Goddard MFA student Patricia Connelly shares a talk given by Motti Lerner, a preeminent Israeli playwright, screenwriter and television writer, whose play, The Admission, ignited a firestorm in Washington when it was announced as part of the season at Theater J.
This year, out of thousands of proposals for panels and presentations, the AWP chose not one disability-related panel. Imagine, for a moment, the AWP had chosen no panels by people of color. None by women. None by LGBT people. There would be an uproar. That uproar, except within the still fairly insular disability writing community, did not happen.
I had no idea how to start a press but my fingers searched for the path and I began to feel my way in the dark, researching different options and learning as I went along while fueled by the love of writing poetry and the love of sharing poetry that I loved.
LANGUAGE SPOKEN
Port, starboard, forward, aft, bow, stern, fo’c’sle, lazarette, half hitch, clove hitch, bowline, lovers knot, freeboard, false deck, fairlead, deck-winch, vanging-winch, picking boom, power block, davit, dump-box, buoy stick, PTO, chiller, seacock, shaft, rudder, keel, magnetic north, true north, degrees of variation, aurora borealis, bio luminescence, Morning Star.
Goddard MFA alumna Brianna Johnson’s thesis, Fire Sale, was recently published as a digital chapbook with Essay Press. Here’s how it begins: “I come from whiteness, which is not innocent. If I speak of things which cause intense pain, it is because I have felt pain because of them. Not feeling would cause greater pain to the memory of those brutalized. I don’t condone evil, but I acknowledge it. I am here to acknowledge it.”
