The imagery of the poem reflects the life of a transnational drug smuggler, highlighting the mechanics of smuggling through vivid details like a man removing his leg. The poet addresses the complexities of ableism, illustrating a disconnect between societal perceptions and personal realities. The collection delves into disability's poetic potential, showcasing varied styles that enhance bodily awareness and explore the intersections of politics, identity, and nature. Handley’s work provides scathing critiques of ableism while celebrating the renewed sensory perceptions that disability can offer.
The act of wrapping the world in cling film. Bethany Handley extends the metaphor further in the title poem of her recent pamphlet, Cling Film.
Disability can refresh the senses: it can have the force of poetry.
Other poems use smoother lineation and more traditional stanzas paradoxically to express the enhanced bodily awareness which is liberating, and reintegrates the poet with the natural world.
Swifts' legs are fingers, not fists. They don't pound but stroke the earth, she writes in a paean, A Swift's Flight.
Collection
[
|
...
]