An anthology of poems and craft essays by and celebrating Disabled writers

Declaring that Disabled people exist, innovate, thrive, and persevere, Every Place on the Map Is Disabled imagines the world we deserve. Its contributors spotlight the wisdom Disabled people embody from living within and navigating the economic and medical systems, communities, and families that often oppress their existence. This anthology is an intersectional compass pointing to the creative ways Disabled people build bridges to each other through Disability poetics and perspectives.

The contributing poets write about love, resistance, loss, pain, beauty, and culture. They capture tender and life-affirming moments where one Disabled person recognizes themself in another. The essays illustrate how Disability poetics suggest avenues for embracing the full spectrum of disability experiences. Every Place on the Map Is Disabled offers students, scholars, members of disability communities, and any reader a direction for paving a wider path toward a collective survival.

Foreword: A New Possible
Sheila Black

Introduction: A History and Q&A
Michael Northen, Camisha L. Jones, Travis Chi Wing Lau, Naomi Ortiz

1. Intimacies and Interdependence

Naomi Ortiz
Essay: To Reclaim Power
Benefaction
Y2K Philadelphia (That time we met)
Shelter Is a Privilege (one & two)
To the Non-Disabled White Grrrl with the Frida Kahlo Altar in the Living Room

Liv Mammone
Essay: Art Object, Talisman
Surgery Psalm
Reinventing the Scale
A Crip Is

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Essay: Why We Do This Thing Called Disability Justice Writing
I know crips live here
Bad road
Adaptive device

Ekiwah Adler-Belendez
Essay: On Writing "I Bargained For This Wheelchair"
The Speed of Sound: Skydiving from one life to another
La velocidad del sonido: Saltando de una vida a otra (trans. Kenia Cano)
Falling into Truth
En Verdad Caer (trans. Kenia Cano)

Jay Besemer
Essay: PERMEABLE
eleven
Where the Loved Ones Go

Viktoria Valenzuela
Essay: My Fibromyalgia, Like My Poetry, Is a Response to Trauma
The Scent of a Battle
Thank You to the Dust
Nightly News

Osimiri Sprowal
Essay: A QueerCrip Reflection on Intimacy and Boundary Building
Hearth: A QueerCrip Break-up Manifesto

Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison
Essay: A Place That's Ours
Dear M—
Dear S—
Dear M—
Dear S—
Dear M—
Dear S—

Rachel Scoggins
Essay: The Magic Consortium of Poetic Disabled Lives
Guide to Magic Helium
Vivid Dreams

Daniel Sluman
Essay: Suspended Disability and the importance of disability poetry
my love is sponsored by the warmth of opiates
& this is love


2. Language

Shahd Alshammari
Essay: Navigating a Hijacked Body with Two Tongues
Public Disgrace
Meaninglessness

David James "DJ" Savarese
Essay: Squawking Joy and Mayhem
The Librarian in the Trees
Swoon
Tongue

torrin a. greathouse
Essay: Poems with Bodies Like Mine
Weeds
Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination Before a Diagnosis Can Be Determined
That's So Lame
Essay Fragment: Economic Model of Disability

Jessica Stokes
Essay: all the floors I know too well from trying not to trip are one thick memory
New Shoes

Gaia Thomas
Essay: Hold It against me
V
VI

Ilya Kaminsky
Essay: Reading Celan in Ukraine
That Map of Bone and Open Valves
In a Time of Peace

Constance Merritt
Essay: Some Notes on a (Dis)/Embodied Poetics
Jay-Walkin Blues
Revelation Blues
Less Than Greater Than Blues


3. Ableism

Aurora Levins-Morales
Essay: The Why and the How: Disability Justice Poetics
Poem for the Bedridden
Asher Yatzar

Roxanna Bennett
Essay: You Were Born, Ergo, I Love You
"What do you do for a living?"
"Wherever You Go, There You Are"

Meg Day
Essay: T-I-M-B-E-R
Deaf Erasure of the Gospel According to the TSA Agent at Atlanta International
Elegy in Translation
10am Is When You Come to Me

Stephen Lightbown
Essay: Searching for Dignity
After the Check In
Grounded

Lateef McLeod
Essay: How Poetry Can Evoke Empathy and Meaning
Absence of routine
So Much

Jill Khoury
Essay: Unimagined Possibilities
Cranial Nerve II
AN OBJECT APPROACHES THE I
[rotary nystagmus]

Kay Ulanday Barrett
Essay: We Will Buoy Each Other
Sick 4 Sick
I use the word Disabled
In which your white doctor informs you that he was in the Navy & based in the Philippines
consider the gender spectrum

Raymond Antrobus
Essay: Is There a Right Way to Act Deaf [Captioned]
Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris
The Mechanism of Speech
The Acceptance


4 Medicalization

Stephanie Heit
Essay: Disability as a Creative Practice
Treatment Room
Recovery Bay
Dear Brain,

Emilia Nielsen
Essay: A Note on the Poetry and Poetics of Dissonant Disabilities
Tremors
Emotional Lability
Polyphagia
Hypertensive

Travis Chi Wing Lau
Essay: The Crip Poetics of Pain
Treatment
On the Anniversary of an X-Ray
Brain Fog
Pithy

Kelly Davio
Essay: A Little Pocket for Rage
I May Appear Drunk
He Died after a Long Illness
Etymological Note

Camisha L. Jones
Essay: Poetry, Self-Advocacy, and Survival
Accommodation
Ménière's Flare
In/Ability
My Hearing Loss Interrogates the World

Jesse Rice-Evans
Essay: I Want to Feel Like Home
Pills
All I'm looking for is a ceremony


5. Journeys and Becomings

Andy Jackson
Essay: Broken Lines and Belonging
Quasimodo
Double Helix

Rigoberto González
Essay: The Man with the Cane
To the Man Who Walks with a Cane
The Trees Keep Weeping Long after the Rain Has Ended

Cath Nichols
Essay: It's a Bit Like This
Tender spots

Eli Clare
Essay: Turning Toward Each Other
Confluence
A Survivor's Wail

L. Lamar Wilson
Essay: "I Wouldn't Help It Even If I Could'
I Can't Help It
Legion: Human Immunodeficiency Virus

Emily K. Michael
Essay: The Blood and Candor of Craft
Faith
Among the Blind
Deficiencies

Natalie E. Illum
Essay: If you are Disabled, and there is an [INSERT], you [???].
What the brain hemorrhage says
If you are Disabled and there is a bomb cyclone, you

Liz Whiteacre
Essay: Playing Poetic Telephone to Explore Pain in Poems
Pain Pouts
The Stoic's Universe

Kobus Moolman
Essay: The Poetics of Falling: an overview
The Shoulder
Three Views of a Pair of Orthopedic Boots
In the Bathroom

Acknowledgements
Contributors