New Disability-Inspired Poetry at Breath & Shadow!

Breath & Shadow, the disability literary journal produced by Ability Maine, has its Fall 2014 issue out now!

This edition features poetry by Jenna-Nichole Conrad, Mark Cornell, Sergio Ortiz, and Raud Kennedy.

Here's an excerpt from "Define Me," a poem by Jenna-Nichole Conrad to whet your appetite:

...And here is the poet, pen-stained

And naked in her thoughts. She has planted
A garden in her armchair;
It is time to harvest

To read her other poem, and the other poems published this month, please visit Breath & Shadow!

New edition of Breath & Shadow online! Poetry, fiction, essays!

Below is the post that went out to Breath & Shadow subscribers from Chris Kuell, editor of Breath & Shadow, the literary journal of Ability Maine. If you, too, would like to subscribe (for free!), please drop us a line at breathandshadow@gmail.com.

Breath and Shadow
Volume 11, Number 2
Spring 2014

April is National Poetry Month, and in this issue we feature excellent pieces from Abigail Astor, Allegra Keys, Lori-Ann Tessier and Bruce Ario. There is also compelling fiction by Raymond Luczak, Susan M. Silver and Day Al-Mohamed. Essays by Michael Lockwood and Patti Rutka round out this exciting issue. So go hug a poet, and happy reading.

As part of a new initiative, poets are invited to submit audio/video clips of their performance pieces (in addition to the text) if they wish. It's not mandatory, but we hope that adding this new dimension will help open up the world of poetry to more of our readers. Visit our guidelines page for details. Our editors hope you enjoy this issue of Breath and Shadow. Please recommend us to your friends and let us know what you think.

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To read our Spring (or past issues) please visit: www.abilitymaine.org/breath

Breath and Shadow Staff:

Chris Kuell, Editor in Chief

Assistant Editors: Abby Astor, Dorothy Baker, Anne Chiapetta, Linda Cronin, Tricia Owsley and Suzanne Westhaver

Breath & Shadow is a collaborative effort of AbilityMaine, Resourcesfor Organizing and Social Change (ROSC), and our many valuable readers and contributors. Please consider donating to Breath and Shadow. We need your support to achieve our mission, and your gift is tax deductible. You can learn more by visiting: http://www.abilitymaine.org/breath/fund.html

Call for Entries: Disabled Slam Poets & Visual Artists!

As part of a celebration of the twenty-fourth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the New England ADA Center is hosting a poetry slam and art exhibition at the Institute for Human Centered Design in Boston in July of this year. The deadline for both poetry and visual art submissions is May 15, 2014.

Click here for more information on the call for poetry and how to submit your poems for the poetry slam.

Click here for more information on the call for art and how to submit your artwork for the exhibit.

Poetry in Fall 2013 Breath & Shadow Journal of Disability Literature & Culture

The current issue of Breath & Shadow (Volume 10, Number 4) blows opens with the "Twister," by high school student Abby Ridderhoff. The poem takes on the challenges of mental illness in

a pristine little girl
[which] ripped the daisies
from her hair

The next poetic offerings are three pieces by Akua Lezli Hope -- "Routine," "Dentist Visit," and "I fly into your indifference." The villanelle, "Routine," uses the form to good effect as the hypnotic repetition of the first and third line of the opening stanza carries the reader into the narrator's musings on the slowing of life with a new disability:

I sleep to wake and take my waking slow
I fear my fate in what is no longer there
I get nowhere that I used to go

C.R. Reardon makes his debut in Breath & Shadow with "No Lie," a hip-hop flavored poem primed with rhymes. The piece takes on sex, sexism, and pity -- leavened by humor and playfulness with lines like these:

Go ahead, show off your lexicon
With words like “lexicon”.  Tell her
How King Kong ain’t got shit on you; that will
Make her weepy, all touchy-feely.  Take her
To your room, go boom boom or do what you do,
And say tutaloo.  

