings
damn them
some mornings I forget

I unfurl my pillow, turn around
and there it is
the "chair", sitting there, waiting

the necessary demon -
empty until I shake my hear free of demons
slip out of bed to nestle my body into its curve


Though McLaughlin does to some extent sound her barbaric yawp, she also is searching for new possible forms of expression for disability in poetry. This is the second direction in which it works. The book experiments with list poem, haiku sequence, odes, prose poems and forms with no particular names. Not all of these are successful, but that is what experimentation is about.
Her use of the term "Staring Back" in a poem title references Kenny Fries’ anthology of the same name, very popular when McLaughlin was writer. It is a move that disability theorist David Mitchell suggests is necessary for writers in this new field.

A Map of this World was McLaughlin’s only book of poetry, but it is sufficient to warrant her consideration as an important voice in disability poetry during the 1990’s. You will probably have to find a used copy on line somewhere, but if you can do it, the book is well worth the effort.

Beauty is a Verb

This year’s Associated Writers Programs (AWP) conference held in Denver, Colorado next month will include at least one panel discussion on disability poetry. The title of the panel is, Beauty is a Verb – The New Disability Poetics and is described by itself organizer, poet Sheila Black, as following:

“This panel will discuss how the poetry of disability seeks to tackle and refigure traditional discourses of the disabled around an interrogation of "normalcy" and of the notions of beauty and function that have been so foundational to Western culture and aesthetics. The panel will focus on poetic strategies, including the subversion of historical discourses and the decentering of the subject through which a range of disabled poets have sought to address these issues.”

Black will be joined the panel by four other poets/scholars Barbara Crooker, Jennifer Bartlett, Ann Bogle, and Ellen McGrath Smith . Michael Northen, an editor of Wordgathering will moderate the panel. The panel promises to be exciting with this opinionated and diverse group. It is a chance to hear first hand about many of the issues raised in disability literature by the writers themselves. Sample poetry from each of the panelists can be seen in the current issue of Wordgathering.

Paul Kahn: Something Close to Beautiful

Early New Years Day of this year, poet, playwright, critic and essayist Paul Kahn died. Paul was not connected with an academic institution. He was not a bullhorn for any particular disabilities movement. Because of that, his work will go unnoticed by most, and that is a pity because, in many ways, Paul was just the sort of man whose work provides the bricks and mortar of disabilities literature. His was the voice that disabilities literature was meant to express in all of its unresolved complexity.

One senses that the protagonist of Kahn’s most successful play, The Making of Free Verse, Joshua was in many ways his alter ego. Joshua, a writer with muscular dystrophy, both embraced and resented his wheelchair. While frustrated with the way that he was perceived by those who could walk and by the medical system in general, he was equally cynical about political correctness.

Asked to write about his few of disability literature Kahn responded, “ I was recently asked to write something about the literature of disability… My first impulse was to say no: there’s nothing different about us. But then I realized that this was a conditioned, reflexive response to an oppressive society which scorns us for our differences, which tells us that we are unworthy of love and incapable of living productive, happy lives. .. A more considered response would be to say that we and, therefore, our arts are not fundamentally different, but we do embody in a more dramatic way, the universal human condition.”

It was from this particular perspective that Kahn does put his own stamp on disability literature and contributes to its development. One of Kahn’s gifts was that he was able to look find these commonalities in looking unsentimentally at his own particular body.

Body, gruff husband,

there you are again-

always disappointingly the same.

Never get more handsome.

Always on minute inspection

ominously changed – more sags and creases,

the flesh slipping off the bone,

a map of entropy.

Yet he could also be wondrously hopeful, as in his marvelous poem “Katharine’s Room.”

In Katharine’s room I do not hate my body anymore.

In Katharine’s room I am happy to have this body

that can feel her friendly heat.

I am happy to let he sculpt me

with her kindness and her hands.

She remakes me into something close to beautiful.

Kahn frequently wrote of sexuality, but was able to strike a balance that often seems difficult for poets who write from wheelchairs. While seeing himself as a sexual being, he did not feel the need to overcome stereotypes through shock. His work is open, but not in your face.

As a drama writer for Opening Stages, he had the opportunity to interview other playwrights with disabilities, like Charles Mee, who took very different approaches to the role of accessibility and drama. While Mee insisted that all of the major roles he wrote were capable of being played by anyone regardless of physical ability, race or gender, regardless of subject, Kahn insisted that his plays actually grapple up front with issues of disability.

Kahn’s work was continually in progress. He provides no quick fixes or easy. It is likely that when the first – and long overdo – comprehensive anthology of disability literature appears, Kahn’s work will be missing from it.It is not always true that we stand on the shoulders of giants. Sometimes we stand on firm ground created unnoticed by others now gone.

