Michael NorthenTHE INGLIS HOUSE POETRY CONTEST: ONE OF A KIND(This is a shortened version of the essay and contains only the first few lines of each of the first place winning poems from the Inglis House Poetry Contests. Readers who would like to read the essay that includes the full version version of the poems can do so by clicking on full.) As I begin this essay it is mid-way through June 2015. It is eighteen years since I began working in disability literature with the founding of the Inglis House Poetry Workshop in 1997 and over eight years since Wordgathering printed its first issue. By this time in the twenty-first century, it is safe to say that disability poetry is finally getting recognition. The work of poets with disabilities is finding its way into literary magazines, anthologies, poetry festivals, writers conferences and university classrooms. Though it takes a bit of digging, one can also come up with an impressive list of quality single author poetry books and chapbooks. There is no denying that disability poetry has come a long way from the time I first encountered it. One would think that work by writers with disabilities has pretty much moved into all those venues that could be expected of poetry. This makes it a bit surprising that at the present time there is no national contest dedicated to disability poetry — and even more interesting that for eight years, there was one —the Inglis House Poetry Contest. In his book The Archeology of Knowledge, Foucault talks about continuities. The examination of the circumscribed existence of an object, thinking about what it was. In that spirit, I would like to take a look at the Inglis House Poetry Contest, which existed from 2003-2011, to see how it evolved and what it accomplished, but with the main purpose of allowing readers to read again some of what it produced by reprinting its contest winners. In 2003, the Inglis House Poetry Workshop consisted of a small group of writers in Philadelphia, all of whom were in wheelchairs. The group met weekly to read and critique each others poetry. It also tried to read the work of other poets with disabilities, but at the time the discovery of and access to that kind of work was difficult. Despite new technology that allowed group members to compose on computer in a way that few of them had been able to by and, they still had little Internet access, and poetry venues held in many of the wonderful old Philadelphia buildings were generally inaccessible to people in wheelchairs. As the introduction to the first Inglis House Chapbook, Why Can't You See Me recounts "In the spring of 2003, the Inglis House Poetry workshop…launched a poetry contest whose main submission criteria was simply that the poems have some connection with disability. The purpose of the contest was twofold — to let others know of the existence of our group and to encourage the writing of quality work on disability." For the first two years the contest was conducted predominantly through traditional mail. The contest judges were drawn from the original founders of the workshop and included Dana Hirsch, Steven Parker, Stuart Sanderson, Yvette Green and me, with other members sitting in occasionally and offering an opinion. "There was a bit of trepidation on the part of the judges when the submissions seemed at first to trickle in unbearably slowly. By the contest deadline, however, the problem was the exact opposite. How could we choose among so much quality poetry on so many aspects of a topic that needed to be articulated. Nevertheless, we did choose the winners, the prizes were awarded and the winning poems were posted on our website. The first place winner of the contest for the first year was Liesl Jobson of South Africa. PRAISE POEM FOR AN AFRICAN GIRL Sound the Kudu horn today While contests by nature are meant to produce winners, it seemed a disservice to simply jettison all of the wonderful disability-related poetry that did not make it into one of the top three places or honorable mentions. Since its outset the IH Poetry Workshop had been producing chapbooks for its own members, so the next logical step was to produce a chapbook that included much of the contest poetry the group liked but that did not make it into the winner's circle. The result was Why Can't You See Me, which included twenty-three writers. The chapbook was given free to the winners along with their certificates and prize money. Since our purpose was to try to get a greater readerships for the poets included, the last thing we wanted was for our contest to appear to be a money-making gimmick, so writers were included without regard to their purchase of the chapbook. We charged only for additional copies. The first place winner of the contest for the following year was J. C. Todd with a poem whose title we also appropriated for our second chapbook. DANCING WITH CECIL The kitchen streams with music--dulcimer, Jews-harp,
blues As we had hoped, the second year of the contest brought in a greater number of submissions, but it also made us aware of an unfortunate — if not unexpected —phenomenon. We were receiving far more submission by people with out a disability than by poets with a disability. This ran counter to our hope to promote the work of writers with disabilities. To solve that problem, we made a change for the contest during the third year. The group decided to have two categories. The first category was open to all writers with the only criteria that the poems submitted had to have some relationship to disability. The second category was open only to writers with disabilities. A writer with a disability could enter either or both categories. The winner of category one for the 2005 contest was Paul Kahn. KATHARINE'S ROOM In Katharine's room I like undressing. Dan Wilkins was the winner of category 2. HOW? The door closes The chapbook for that year was called Something Close to Beautiful, after a line in Kahn's poem. The cover design took on a more professional look with the inventive photography of Elijah Northen who continued to produce the covers for all of