Poetry Coalition Launches Poetry and Disability Justice Programming Initiative

In spring 2022, the more than 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. 

Participating organizations include the Academy of American Poets, Beyond Baroque, CantoMundo, Cave Canem, Indigenous Nations' Poets, Kundiman, Lambda Literary, Letras Latinas, GrubStreet, the Poetry Foundation, the Poetry Project, Poems on Wheels, the Poetry Society of America, Urban Word, the National Youth Poet Laureate Program, Wick Poetry Center, Youth Speaks, and more.

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. Programming initiative's title, “The future lives in our bodies: Poetry & Disability Justice,” references the poem “Femme Futures” by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.

All organizations and others interested are invited to create programs on this theme in 2022 and share their efforts using the hashtags #DisabilityJustice and #PoetryCoalition. To learn more visit the initiative's website.