Crip ecologies, crip time, crip ingenuity, crip spirit

June 7, 2022 8:37 PM

"Crip ecologies, crip time, crip ingenuity, crip spirit radically aim to question root systems that keep our imaginations limited and starved. How can we channel joy within our own skins before there is the stethoscope, the specialist’s jackhammered interrogation, before all the stigma we battle? I am not asking to look beyond it, because these constraints in our beings are here and ever-present. I am asking, as poets, as curious people who want liberation, how do we revel in the grief and also the growth we experience? In what ways does this unpack how we are taught to perceive place and nature?...I cannot discuss just the maroon autumnal leaves of a forest in a poem. You see, for every invitation of publication, every event, in-person and virtual, every residency in the middle of oak trees, there’s a script I have to bring along with me. I am, by default, an unpaid teacher, training: Yes, Disabled and Sick people exist, do in fact care about poetry, but they can’t access the flyer without a description, can’t get to the building because of all the stairs, can’t witness the poetry because there are no ASL interpreters or captions." Kay Ulanday Barrett on poetry, accesabilty, disability & intersectionality.
posted by Grandysaur (2 comments total)

This is a long and wonderful article....thank you for posting it.
posted by lazaruslong at 4:25 AM on June 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

This is such a great piece, and as a person with significant disability issues who is still in the workforce, so resonant - accommodations like working from home came when abled people needed them, and now that abled people want to pretend the pandemic is "over" too many of us are being denied the option to stay safe while we're working, and on. and on. and on.
posted by bile and syntax at 12:51 PM on June 9, 2022 [2 favorites]