Imaginary margins: disability poetics & reinventing the page

Abstract

Disability poetics resist marginalisation by centralising disabled words and experiences, both literally and figuratively. In a world that prioritises ability, disabled bodyminds are marked as deviant from norms and conventions. Disabled poets have the opportunity to resist the normalised ‘body’ of the poem on the page. Conventions, rules, and norms can shape poetry – not just rhyme and metre, but line breaks, line arrangements, and limiting poems to the written linguistic mode. Disability poetics can include techniques such as poems written sideways, prose poems, and multimodally-composed texts, as explored in Tonguebreaker by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound by torrin a. greathouse, How I Bend Into More by Tea Gerbeza, ‘the snip’ by Tate N. Oquendo, and You Bury the Birds in My Pelvis by Kelly Weber. What might a poem inspire when its shape mimics the body? What can a poet bring attention to with simple textual markers like ellipses or strike-throughs? What might readers consider more deeply when exposed to different modes in a poem? Disability poetics has deconstructive benefits to consider (such as resistance to norms), as well as generative benefits (such as sharing different ways of being in and experiencing the world).