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About this book
Poetry Book Society Recommendation
This groundbreaking anthology brings together one hundred deaf, disabled and neurodivergent poets from across the international arena, from emerging voices to world-renowned authors, and offers an urgent redress, unpicking many misapprehensions and misrepresentations.
The word versus means pitching one thing against another. To be versus versus, therefore, is a paradox, but paradox can be helpful – it can open a space for deeper thought. This anthology aims to be such a space.Here, the reader will encounter poems of love and pain, self-care and companionship; poems which challenge cultural, medical and political agendas and policies. There are war poems, poems as acts of witness and solidarity, poems which address the impacts of the climate emergency. There are humorous poems, nature poems, and much more. The selection also draws together poetry in a wide variety of styles and forms, and from different traditions, such as haiku, renga, sonnet, villanelle, prose poem, performance poem, and sign language. Building on the work of decades of disability justice advocacy, Versus Versus offers a poetry of assertiveness and immense vitality.
The anthology draws upon a wide range of voices from across the globe, including many indigenous poets and poets of color. Writer based in the US include: Agha Shahid Ali, Threa Almontaser, Kay Ulanday Barrett, John Lee Clarke, Meg Day, Kwame Dawes, Anita Endrezze, Megan Fernandes, torrin a. greathouse, Ona Gritz, Stephanie Heit, Linda Hogan, Cynthia Huntington, Rachael Johnson, Cyrée Jarelle Johnson, I.S. Jones, Fady Joudah, Ilya Kaminsky, Tsipi Keller, Jane Kenyon, Petra Kuppers, Stephen Kuusisto, Adrienne Leddy, Ada Limón, Ibtihal Rida Mahmood, Airea D. Matthews, Lateef McLeod, Erica Mena, Leroy F. Moore Jr., Naomi Ortiz, Saleem Hue Penny, Lucia Perillo, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and heidi andrea restrepo rhodes.
This anthology was prepared with the help of an Advocacy and Advisory Panel: grateful thanks to Karthika Naïr, Chisom Okafor and Daniel Sluman. Many thanks to the Royal Society of Literature and to the judges of the 2023 Literature Matters Awards for selecting this anthology as one of the winning entries.
Cover image description: The book's cover features a square-shaped artwork by Polish artist, Julian Stanczak, entitled 'Concurrent Colors'. The painting creates an optical illusion of vertical moving curved lines in red and blue, giving the impression of moving waves or sand dunes. At the edges of the painting the lines thin out so that they resemble a comb effect. The painting has a darker blue framing band around it, filling the extent of the cover. The title of the anthology 'VERSUS VERSUS' is in a large red font at the top of the cover, and the subtitle, '100 POEMS BY DEAF, DISABLED & NEURODIVERGENT POETS', is in a large blue font underneath the square painting. The editor's name, Rachael Boast, is in a smaller red font beneath the subtitle.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Introduction
- Acknowledgements
- Khando Langri ▪ Medicine mantra for the road
- Jen Campbell ▪ First Thing, I Am a Forest
- Stephen Kuusisto ▪ Night Seasons
- Lateef McLeod ▪ I Am Too Pretty for Some ‘Ugly Laws’
- John Lee Clarke ▪ At the Holiday Gas Station
- Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay ▪ Misfit
- Linda Hogan ▪ When the Body
- Janet Frame ▪ I Take into My Arms More Than I Can Bear to Hold
- Jane Burn ▪ An Evanescent Garden
- Airea D. Matthews ▪ Eviction
