Naomi Ortiz - Böcker

An innovative roadmap to facing our past and present selvesHonest, aching, and intimate, self-elegies are unique poems focusing on loss rather than death, mourning versions of the self that are forgotten or that never existed. Within their lyrical frame, multiple selves can coexist—wise and naïve, angry and resigned—along with multiple timelines, each possible path stemming from one small choice that both creates new selves and negates potential selves. Giving voice to pain while complicating personal truths, self-elegies are an ideal poetic form for our time, compelling us to question our close-minded certainties, heal divides, and rethink our relation to others.  In Writing the Self-Elegy, poet Kara Dorris introduces us to this prismatic tradition and its potential to forge new worlds. The self-elegies she includes in this anthology mix autobiography and poetics, blending craft with race, gender, sexuality, ability and disability, and place—all of the private and public elements that build individual and social identity. These poems reflect our complicated present while connecting us to our past, acting as lenses for understanding, and defining the self while facilitating reinvention. The twenty-eight poets included in this volume each practice self-elegy differently, realizing the full range of the form. In addition to a short essay that encapsulates the core value of the genre and its structural power, each poet’s contribution concludes with writing prompts that will be an inspiration inside the classroom and out. This is an anthology readers will keep close and share, exemplifying a style of writing that is as playful as it is interrogative and that restores the self in its confrontation with grief.

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.