Media Representation of People with Disabilities

HeartBeats - Teaching Poetry

Hey guess what!? I am going to be teaching a poetry class with 'Write From The Heart writers program, a project of the Consumer Initiative Funds, Vancouver Coastal Health/Community Mental Health Services'. Very fun! I have been known to make people who 'don't even like poetry' - like poetry, and people who have stopped writing poetry be inspired to start again! I love poetry, its so free form! It's just words piled on top of each other!

Plus it's always good to get to say the words Kinetic, Magnetic, Tagnetic out loud, in a row. Don't worry I will say many more, less obtuse words a well, I promise! While we consider  different types of poetry from many wonderful Canadian poets, and try some new things.

The course is facilitated by Susan J. Katz, who recently won a Tom Howard/John H. Reid Poetry Prize for her poem The Bowpicker.

HeartBeats is the website for the 'Write From The Heart' writers program. Which includes a great clearing house of information on local and international opportunities and links for writing. Now in it's third year, 6-8 people meet once a week for 8 weeks and learn, share, practice, and create - writing. 

Sins Invalid

The poem in-valid,  title poem of my poetry chapbook (in) valid, is featured on the Sins Invalid Blog, in text and audio. Sweet.

Based in California 'Sins Invalid is a performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and queer and gender-variant artists as communities who have been historically marginalized. Our performance work explores the themes of sexuality, embodiment and the disabled body. Conceived and led by disabled people of color, we develop and present cutting-edge work where normative paradigms of "normal" and "sexy" are challenged, offering instead a vision of beauty and sexuality inclusive of all individuals and communities'

Sins Invalid has produced an annual performance since 2006, as well as workshops, and have a lot of interesting videos from shows on the Sins Invalid website. Including by compatriot and dancer Rodney Bell, and I especially like Maria R. Palacios graceful writing and performance.

You can also find Sins Invalid on Facebook. Music that accompanies the RNZ audio recording of in-valid poem is by prolific NZ composer Eric Biddington, whose music I sometimes featured on One in Five. His music accompanies the work of other poets. He named his cat after  me. ( :     All photos by Sins Invalid.