- Chisom Okafor ▪ In another life, I am twenty-two, gifted and curious
- Ada Limón ▪ The Endlessness
- heidi andrea restrepo rhodes ▪ A Small Disunified Theory
- Sandra Alland ▪ having been
- Andy Jackson ▪ Song not for you
- Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha ▪ Crip fairy godmother
- Hoshino Tomihiro ▪ Chewing My Pen
- Roddy Lumsden ▪ Against Complaint
- Kerri Shying ▪ and bulbul means heart
- Naomi Ortiz ▪ Epicenter
- Meg Day ▪ It Must Still Be Summer
- Erica Mena ▪ from Featherbone
- Paul Celan ▪ Afternoon with Circus and Citadel
- Osip Mandelstam ▪ ‘Having deprived me…’
- Jack Mapanje ▪ Skipping Without Ropes
- Sarah Lubala ▪ 6 Errant Thoughts on Being a Refugee
- Ali Cobby Eckermann ▪ Kulila
- Steffi Tad-y ▪ Duplex Ukol Sa Utang Na Loob
- JK Anowe ▪ a musical malady
- Riyad al-Saleh al-Hussein ▪ The Sleeping Boy
- Khairani Barokka ▪ Tub
- Urvashi Bahuguna ▪ Medical History
- Raymond Antrobus ▪ For Tyrone Givans
- Karthika Naïr (& Marilyn Hacker) ▪ from A Different Distance
- William Soutar ▪ The Room
- Erez Bitton ▪ You Who Cross My Path
- Hàn Mặc Tử ▪ Here in Vĩ Dạ Hamlet
- Masaoka Shiki ▪ 1898 Summer
- Ekiwah Adler-Beléndez ▪ Evening Summer Rain
- Kay Ulanday Barrett ▪ Sick 4 Sick
- Kathryn Gray ▪ Bournemouth
- Therese Estacion ▪ The ABG (Able-Bodied Gaze)
- David Wheatley ▪ Dyspraxia Ode
- Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze ▪ riddym ravings (the mad woman’s poem)
- Levent Beşkardèş ▪ V
- Petra Kuppers ▪ Craniosacral Rhythms
- Shahd Alshammari ▪ Injections
- Dean Atta ▪ Five Litres of Blue
- Ona Gritz ▪ No
- Nuala Watt ▪ Disabled Person’s Travel Card
- Mishka Hoosen ▪ What wasn’t said to the doctor
- Kate Davis ▪ Hand-writing practice
- Kerry Hardie ▪ Flesh
- Lucia Perillo ▪ Shrike Tree
- Stephanie Heit ▪ ETC. THE RESISTANCE
- torrin a. greathouse ▪ Essay Fragment: Medical Model of Disability
- Madailín Burnhope ▪ Camel Girl
- Daniel Sluman ▪ the beautiful
- Yu Xiuhua ▪ A Leaky Boat
- Cynthia Huntington ▪ The Rapture
- Jamie Hale ▪ Fibrotic
- Gwyneth Lewis ▪ Will I?
- Iyanuoluwa Adenle ▪ Beneath the Waves
- Adrienne Leddy ▪ Erupture
- Rachael Johnson ▪ You Tear Out My Tongue
- Leroy F. Moore Jr. ▪ Disabled World Nation
- Ilya Kaminsky ▪ That Map of Bone and Opened Valves
- Abdullah al-Baradouni ▪ Why I Am Silent about the Lament
- G.N. Saibaba ▪ A Sparrow in My Cell
- Les Murray ▪ Dog Fox Field
- Gaele Sobott ▪ Exuviae
- Anita Endrezze ▪ Song-Maker
- Megan Fernandes ▪ Letter to a Young Poet
- Lisa Kelly ▪ Blackbird and Beethoven
- Joanne Limburg ▪ The Alice Case
- Frank Ormsby ▪ Once a Day
- Zuo You ▪ Bluff
- Brandi Bird ▪ Ode to Diabetes
- I.S. Jones ▪ Self-Portrait as the Blk Girl Becoming the Beast Everyone Thought She Was
- Selima Hill ▪ Snouts
- Karl Knights ▪ A Field Guide to Stares
- Saleem Hue Penny ▪ Tinniō
- Kei Miller ▪ The Subaltern Dreams of Big
- Gayle Kennedy ▪ After Viewing the Carved Trees Exhibition
- Shiki Itsuma ▪ Loam
- Agha Shahid Ali ▪ Not All, Only a Few Return
- Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb ▪ Rain Song
- Golan Haji ▪ from A Soldier in a Madhouse
- Cyrée Jarelle Johnson ▪ Now Let the Weeping Cease
- Cat Chong ▪ —I accept the task from the sun—
- Anthony Vahni Capildeo ▪ Plague Poems
- Polly Atkin ▪ Breath Test
- Hannah Hodgson ▪ Dancing with a Doctor
- Kwame Dawes ▪ Keratoconus
- Aaron Kent ▪ Scabies vs Predator
- Nat Raha ▪ [subterranean / dreaming grace roots]
- Josephine Dickinson ▪ Alphabetula
- Jane Kenyon ▪ Having It Out with Melancholy
- Pascale Petit ▪ Bac du Sauvage
- Maya Abu al-Hayyat ▪ You Can’t
- Biographical Notes
- Selected Reading List
- Publication Acknowledgements
- Index of Poets & Translators