An anthology of poems and craft essays by and celebrating Disabled writers
Declaring that Disabled people exist, innovate, thrive, and persevere, Every Place on the Map Is Disabled imagines the world we deserve. Its contributors spotlight the wisdom Disabled people embody from living within and navigating the economic and medical systems, communities, and families that often oppress their existence. This anthology is an intersectional compass pointing to the creative ways Disabled people build bridges to each other through Disability poetics and perspectives.
The contributing poets write about love, resistance, loss, pain, beauty, and culture. They capture tender and life-affirming moments where one Disabled person recognizes themself in another. The essays illustrate how Disability poetics suggest avenues for embracing the full spectrum of disability experiences. Every Place on the Map Is Disabled offers students, scholars, members of disability communities, and any reader a direction for paving a wider path toward a collective survival.
Preface: “A New Possible”
Sheila Black
Introduction: A History and Q&A
Michael Northen, Camisha L. Jones, Travis Chi Wing Lau, Naomi Ortiz
I. Intimacies and Interdependence
Naomi Ortiz
Essay: “To Reclaim Power”
“Benefaction”
“Y2K Philadelphia (That time we met)”
“Shelter Is a Privilege (one & two)”
“To the Non-Disabled White Grrrl with the Frida Kahlo Altar in the Living Room”
Liv Mammone
Essay: “Art Object, Talisman”
“Surgery Psalm”
“Reinventing the Scale”
“A Crip Is”
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Essay: “Why We Do This Thing Called Disability Justice Writing”
“I know crips live here”
“Bad road”
“Adaptive device”
Ekiwah Adler-Belendez
Essay: “On Writing ‘I Bargained For This Wheelchair””
“The Speed of Sound: Skydiving from one life to another” / “La velocidad del sonido: Saltando de una vida a otra”
“Falling into Truth” / “En Verdad Caer”
Jay Besemer
Essay: “PERMEABLE”
“eleven”
“Where the Loved Ones Go”
Viktoria Valenzuela
Essay: “My Fibromyalgia, Like My Poetry, Is a Response to Trauma”
“The Scent of a Battle”
“Thank You to the Dust”
“Nightly News”
Osimiri Sprowal
Essay: “A QueerCrip Reflection on Intimacy and Boundary Building”
“Hearth: A QueerCrip Break-up Manifesto”
Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison
Essay: “A Place That’s Ours”
“Dear M—"
“Dear S—"
“Dear M—"
“Dear S—"
“Dear M—"
“Dear S—”
Rachel Scoggins
Essay: “The Magic Consortium of Poetic Disabled Lives”
“Guide to Magic Helium”
“Vivid Dreams”
Daniel Sluman
Essay: “Suspended Disability and the importance of Disability poetry”
“my love is sponsored by the warmth of opiates”
“& this is love”
II. Language
Shahd Alshammari
Essay: “Navigating a Hijacked Body with Two Tongues”
“Public Disgrace”
“Meaninglessness”
DJ Savarese
Essay: “Squawking Joy and Mayhem”
“The Librarian in the Trees”
“Swoon”
“Tongue”
torrin a. greathouse
Essay: “Poems with Bodies Like Mine”
“Weeds”
“Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination Before a Diagnosis Can Be Determined”
“That’s So Lame”
“Essay Fragment: Economic Model of Disability”
Jessica Stokes
Essay: “all the floors I know too well from trying not to trip are one thick memory”
“New Shoes”
Gaia Thomas
Essay: “Hold It against me”
“V”
“VI”
Ilya Kaminsky
Essay: “Reading Celan in Ukraine”
“That Map of Bone and Open Valves”
“In a Time of Peace”
Constance Merritt
Essay: “Some Notes on a (Dis)/Embodied Poetics”
“Jay-Walkin Blues”
“Revelation Blues”
“Less Than Greater Than Blues”
III. Ableism
Aurora Levins-Morales
Essay: “The Why and the How: Disability Justice Poetics”
“Poem for the Bedridden”
“Asher Yatzar”
Roxanna Bennett
Essay: “You Were Born, Ergo, I Love You”
“What do you do for a living?”
“Wherever You Go, There You Are”
Meg Day
Essay: “T-I-M-B-E-R”
“Deaf Erasure of the Gospel According to the TSA Agent at Atlanta International”
“Elegy in Translation”
“10am Is When You Come to Me”
Stephen Lightbown
Essay: “Searching for Dignity”
“AFTER THE CHECK IN”
“GROUNDED”
Lateef McLeod
Essay: “How Poetry Can Evoke Empathy and Meaning”
“Absence of routine”
“So Much”
Jill Khoury
Essay: “Unimagined Possibilities”
“Cranial Nerve II”
“AN OBJECT APPROACHES THE I”
“[rotary nystagmus]”
Kay Ulanday Barrett
Essay: “We Will Buoy Each Other”
“Sick 4 Sick”
“I use the word Disabled”
“In which your white doctor informs you that he was in the Navy & based in the Philippines”
“consider the gender spectrum”
Raymond Antrobus
Essay: “Is There a Right Way to Act Deaf [Captioned]”
“Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris”
“The Mechanism of Speech”
“The Acceptance”
IV. Medicalization
Stephanie Heit
Essay: “Disability as a Creative Practice”
“Treatment Room”
“Recovery Bay”
“Dear Brain,”
Emilia Nielsen
Essay: “A Note on the Poetry and Poetics of Dissonant Disabilities”
“Tremors”
“Emotional Lability”
"Polyphagia"
“Hypertensive”
Travis Chi Wing Lau
Essay: “The Crip Poetics of Pain”
“Treatment”
“On the Anniversary of an X-Ray”
“Brain Fog”
“Pithy”
Kelly Davio
Essay: “A Little Pocket for Rage”
“I May Appear Drunk”
“He Died after a Long Illness”
“Etymological Note”
Camisha L. Jones
Essay: “Poetry, Self-Advocacy, and Survival”
“Accommodation”
“MÉniÈre's Flare”
“In/Ability”
“My Hearing Loss Interrogates the World”
Jesse Rice-Evans
Essay: “I Want to Feel Like Home”
“Pills”
“All I’m looking for is a ceremony”
V. Journeys and Becomings
Andy Jackson
Essay: “Broken Lines and Belonging”
“Quasimodo”
“Double Helix”
Rigoberto GonzÁlez
Essay: “The Man with the Cane”
“To the Man Who Walks with a Cane”
“The Trees Keep Weeping Long after the Rain Has Ended”
Cath Nichols
Essay: “It’s a Bit Like This”
“Tender spots”
Eli Clare
Essay: “Turning Toward Each Other”
“Confluence”
“A Survivor’s Wail”
L. Lamar Wilson
Essay: “‘I Wouldn’t Help It Even If I Could’”
“I Can’t Help It”
“Legion: Human Immunodeficiency Virus”
Emily K. Michael
Essay: “The Blood and Candor of Craft”
“Faith”
“Among the Blind”
“Deficiencies”
Natalie E. Illum
Essay: “If you are Disabled, and there is an [INSERT], you [???].”
“What the brain hemorrhage says”
“If you are Disabled and there is a bomb cyclone, you”
Liz Whiteacre
Essay: “Playing Poetic Telephone to Explore Pain in Poems”
“Pain Pouts”
“The Stoic’s Universe”
Kobus Moolman
Essay: “The Poetics of Falling: an overview”
“The Shoulder”
“Three Views of a Pair of Orthopedic Boots”
“In the Bathroom”
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