Literary Mama

Ona Gritz is a poet with a lot of talent whose work is really starting to get around. Since the publication of Left Standing, her work has appeared in a number of magazines including Disabilitiy Studies Quarterly and Barefoot Muse . Her prose essays about the writer's life are also catching on. One will be coming up in a future issue of Lilith while another is being reprinted in The Utne Reader . Despite the crisp, non-sentimantal poetry Gritz writes related to disability, she also has a regular column in Literary Mama , a column that reflects on the myriad issues that arise for the woman who is both a disciplined writer and a mother. Finally, Gritz was recently part of an exciting dialogue on writing and disability with poets Kathi Wolfe, Linda Cronin and Patricia Wellingham-Jones in Wordgathering. She is definitely a poet to keep on your radar.

Deaf American Poetry

For anyone with even a passing interest in Deaf culture, Deaf American Poetry edited by John Lee Clark and published by Gallaudet University Press is essential reading. It is also a book that anyone teaching a course in disability literature needs to keep handy on their shelf. Quite simply, what Clark does is chart the development of Deaf poetry in the United from the poems written by deaf writers in from the early 1800’s up through today. He accomplishes this by introducing each poet in historical and social context, then supplying and exam of the poets work. The journey takes the reader from John R. Burnett to contemporary poets like Raymond Luczak and John Christopher Heuer. Along the way the way poets tackle such a wide range of topics as whether a Deaf poet can actually pray (no lie – that is the kind of ignorance that the Deaf faced) to the linguistic and translation issues of American Sign language poetry.
The resistance to translation comes from a somewhat different direction than some readers might expect. As Clark points out, something is always lost in translation, which is why ASL poets like Clayton Valli strenuously resisted having their work translated into print until he was able to see what a poet of the caliber of Ray Luczak could do with his work. Was Valli right in resisting? That is something readers will have to judge, but Luczak’s rendering of Valli’s popular poem “A Dandelion”it does give readers not literate in ASL some sense of what creating poetry in ASL is about. Other writers have tried incorporating ASL poetic techniques into traditional print poems.
Naturally, anyone trying to define the parameters of a genre are going to include as well as exclude, so we do not really know who Clark may have excluded among contemporary poets who are biologically deaf, but who do not consider themselves part of Deaf culture. Every anthology is political to some extent, though, and Clark’s book is an extremely important one.

Hyperlexia Journal

Hyperlexia: A Literary Journal Celebrating the Autistic Spectrum is looking for fiction, poetry, and personal essays. The deadline for the inaugural issue are December 31.

The editors offer the following submission guidelines:

• Hyperlexia is interested in honest, thoughtful, well-written poetry and prose about being autistic and loving someone with autism. We want genuine and truthful writing about autism. Our journal is a celebration of real life with autism, both the good and the bad. You can be serious, sad, or funny. We believe in respecting the diversity of the human mind and discriminatory writing or hatred of any kind will not be published.



• Submissions should be 1500 words or less.


• Send submission inside the body of the email, as well as attached as a Word doc.

Submissions can be sent to submissions@hyperlexiajournal.com. The journal itself will be found at www.hyperlexiajournal.com.

Foust, Lambeth and LaFleche: Three Worth Reading

Wordgathering has just reviewed the work of three new poets whose work deserves further mention: Rebecca Foust, Ellen LaFleche and Laurie Clements Lambeth.
So here goes.

Foust’s Dark Card centers around the experience of the poet and her son, who has Aspergers. The title refers to the card of the “idiot savant” that she has to continually play in order to help her son navigate through the cruelty, both intentional and unintentional, that he encounters on a regular basis. Foust also explores the emotional terrain of the narrator herself. In both cases, the book is remarkably free of standard clichés of disability.

Freedom from clichés is also one of the many virtues of Lambeth’s Veil and Burn , a book in which the author explores the unravelings of her own nervous system. The book sandwiches poems with prose fragments to tell the story, but it is not a story in any conventional linear sense. Mix sexuality, optic neuritis, horses, hypothesthesia, Georgia O’keefe, Alfred Hitchcock and you get…well a book of disability poetry much too rich and complex to describe in this paragraph. It's better to check out the Wordgathering review.

Less structurally complex but equally as emotionally sophisticated is Lafleche’s Estella, With One Lung. While Foust’s invectives against the medical establishment occasionally border on rant, LaFleche’s more subtle accusations are actually much more cutting. Estella follows the life a blue collar woman and her family from the time of her refusal of further chemotherapy through her death. The major drawback of LaFleche’s work is that it is still in manuscript form – one that some publisher really needs to grab.

All three of these works presage good things for disability poetry. They are pushing the genre, each author in her own way. Surely bookstores can make room on the shelves for quality work like this, but they will only do it if college instructors recommend these to their classes and readers of poetry request them. Please do.