Sandra Alland, Khairani Barokka and Daniel Sluman co-edit Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back, a ground-breaking anthology examining the poetics of disabled and D/deaf cultures. With contributions that span Vispo to Surrealism, and range from hard-hitting political commentary to intimate lyrical pieces these poets refuse to perform or inspire according to tired old narratives.
Five years after the seminal U.S. anthology, Beauty is a Verb, Nine Arches Press brings you its exciting UK progeny: Stairs and Whispers. The first of its kind and packed with fierce poetry, essays, photos and links to accessible online videos, this book showcases a diversity of styles, opinions, and survival strategies for a world that often works to shut us down.
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10 | (3) |
| Introductions |
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Raymond Antrobus: A Language We Both Know (essay) |
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Abi Palmer: No Body to Write With; Intrusion as a Manifesto for D/deaf and/or Disabled Poets (essay) |
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Eleanor Ward: How can we identify a UK disability poetics? (essay) |
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Nuala Watt: Insufficiently Imagined: Partial Sight in Poetics (essay) |
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| Descriptive Text of Photos and Vispo |
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| Content Notes |
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232 | (6) |
| Some Short Definitions for Complex Ideas: D/deaf and Disabled Terminology |
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| Biographies and Notes |
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| Thank Yous |
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| Supporters |
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Khairani Barokka is a translator, editor, writer and artist from Jakarta. In 2023, Okka was shortlisted for the Asian Women of Achievement Awards. Okkas work has been presented widely internationally, and centres disability justice as anticolonial praxis, and access as translation. Among her honours, she has been a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change, and Associate Artist at the UKs National Centre for Writing. Okkas books include Indigenous Species (Tilted Axis), Rope (Nine Arches), and Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (as co-editor; Nine Arches). Her latest books are Ultimatum Orangutan (Nine Arches), shortlisted for the 2022 Barbellion Prize, and 2024's amuk (Nine Arches). Daniel Sluman is a poet and disability rights activist. He co-edited the first major UK Disability anthology Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back. His second collection 'the terrible' was published by Nine Arches Press in 2015. He has appeared widely in UK poetry journals and his third collection, single window, about living with disability and chronic pain, is published by Nine Arches Press in September 2021.