the subsequent chapbooks. The 2006 contest continued the duel winning system. Category 1 ANGEL, WITH PARKINSON'S DISEASE Angel slaps hash and eggs on a plate, When she shimmies over to the booth * Category 2 THIS DANCE We are in the lingo of social workers Each year produced changes in either the contest or the resulting chapbook. The 2006 chapbook, Bone and Tissue, was enlarged to include not just poetry, but prose commentary on poetry and disability by writers who had submitted work to the contest. Among the four essays included was one by contest winner Ellen LaFleche discussing the writing of a manuscript that later became a book, Estella with One Lung. It was just such a progression in the publication of disability poetry that the Inglis House Poetry Contest had started out to abet when it was originally launched. The years 2007 and 2008 produced first place winning poems by Sheila Black, Ona Gritz, Sandra Gail Lambert and (once again) Ellen LaFleche and resulted in the chapbooks " "Slow Dancing to Invisible Music" and "On the Outskirts." As with previous chapbooks, the titles were drawn from a line by one of the poem in the collection. 2007 PARKING LOT The brick block of the hospital * Category 2 FIRST ANNIVERSARY Once, as a child, I had my father
2008 ESTELLA,WITH ONE LUNG, KEEPS HER APPOINTMENT AT BRENDA'S BEAUTY Brenda throws in the dye * Category 2 EXHAUSTION PANTOUM Sometimes the tears come so quick, I'm shocked. During 2007 another important development took place. Even the twenty-nine poems and four essays included in the chapbook seemed to impose limitations on what we hoped to accomplish. The once a year publication of a hard print chapbook that needed to be mailed out to reach its readers made it difficult to publish all of the work that we would like to and, even more importantly, to reach all the readers that we hoped to. As a result, our online journal Wordgathering came into existence. The first issue of Wordgathering, originally subtitled "A Journal of Disability Poetry" drew heavily on the contest winners above including Liesl Jobson, Ellen LaFleche, Paul Kahn and Sheila Black, but also other contest contributors: Laura Hershey, Anna Evans, Kobus Moolman, Tracy Koretsky and Barbara Crooker. The contest continued as before but now, in addition, we were now able to feature the work of a greater variety of writers. The contest chapbooks also continued, but beginning with the June 2008 issue, all of the contest winning poems were now printed in Wordgathering. With the 2009, the poetry contest had reached its most expansive form. Contest winners for that year were John C. Mannone and Jimmy Burns; those for the 2010 contest were Gloria Masterson-Johnson. The poetry chapbooks from those two years She Asks for Slippers While Pointing at the Stairs and Their Buoyant Bodies Respond continued the tradition of selecting their titles from a line in one of the poems included. 2009 HAUNTINGS No rain to wash the heat away * Category 2 TRANSMORGRIFICATION The poet stared at the hospital ceiling dust genies and dreams collide things that were
2010 TRASHCAN, UNMOVED At dawn, I wake alone with a start * Category 2 TRAPPED Only a window separates the winter of gated beds, of humming monitors – or morphine in their branches. A net Their Buoyant Bodies Respond contained two features that had not appeared in prior chapbooks. The first was a section at the end the book asking each of the eight contest winners (places 1-3 and honorable mention for each category) to comment on the genesis of their winning poem. The second, somewhat prophetically, was the inclusion of the cover artwork from each of the previous chapbooks. For a variety of reasons that all converged, 2011 was the last year of the contest. Though the two final first place winners, Meg Eden and Kobus Moolman, were poets whose were had appear in previous contest and chapbooks, no chapbook resulted from the final year of the contest. 2011 the order of things
1.the letter A is red. she is the leader, the heroine, type A personality. she rescues people, and she
always has a plan. she is a little like the number nine, except nine is the villain.
and if you mix three and six, you get strawberry-raspberry. I mean, if you mix six and
eight, you get raspberry swirl. so when the answer to my math problem is 68, my mouth
tastes like berries and I want to go to get ice-cream sticks.
* Category 2 THE HAND This is the hand. Talking. This is me. Holding up the hand Is anyone listening? The hand swims through the quick While the 2011 year ended the Inglis House Poetry Contest, the work of many of the writers continued to make their appearances in Wordgathering. The journal, in some sense took over the work that the contest began, the gathering together and championing of poetry by writers with disabilities. 2011 also gave the work of the poetry contest another incarnation. It saw the publication of Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, that I was privileged to join Sheila Black and Jennifer Bartlett in editing. While Sheila and Jen drew on their own wealth of resources contributing the work of man academic and experimental writers, the anthology included the work of a number of writers who had participated in the Inglis House poetry contest including Laura Hershey, Ona Gritz, Jim Ferris, Daniel Simpson, Kathi Wolfe and Raymond Luczak. As of this point in time BIAV, is listed by World Cat as having a place in over 400 national and international libraries, and is used throughout the United States in college courses. That is no small accomplishment for a contest that began with a handful of wheelchair-using writers in a Philadelphia workshop. Despite this transformation, there is still a hole left by the absence of the IH Poetry contest. And it is not a small one. While April blooms poetry contests of almost every variety, there is still no national contest that is dedicated solely to the work of poets with disabilities or even to disability related poetry. That is a task that needs to be taken up.
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