provided upon request – from my messy notes for Wollongong Writers Fest. i am resisting the urge to fill out this painfully incomplete list further, because otherwise it will languish in my to-do list indefinitely

i think a lot about Jennifer Bartlett’s contribution to the NYT series on disabled poets… Poetry is a Way of Being in the World That Wasn’t Made for Us (ft. Sheila Black, Daniel Simpson, Kathi Wolfe, Lateef McLeod, Camisha L. Jones, torrin a. greathouse, Kenny Fries, Alison Hedge Coke, and Ellen McGrath Smith).

Vanamali Hermans – On Hospitals, in the most recent issue of Overland

APJ,  vol. 9.2, DIS─.

Beauty is a Verb

Stairs and Whispers

Audre Lorde – Sister Outsider, The Cancer Journals

Lucia Perillo

Ilya Kaminsky – Deaf Republic 

Jim Ferris (author of one of my favourite poems, Poet of Cripples)

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha – poetry and also Care Work

Eli Clare – Exile and Pride

Khairani Barokka

Kay Ulandlay Barrett

Laura Hershey

Quin Eli 

Jorge Luis Borges (only learnt recently that he had been blind for seven years when he wrote my favourite short story of anything I’ve read, The House of Asterion)

Nancy Mairs – On Being a Cripple 

‘I am a cripple. I choose this word to name me. I choose from among several possibilities, the most common of which are “handicapped” and “disabled.” I made the choice a number of years ago, without thinking, unaware of my motives for doing so. Even now, I’m not sure what those motives are, but I recognize that they are complex and not entirely flattering. People–crippled or not–wince at the word “cripple,” as they do not at “handicapped” or “disabled.” Perhaps I want them to wince. I want them to see me as a tough customer, one to whom the fates /gods /viruses have not been kind, but who can face the brutal truth of her existence squarely. As a cripple, I swagger.’

Bill Peace – Bad Cripple 

Stephen Kuusisto – Planet of the Blind

Jillian Weise – Common Cyborg

Mia Mingus

Frantz Fanon – Wretched of the Earth; Black Skin, White Masks

Susan Sontag – Illness as a Metaphor

Alison Kafer – Feminist, Queer, Crip

Alice Wong’s Disability Visibility Project

Kerima Çevik