QUEERING CRIP, CRIPPING QUEER

QCCQ Cover

Rainbow collection of disability symbols under text reading QUEERING CRIP, CRIPPING QUEER, workshop facilitated by Robin Eames.

I did a workshop today at the University of Queensland for the Queer Collaborations conference, titled QUEERING CRIP, CRIPPING QUEER.

A recording of the workshop is available here (Auslan interpreted) and the slides can be accessed here.

Love & solidarity,
robin

On the movement of bodies, or, the transgender celestial

I have a poem in the latest issue of Voiceworks, #111, Riff. This poem is a lot of things: a love letter, an exercise in surreality, and a conversation between binary and nonbinary forms of trans identity. It draws on ancient Sumerian, Greek, and Egyptian astronomical theories, including those of Anaxagoras, Anaximander, Aristotle, Empedocles, Thales, and Ptolemy.

You can buy the issue here.

 

my body is a disc floating on an endless ocean

gently orbiting the distant island of your body

 

daylight reigns over my body and night over

your body black and absent of suns or stars

 

you are an immense vault studded with tiny

points of perfect light in which i am enclosed

 

the surface of my skin is much colder than

yours which is formed out of blazing metal

 

your body is a binary system while my body

continues to resist all binary classification

 

i am growing into a great old oak tree whose

questing branches twine around and into you

 

my body is no longer capable of sustaining life

and yet is still capable of sustaining your body

 

i retain my own field of gravity which is several

times heavier than the lighter gravity you exude

 

i am suspended in endless space watching you

plummet inevitably into a vast and infinite void

 

your body is a chariot wheel of mist-shrouded

fire encircling the hollow cylinder of my body

 

my body revolves not around the sun as initially

thought but in fact revolves around your body

 

the death of my body approaches rapidly but i

have every hope that your body will live forever

 

i am constructed from four elements while you

are formed of a single fifth and mythic element

 

you are a quintessence of luminiferous aether and

i simply consist of classical earth air water and fire

 

your existence is a scientific marvel while i am

considered to be a mathematical impossibility

 

my body is doubted by philosophers of antiquity

whose texts questioned the veracity of your body

 

unbeknown to many my body is not a flawless

sphere like yours but rather very slightly elliptical

 

Accessibility

A couple of people have noted that they’re having difficulty reading my posts because of the lack of contrast. The font, colour, and contrast settings on my site are based on my own access needs (I’m photosensitive and prone to migraines), but if you would like to read my posts in higher contrast with a dark font on light background, you can do so at the WordPress reader here.

I’m going to ask around and see if I know anyone who can help me sort out website toggles for colour, contrast, and font size, because multimodal access is important!

Love & solidarity
robin

Radio segments & lists of autistics

I’m flat out working on my thesis right now but thought I’d chuck up a blog post with a link to a couple of radio segments I’ve done lately – one with Laura Cheyne for 2ser’s Think: Health on how the media marginalises disability, and one with Swetha Das and Maddison Connaughton for FBi Radio’s Backchat, on the NDIS and the ditching of the Medicare levy.

I’ve also been featured in a couple of excellent lists of autistic writers, artists, & activists on the heels of Autism Bewareness Month – one over at Rooted in Rights, compiled by the inestimable Alaina Leary, and one compiled by Anomalous Press. The latter includes the loveliest description of my work I’ve ever read:

Robin M. Eames’ work explores the mythic and the personal. But it’s in the fissures, the spaces in-between, where their art finds purchase. Here it grows and spreads, providing shelter, nourishment, and encouragement for other marginalized disabled people to continue on.

I’m currently working on a very exciting project with Alice Wong for the Disability Visibility Project, so keep an eye out for that! I’ll post details here when the project goes live.

Love & solidarity as always x

Article out in Junkee on Stephen Hawking

I wrote an article for Junkee about Stephen Hawking and the media reception of his death. You can read it here.

Excerpt:

Stephen Hawking died two days ago. He was an extraordinary and uncommon academic, a scientist with a deep sense of artistry and a wicked sense of humour. And he was a bright fire in the lonely sky of disabled academia.

I am not a scientist. But I am a wheelchair-using academic, and I have a lot of feelings about space; my thesis has “cosmogonies” in the title. Hawking’s work was a joy and his presence in the world was a comforting reminder that people like me belong in academia just as much as any abled person does.

So it is disappointing, and deeply hurtful, to see how abled people are handling the news of Hawking’s death.

Many abled people have created artistic depictions where Hawking’s spirit is seen standing or walking away from his wheelchair. Leaving aside the fact that Hawking was a staunch atheist who described the idea of an afterlife as a “fairy story”, this fundamentally misunderstands the function of a wheelchair in a disabled person’s life.

Hawking is not “finally free” of his wheelchair now that he is dead. His wheelchair is the thing that gave him freedom during his life. The only time he ever envisioned himself mystically floating away into a sparkly cosmos, it was with his chair: go ahead and watch his cover of Monty Python’s ‘Galaxy Song’ if you want to see for yourself.

Read the full article on Junkee here.

 

 

 

MELANCHOLIA

I have a blackout poem out in Streetcake Magazine today!