Maine resident Carol Mackey contributes two poems to the current issue of Breath & Shadow. "Differences" and "Life's Friends," the latter using the metaphor of walking in another's shoes to connect with the reader:

You have walked in my shoes,the festering blister,the too tight arch....
The birds have no voices,dogs do not bark.

Anchoring the poetry in this edition of the literary journal is Cody Vander Clute's "Choosing Between the Long Jump and the Short Drop." A fast-paced sensual poem, rich with sensory detail, each stanza reveals a surprise as the narrator decides whether to take a lover home that night:

does he want to knowifnot having the signs fortalking with me will stopthe mystical unionof being wet and sticky

Read the diverse and delicious poems in the current edition of Breath & Shadow!

Audio & Slam Poetry comes to Breath & Shadow, Disability Literary Journal

The latest issue of Breath & Shadow, the journal of disability culture and literature published by Ability Maine, is up now. Editor Chris Kuell included this note to subscribers of the journal:

April is National Poetry Month, and as part of the celebration Breath & Shadow is launching a new initiative. Beginning now, poets are invited to submit audio/video clips of their performance pieces (in addition to the text) if they wish. It’s not mandatory, but we hope that adding this new dimension will help open up the world of poetry to more of our readers. Visit our guidelines page for details.

With the increasing popularity of poetry performances on youtube or other media, and with slam poetry continuing to hold an important place in the poetry world, Breath & Shadow hopes this openness to accessible multimedia approaches to poetry will be exciting to readers and poets alike.

And just to kick things off, here are a couple of poetry performances from youtube:

[If you're reading this post in an email, watch these two videos from Special Poetry Slam here: Life in Drag and Ice Skating.]

Disability Poetry in Breath & Shadow Vol 10, No 2

by Sharon Wachsler

What poetry will you find in the Spring 2013 issue of Breath & Shadow, a journal of disability literature and culture?

Ani Keaton's "Withdrawal" uses a spare economy of words to connect the reader intimately to the speaker's embodied experience:

My back, a twig,
trembles
I know each rib intimately
Its size, shape and placement

Read Ani Keaton's poetry.

Jennifer Ruth Jackson's "Again" is a short poem that packs a lot of power. I love it. An excerpt:

Defibrillator paddles bouncingMy body to lifeEach nerve on endRising up to meet you

It starts out seemingly focused on the body's dys/functions but builds toward another force, leaping into its arms at the end. 

Read Jennifer Ruth Jackson's poetry.

The next poetry selection in this issue is "Three Tankas" by Sergio Ortiz. Like haiku, tankas are best experienced directly on the page, and also I don't want to spoil the ending, so I won't be excerpting any right here. You can learn more about tankas here.

And you can read Sergio Ortiz's tankas here.

"Elegy for James Eagan Holmes" is offered by high school student, Jordan Jamison. Lines like these really connected me to me to time and place in this poem:

Do you remember that little taco shop called Rodrigo’s near the 7-Eleven, the place that never gave credit and the dusty old TV played Telemundo all day? Did you eat there, did your mother ever pick up carne asada and burritos and chips there on Fridays for you, and would you smile? 

Read Jodan Jamison's poem.

"Travels of Lip Balm" by Shawn Jacobson tells the story of a man's day-to-day life as witnessed by a tube of lip balm that keeps ending up in the laundry. It's a poem full of circles and cycles.

The drier door opens and I fall outafter traveling the drum. . . .He picks me up, his daughter will want this.He returns to folding clothes.

Read "Travels of Lip Balm."

The Spring Issue of Breath & Shadow, the Disability Literary Journal, Is Up!

This is 10th year of publication for Breath & Shadow and this spring issue shows it's still going strong, with poetry, essays, and fiction by diverse writers with disabilities. It features poetry by Ani Keaten, Jennifer Ruth Jackson, Sergio Ortiz, and Jordan Jamison, nonfiction by A.K. Duvall, Misti Shupe, and Robert Kingett, and fiction by W.R. Hilary and William Ward.

Read the Spring 2013 issue of Breath & Shadow!