Wordgathering

A Journal of Disability Poetry

Volume 6     Issue 2     June 2012

Welcome

Welcome back to Wordgathering. The summer issue includes a wide range of poetry from the tongue-in-cheek humor of Mike Berger's "Peggy" and Leah Maines' "The Usefulness of Canes" to the hip hop influenced poetry of Leroy F. Moore, Jr. to the work of one of the venerated writers of disability literature, Floyd Skloot. Presented for the first time in Wordgathering is the poetry of Meg Eden, Vera Gelvin, Tom Healy, Leroy Moore, Floyd Skloot, Austin Tremblay, Dick Thomas and Anissa Zucker. We also have a strong field of returning poets including Jimmy Burns, Lisa Cihlar, Barbara Crooker, Paul Hostovsky, Leah Maines, Kobus Moolman and Curtis Robbins.

As promised in our past issue, the June issue of Wordgathering initiates a new poetry feature that we are calling our Reading Loop. This allows a guest editor to select the writing of several poets on a topic of interest and discuss them. For our inaugural Reading Loop, the guest editor is British poet Mark Burnhope, who leads off with his essay, "Negotiating Broken Bridges: disability poetics from where I'm sitting." Burnhope then examines sample poems by Sean Burn, Laurie Clemens, Peter Daniels, Sophie Mayer, Daniel Sluman and Peter Street, all of whom, except Street, are probably new to Wordgathering readers.

All of our regular features – book reviews, interviews and essays – are also present in the June issue. This time around we review books by Meg Eden, Marie Kane and Raymond Luczak. The interviewees are novelist Terry Tracy and poet/editor Marilyn Brandt/Smith. Tracy's work focuses on epilepsy, while Smith's is on blindness and visual impairment. Readers will find a provocative and diverse group of essays in the writing of Sheila Black, Laurie Clements Lambeth, Leroy F. Moore Jr., and Lynne Thermann. We are especially excited to be able to introduce readers who may not already know about it to the "Crip Couture" and wearable art of Chun Sun (Sandie) Yi in our arts section.

Wordgathering continues to seek work that develops the field of disability literature. We invite the submission of poetry, short fiction, and essays that discuss poetry from a disability perspective or that contribute to the theoretical development of the field of disability literature. Submission guidelines are provided at the guidelines link on this page. We value our readers' opinions and hope you will send your comments to us at comments@wordgathering.com. We can be seen on Facebook where we hope you will join us with your comments about the journal or about poetry and writing in general. Wordgathering can also be found on Twitter. Readers can receive updates related to the field of disability literature from us by following us on @wordgathering.com.

The Editors

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This site is maintained by Michael Northen.