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We are not your metaphor.
Sometimes ableism is so embedded in our culture that it’s hard to recognize that it’s there. Getting people to be aware of it is like asking them to think about the air that we breathe in. It’s subtle; it’s often unconscious and not meant to be hurtful. Yet it often perpetuates untrue and demeaning images and stereotypes. That can fester and, without conscious awareness, form misperceptions about disabled people.
For poets, one example of this is the ableist metaphors used so often in poetry to describe disabilities or those of us with disabilities. How often have you read poems that use blindness as a metaphor for spiritual ignorance, unthinking faith, or moral failings? Or deafness used as a metaphor for isolation, aloneness–a failure to emotionally communicate? Think: world of darkness. Deaf ears. Crippling rage … –Kathi Wolfe
With this anthology, eleven poets with disabilities prove themselves to be far more than metaphors. Leading off with excerpts from Kathi Wolfe’s speech on metaphors, the anthology features the following poets: Viktoria Valenzuela, Gaia Celeste Thomas, Elizabeth Theriot, Zoe Stoller, Jessica Suzanne Stokes, Margaret Ricketts, Naomi Ortiz, Raymond Luczak, Stephen Lightbown, Stephanie Heit, and Genevieve Arlie.
Proceeds from this book will be donated to Zoeglossia, a nonprofit organization created to foster a community of disabled poets.
