Reviewed by Diane R. Wiener
BORG.DIEM, emboldened by The Borg Collective and Borg4Borg Productions in collaboration with Including Disability, manifested and continues to emerge in the world in a uniquely Crip cultural way. The digital work, now in its second edition, “went live” on November 11, 2024. The editorial team at and collaborators affiliated with Including Disability continue to provide the primary virtual space or home for BORG.DIEM.
As noted on the BORG.DIEM landing page, “If you identify as disabled, then you may adapt, change, build upon, destroy, link to, post, remix, share and tag the material in any medium for any purpose. If you are nondisabled, you may link to, post, share and tag the material for noncommercial purposes only and do include this sentence: ‘I am nondisabled and sharing pursuant to disabled-first copyright.’”
An interview with Stephanie J. Cork and The Cyborg Jillian Weise provides further context for BORG.DIEM, as it appears as a “special addition” to Volume 4 of Including Disability, and further articulates how BORG.DIEM was designated in its originary incarnation as #BorgDiem—from November 7, 2022 at Midnight until November 8, 2022 at Midnight, when the Crip initiative was fashioned as a “word contest game for disabled people only.”
In communication with Stephanie J. Cork and The Cyborg Jillian Weise in preparation for this review, Cork noted helpfully how BORG.DIEM is presented in three formats: HTML with images (by “the Amazing Audrey Lovinger”), HTML without images, and PDF. Cork expressed that The Borg Collective welcomes any requests for other formats; unsurprisingly, accessibility and reader/viewer/visitor requirements, needs, and preferences are of the utmost importance and thus have primacy.
Details about the Including Disability Editorial Team as a whole are available, and there is a shared inbox for collaborative and collective communication (the principal contact includes Disability Ontario Tech University, University of Ontario Institute of Technology; Ontario Tech University supports the endeavor and also co-hosts the initiative).
Co-instigator and co-progenitor of BORG.DIEM, mensch, badass, and gem, The Cyborg Jillian Weise, has written about “cyborg ontology” in a plethora of contexts, including in “Going Cyborg” (The New York Times) “The Dawn of the ‘Tryborg’” (The New York Times), “Stealth” (The New York Times), “Common Cyborg” (Granta), “My Brain is Already Cyborg” (WIRED), and “How a Cyborg Challenges Reality” (The New York Times). Cy’s myriad, brilliant, and bold poems about cyborgs and cyborg ontologies are widely available; as an example, Cy’s poem “Biohack Manifesto” is available via The Poetry Foundation. You can read my review of Cy’s The Cyborg Detective in Wordgathering. As Cy asserts, “Cyborgs are not new. I have been writing about being a cyborg since 2010.”
BORG.DIEM emblematizes, problematizes, and contributes to ongoing “cyborg ontologies.” BORG.DIEM aka #BorgDiem asked Disabled folx to “invent a word to describe disabled life.” These words were Tweeted with their definitions and the accompanying hashtag during the 24-hour contest. The entries were judged by Cyborgs; prizes were awarded.
As Stephanie J. Cork and The Cyborg Jillian Weise note, the first edition of BORG.DIEM was purposefully published solely in Braille: “This exclusivity was intentional, as Braille is often the last point to be considered. Only forty copies of this first limited edition exist and have been gifted and shared with three schools for DeafandBlind, libraries and other communities to get it to as many disabled people as possible.” The second edition underscores an “ongoing project” between the Borg Collective and Including Disability. Moreover, “This second edition marks the first time the words will be digitally available to all users.”
Crucially, “Centering disabled voices and definitions within a very ableist medical-industrial complex” remain priorities to this Crip project, its collaborators, and its contributors.
Title: BORG.DIEM
Editors and Advisors: Amy Gaeta, Cripborg 28, Kalyn Heffernan, J. Logan Smilges, JA Fields, Jaipreet Virdi, Jon Henner, and Mallory Kay Nelson
Publisher: The Borg Collective, Borg4Borg Productions, and Including Disability
Year: 2024 (and ongoing…)
Read a review of The Cyborg Jillian Weise’s book, Pills and Jacksonvilles, in this issue of Wordgathering.
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About the Reviewer
Diane R. Wiener (she/they) became Editor-in-Chief of Wordgathering in January 2020. The author of The Golem Verses (Nine Mile Press, 2018), Flashes & Specks (Finishing Line Press, 2021), and The Golem Returns (swallow::tale press, 2022), Diane’s poems also appear in Nine Mile Magazine, Wordgathering, Tammy, Queerly, The South Carolina Review, Welcome to the Resistance: Poetry as Protest, Diagrams Sketched on the Wind, Jason’s Connection, the Kalonopia Collective’s 2021 Disability Pride Anthology, eMerge, For The Birds Arts & Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. Diane’s creative nonfiction appears in Stone Canoe, Mollyhouse, The Abstract Elephant Magazine, Pop the Culture Pill, eMerge, and Beyond Words. Her flash fiction appears in Ordinary Madness; short fiction is published in A Coup of Owls. Diane served as Nine Mile Literary Magazine’s Assistant Editor after being Guest Editor for the Fall 2019 Special Double Issue on Neurodivergent, Disability, Deaf, Mad, and Crip poetics. She has published widely on Disability, education, accessibility, equity, and empowerment, among other subjects. A proud Neuroqueer, Mad, Crip, Genderqueer, Ashkenazi Jewish Hylozoist Nerd, Diane is honored to serve in the nonprofit sector. You can visit Diane online at: https://dianerwiener.com.