Writing the Body

Upcoming online workshop with Bethany Handley

By Kim Moore

I’ve been lucky enough to be a mentor on the Literature Wales “Representing Wales” scheme this year. I’ve been working with an extremely talented writer, Bethany Handley. Bethany was already an award-winning writer, poet and disability activist before I met her and it’s been an absolute joy to read her new work, and then to meet and talk about it.

Now that the scheme has officially finished, we’ve decided to run a workshop together, which we hope will pick up and bring out some of the things we’ve been talking about. We’re both really interested in writing about the body, although we tackle this theme quite differently in our work.

The workshop will run on 16th April from 10am to 12 via Zoom. Sadly all the free bursary places have now been taken, but there are some paid spaces available here.

As well as writing about the body, I’m also really interested in poetry as activism - and I don’t mean poetry that tells us what to do or how to do it. What I think I’m talking about is those poems that allow us to see the world in a different way, to notice things that went un-noticed before, to challenge our preconceptions and assumptions about the world. Bethany’s work does this and then some - she’s kindly given me permission to feature one of my favourite poems of hers here.

I love how this poem gives me a different way of both thinking about wheelchairs, but also about the body - by the end of the poem, the wheelchair becomes a part of the body, or an extension of it. The tyre marks are ‘stretching their limbs’ and the trenches that the wheels leave behind in the sand are ‘footprints’ as well as train tracks that children can play with.

I also love the feeling I’m left with in regards to the man - how he is both helpful but also not welcome, how both these things can be true. That we don’t have to be grateful when we are helped without being asked if we need it.

Once I was reversing out of a parking space, and a man decided to ‘help’ me. I said I was fine, but he carried on issuing instructions. I studiously ignored him and refused to look at him. Eventually, he left, calling me a ‘stupid bitch’ as he walked away. The man in this poem is a little more evolved I think - his clearing of the throat signalling his discomfort perhaps?

I also love Bethany’s use of form - the way the poem swings from left to right side of the page. In a poem which is about the difficulty of moving into and around the landscape, and simply taking up space, it seems apt that the poem uses the whole page, jumping from side to side.

I hope you enjoy the poem and I will maybe see some of you at the workshop next week!

Hiya Butt Bay Bethany Handley Castors to the sky, face to the sea I’m sitting on my back wheels, leaning against my friend on Rest Bay beach as we sink into the wet sand her weight willing us closer to the waves, driving us forwards like she’s back in a scrum, gripping my handles, her feet digging as I clasp my push rims. We wheel over a sandcastle, sinking into its moat, the turret’s flag flying from my spokes, crushed walls in my tread. Dog walkers and families stare as we giggle, my wheels submerged to the axel. A man approaches us, clears his throat, informs my friend that when he takes his mother-in-law out he finds its best to drag her backwards. I give him my piss off mate, we’re doing fine thanks look but we try it anyway, slowly turning our backs to the sea, admire our tyre marks stretching their limbs see the children pretending to be a train as they jog down our tracks and we’re pushing quicker towards the water, sand surrendering. I used to seek footprints that obscured my own, moved within another’s trace. Now I survey my trenches with delight (you could read them from a drone) you wouldn’t guess they’re footprints: two unsteady lines claiming the land.

Writing the Body with Kim Moore and Bethany Handley Tickets, Tue 16 Apr 2024 at 10:00 | Eventbrite