This year, the 25+ organizations nationwide that comprise the Poetry Coalition will launch “The future lives in our bodies: Poetry & Disability Justice,” the coalition’s sixth annual programming initiative. For this collaborative effort, the organizations will offer a range of programs that speak to this urgent topic. Poetry Coalition programming is made possible in part by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation which were secured by the Academy of American Poets.
The line “The future lives in our bodies: Poetry & Disability Justice” is from the poem “Femme Futures” by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.
Poetry Coalition members aim to demonstrate how poetry can inspire questions in their communities about disability justice and spark increased engagement with this important theme. Member organizations are committed to offering programming that is accessible and that includes disabled, neurodivergent, and d/Deaf poets and those of diverse racial, ethnic, and gender identities, backgrounds, and communities.