Here's a poem about hospital, by fifteen year old Brian Geary. The illustration is by Susie Jenkin-Pearce.

'A quick rush for the play area, but/your mother's firm hand pressing on your shoulder/automatically suggesting no.' Hospital by Brian Geary.   ...
Alt text: Hospital by Brian Geary. An illustration of a boy whizzing down a corridor in a wheelchair is above the poem. The poem reads:
'The white walls, echoing, lonely corridors/Seem unwelcoming for a caring place./The staring nurses and patients,/The abrupt and brief talk with the lean/Lady behind reception, her glasses distorting the reflections/of the gathering place./
'A quick rush for the playing area, but/your mother's firm hand pressing on your shoulder/automatically suggesting no./The sitting down on a hard red chair, still/Warm, with the shape of the previous person still/embedded./
'The harsh, 'Next one please,' that turns out/to be all right, for doctor with the/Most warming smile says:/'And what's wrong with you then?'
I love that chair, too: 'The sitting down on a hard red chair, still/Warm, with the shape of the previous person still/embedded.'

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More from @Inadarkwood

24 Jan
One of the clearest childhood memories I have is getting out of a car in a disabled space. As I got in my wheelchair, an old man started spitting, 'you're too young to be in that parking spot, too young to be in that wheelchair.' Well, guess what, #DisabilityHasNoAgeRequirement
If I had a penny for every time someone's said I'm too young to be disabled, I would be richer than my wildest dreams. As an adult and a child, people always tell me I'm too young, or that I must be faking. #DisabilityHasNoAgeRequirement
I've been informed that after the person said this, I rammed my wheelchair's leg rests straight into his shins lmao
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24 Jan
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Image 1 (left): Karl, a white man with curly brown hair, looks down at the camera with a tilted head. He is wearing glasses, red lipstick, and a blue vest which says 'Venice.'
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22 Jan
Here's the last poem I'll share from the 1989 anthology, Measles and Sneezles, 'In hospital' by seven year old Edward Mooney. The illustration is by Susie Jenkin-Pearce. In Hospital by Edward Moone...
Alt text: In Hospital by Edward Mooney. The illustration shows a boy holding a teddy and waving to a doctor down the hall. He is following his mother. The poem reads:
'Doctors hurrying/Nurses scurrying/and me worried in my room.//Doctors talking,/Nurses walking/And me listening in my room.//Doctors looking,/Nurses watching/And me lying in my room.//Doctors standing,/Nurses waving/And me going to my home.'
Read 5 tweets
19 Jan
I'm excited to see this, the first 'poetry course run by Arvon tutored by, and for, D/deaf, disabled and neurodiverse poets.' The question that needs to be asked now is, why did it take this long?

arvon.org/writing-course…
Arvon celebrated their 50th anniversary in 2018. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to see this course, but I can't help but wonder why Arvon have suddenly acknowledged the existence of disabled writers, after ignoring them for over half a lifetime?
The bitter irony of Arvon running their first course for disabled writers is that if the pandemic wasn't going on, a majority of disabled people literally wouldn't be able to get their foot in the door of Arvon's three writing centres, because they're...less than accessible.
Read 7 tweets
18 Jan
The UK has the highest Covid death rate in the world, a third of deaths are disabled people, and GPs are phoning disabled people and the parents of disabled children to urge them to sign DNRs. Disabled people in the UK are not okay right now. Check in on your disabled friends.
For ten damn years, the Tories have been hammering disabled people in the UK. The UN said the Tories had engineered 'a human catastrophe' by their austerity measures. My friends are fucking dead because of the Tories, and now the Tories are killing thousands by proxy every day.
People have no idea how bad things were here BEFORE Covid. And now they're so much worse, which I hoped wouldn't be possible. Words can't touch how profoundly angry and sad I am. And I have no doubt that thousands of disabled people are feeling it, too.
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18 Jan
Update on the search for disabled poets writing for children: still a whole lot of nothing, a lot of brick walls. But I'll keep up the search.
An NT absolutely would have given up weeks ago
What's become apparent though, is that poetry is majorly lagging behind other genres. I can find disabled authors in picture books, Middle Grade novels and YA - not loads by any means, but a fair few. But there's almost nothing for poetry. Why has children's poetry lagged behind?
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