One of the things that annoys me about poetry award season is that so many poets were allowed to develop and flourish thanks to Arvon courses, the Complete Works, the Ledbury Critics and so on. But what's out there for disabled poets? Who helps them to develop?
If you're a young poet or an LGBT+ poet or a poet of colour, there are avenues (though nowhere near enough) to help you hone your craft. Who's helping disabled poets thrive? What infrastructure is there to guide the disabled poets of the future?
If I was teaching one day and a young disabled poet asked me how they could develop their work, I wouldn't have a damn clue where to direct them. Not just UK poetry, but world poetry fails not only young disabled poets but disabled poets period, over and over again.
I want the day to come where I can confidently signpost a budding disabled poet to stellar support. I want the literary world to have an infrastructure to support their work and let them flourish into their talent, but we're not even close. I dunno. Maybe I'm just grumpy today
I'll add this to the ever-growing list of things I'm perpetually annoyed about
I want the disabled poet of the future to have mentors. I want them to have Arvon courses, craft books just for them. I want them to have a sturdy infrastructure for their work. I want the disabled poet of the future to know that there's a path in poetry for them.
Right now, the budding disabled poet has none of these things, and I can't tell you how enraging that is. Could the poetry world handle one iota of disabled rage? I don't much care about whether *I* have the above things, but I NEED the poet of the future to have them.
Can we take a moment to appreciate that I and every other disabled writer hasn't spontaneously combusted yet?
I mentioned this in the replies, but it seems to belong in the main thread. When I asked one of the schemes mentioned in my first tweet (which shall remain nameless) whether they planned to admit disabled POC, they flatly said 'no.' Bridge building is going well!
.@infinite_scream, if you would do the honours of ending this thread
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