About the Book

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 one thing pitched 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, Cyree Jarelle Johnson, I.S. Jones,Fady Joudah, Ilya Kaminsky,Tsipi Keller,Jane Kenyon, Petra Kuppers, Stephen Kuusisto, Adrienne Leddy, Ada Limn,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 Nar, 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.

Table of Contents:
9. Introduction 13. Acknowledgements 15. Khando Langri | Medicine mantra for the road 16. Jen Campbell | First Thing, I Am a Forest 18. Stephen Kuusisto | Night Seasons 20. Lateef McLeod | I Am Too Pretty for Some ‘Ugly Laws’ 22. John Lee Clarke | At the Holiday Gas Station 23. Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay | Misfit 24. Linda Hogan | When the Body 26. Janet Frame | I Take into My Arms More Than I Can Bear to Hold 27. Jane Burn | An Evanescent Garden 28. Airea D. Matthews | Eviction 30. Chisom Okafor | In another life, I am twenty-two, gifted and curious 31. Ada Limón | The Endlessness 32. heidi andrea restrepo rhodes | A Small Disunified Theory 34. Sandra Alland | having been 35. Andy Jackson | Song not for you 36. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha | Crip fairy godmother 42. Hoshino Tomihiro | Chewing My Pen 44. Roddy Lumsden | Against Complaint 45. Kerri Shying | and bulbul means heart 46. Naomi Ortiz | Epicenter 48. Meg Day | It Must Still Be Summer 50. Erica Mena | from Featherbone 52. Paul Celan | Afternoon with Circus and Citadel 53. Osip Mandelstam | ‘Having deprived me…’ 54. Jack Mapanje | Skipping Without Ropes 56. Sarah Lubala | 6 Errant Thoughts on Being a Refugee 58. Ali Cobby Eckermann | Kulila 60. Steffi Tad-y | Duplex Ukol Sa Utang Na Loob 61. JK Anowe | a musical malady 62. Riyad al-Saleh al-Hussein | The Sleeping Boy 64. Khairani Barokka | Tub 65. Urvashi Bahuguna | Medical History 66. Raymond Antrobus | For Tyrone Givans 68. Karthika Naïr (& Marilyn Hacker) | from A Different Distance 73. William Soutar | The Room 74. Erez Bitton | You Who Cross My Path 75. Hàn Mặc Tử | Here in Vĩ Dạ Hamlet 76. Masaoka Shiki | 1898 Summer 77. Ekiwah Adler-Beléndez | Evening Summer Rain 78. Kay Ulanday Barrett | Sick 4 Sick 80. Kathryn Gray | Bournemouth 81. Therese Estacion | The ABG (Able-Bodied Gaze) 82. David Wheatley | Dyspraxia Ode 84. Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze | riddym ravings (the mad woman’s poem) 88. Levent Beşkardèş | V 90. Petra Kuppers | Craniosacral Rhythms 91. Shahd Alshammari | Injections 92. Dean Atta | Five Litres of Blue 93. Ona Gritz | No 94. Nuala Watt | Disabled Person’s Travel Card 96. Mishka Hoosen | What wasn’t said to the doctor 98. Kate Davis | Hand-writing practice 99. Kerry Hardie | Flesh 100. Lucia Perillo | Shrike Tree 102. Stephanie Heit | ETC. THE RESISTANCE 104. torrin a. greathouse | Essay Fragment: Medical Model of Disability 105. Madailín Burnhope | Camel Girl 106. Daniel Sluman | the beautiful 107. Yu Xiuhua | A Leaky Boat 108. Cynthia Huntington | The Rapture 110. Jamie Hale | Fibrotic 112. Gwyneth Lewis | Will I? 113. Iyanuoluwa Adenle | Beneath the Waves 114. Adrienne Leddy | Erupture 116. Rachael Johnson | You Tear Out My Tongue 117. Leroy F. Moore Jr. | Disabled World Nation 120. Ilya Kaminsky | That Map of Bone and Opened Valves 121. Abdullah al-Baradouni | Why I Am Silent about the Lament 122. G.N. Saibaba | A Sparrow in My Cell 125. Les Murray | Dog Fox Field 126. Gaele Sobott | Exuviae 128. Anita Endrezze | Song-Maker 129. Megan Fernandes | Letter to a Young Poet 130. Lisa Kelly | Blackbird and Beethoven 132. Joanne Limburg | The Alice Case 134. Frank Ormsby | Once a Day 135. Zuo You | Bluff 136. Brandi Bird | Ode to Diabetes 138. I.S. Jones | Self-Portrait as the Blk Girl Becoming the Beast Everyone Thought She Was 140. Selima Hill | Snouts 141. Karl Knights | A Field Guide to Stares 142. Saleem Hue Penny | Tinniō 144. Kei Miller | The Subaltern Dreams of Big 146. Gayle Kennedy | After Viewing the Carved Trees Exhibition 149. Shiki Itsuma | Loam 150. Agha Shahid Ali | Not All, Only a Few Return 151. Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb | Rain Song 155. Golan Haji | from A Soldier in a Madhouse 156. Cyrée Jarelle Johnson | Now Let the Weeping Cease 157. Cat Chong | —I accept the task from the sun— 158. Anthony Vahni Capildeo | Plague Poems 161. Polly Atkin | Breath Test 162. Hannah Hodgson | Dancing with a Doctor 163. Kwame Dawes | Keratoconus 164. Aaron Kent | Scabies vs Predator 165. Nat Raha | [subterranean / dreaming grace roots] 168. Josephine Dickinson | Alphabetula 169. Jane Kenyon | Having It Out with Melancholy 174. Pascale Petit | Bac du Sauvage 175. Maya Abu al-Hayyat | You Can’t 176. Biographical notes 198. Selected reading list 200. Publication acknowledgements 207. Index of poets & translators