It uses the text of Robert Burton’s Last Will and Testament, contained in the front matter of The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Philosophically, Medicinally, Historically, Opened and Cut Up, first published 1621.

The poem and its transcription are reproduced below.

 

melancholia

 

Cui vitam dedit et mortem

Melancholia

 

Azure                   a crescent

death,                 following

casualties to which our life is subject

our                   unsettled states

have

perfect

adventure     of which I am ignorant

First

whensoever

I make

Legacies out of

specified

life                             Lady

if he be not

of the Ground                 I give

equally

other

days                                                                   I

long   to

bestow

purpose

to the

grave

perpetual

 

to redeem

my

remembrance

I desire

to be

where she is buried

besides                         I die

till then

 

Disability Day of Mourning fundraiser

fight

Image: a black shirt with text in light blue and bright red, reading MOURN FOR THE DEAD, FIGHT LIKE HELL FOR THE LIVING, a quote from Mother Jones.

I’m volunteering as Sydney site coordinator for the Disability Day of Mourning again this year, but I need some help to cover the costs of venue hire, public liability insurance, and printing event materials.

If you can, please consider buying a shirt (or a hoodie, sweatshirt, or tank top) to help cover the costs involved. There’s an option to add a donation to the cost of the shirt if you’re feeling especially kind. They come in black, charcoal, navy, indigo, and purple.

Link to the Bonfire campaign here: Disability Day of Mourning

Alternatively, if you hate wearing clothes but would still like to help out, you can send $$ via paypal.me/robinmarceline.

Crip love & solidarity 

In the past five years, over 550 disabled people have been murdered by their parents, relatives or caregivers.

On Thursday, March 1st, disability communities in Sydney and around the world will gather to remember the disabled victims of filicide – disabled people murdered by their family members or caregivers.

In the year since our last vigil, our community has lost 100 more people to filicide. These are just the cases that we are aware of – since we began monitoring this issue, we learn about more murders every week. The total number of deaths is likely higher than the amount that reach the media. This problem is made worse by irresponsible news coverage which presents these murders as the sympathetic acts of loving and desperate parents, by a justice system which often gives a lighter sentence to a parent who kills a disabled child, and by the dangerous cultural prejudice that says a disabled life is not worth living.

Media coverage and public discourse about disability filicides frequently justifies them as “understandable” and sometimes “merciful”, rather than appropriately condemning the crimes and those who commit them. If the parent or caregiver stands trial, they are given sympathy and comparatively lighter sentences, if they are sentenced at all. The victims are disregarded, blamed for their own murder at the hands of people they should have been able to trust, and ultimately forgotten. And then the cycle repeats.

But it doesn’t have to.

For the last six years, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, ADAPT, Not Dead Yet, the National Council on Independent Living, the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, the American Association of People with Disabilities, and other disability rights organisations worldwide have come together to send a clear message that disability is not a justification for violence. We read the victims’ names, see their photographs, and gather what information we can about their lives.

We hold the Day of Mourning vigils to draw attention to the violent injustice faced by disabled people, to commemorate the lives of victims of filicide, and demand justice and equal protection under the law for all people with disabilities.

Find your local vigil site here: Day of Mourning Vigil Sites

View the online Disability Memorial here: Disability Memorial

NOTHING ABOUT US WITHOUT US
 

QUEERCRIP COMMUNITY + ARCHER @ THE RED RATTLER

Archer Magazine 9

[image description: the cover of Archer Magazine’s Issue 9, depicting Abbey Mag, a beautiful black fat femme looking over their shoulder, wearing gold eyeshadow, pink lipstick, pink heart-shaped earrings and a pink faux fur shrug.]

I wrote an article for Archer Magazine Issue #9 about finding queercrip family and community. You can preview the issue here, or buy it here.

I’ll be reading an excerpt at the launch party, Wednesday 24 January at 6:30pm, at the Red Rattler Theatre, Marrickville. You can buy tickets here.

—

Join us for the launch of Archer Magazine #9 in SYDNEY!

A very special launch party to celebrate Issue #9: Family, and also celebrating Archer Magazine founder Amy Middleton’s last issue as editor before taking maternity leave.

$5 Ticket price covers cost of the event including venue hire, performers, speakers, and AUSLAN interpreters
$10 Ticket price covers event costs plus a small donation to Archer Magazine
$20 Ticket price covers event costs plus a copy of Archer Magazine #9 at the discounted launch price of $15 (magazine to be collected at the launch)

–Issue #9: Family–
Polyamory, infidelity, HIV and gay men, trans kids, fat femme visibility. We don’t mean the traditional kind of family, we mean the most important kind.

Come celebrate, connect with the community, grab a copy of the magazine and have a dance.

Venue: Red Rattler Theatre, 6 Faversham St, Marrickville.
The Red Rattler is a community run, accessible theatre space. Venue is wheelchair accessible, bathrooms are gender neutral. The event will be AUSLAN interpreted by Amanda Galea, with simple (no flashing/strobe) lighting, and quiet/dark spaces available. There will be breaks between each speaker for a chance to digest, and process. Any other accessibility needs, please contact Lucy, lucy@archermagazine.com.au

We acknowledge our event will take place on stolen land from the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to Indigenous elders past, present and future. Sovereignty was never ceded.