Bad Weather Mammals is an excavation, or perhaps an investigation, through poetry of the devastations and joys of living in a disabled and traumatized body. My poetic style can be eclectic, and in this collection, I use multiple formal constraints to humanize medical and bureaucratic systems that continue to retraumatize our most vulnerable citizens and keep them in a poverty loop. I am a disabled/queer person that grew up with a disabled mother who subsisted on ODSP and I have four younger siblings. That lived experience, as well as living on ODSP myself after becoming disabled when I was 20, informs my writing. What is my poetic style? I’m not sure. I guess whatever works to dissemble dominant narratives about the disabled and recenter us in our own narrative. The craft is a vehicle for the content. I want to hear from those surviving and those who learned to thrive. I am asking the reader to witness injustices refracted between individuals and the ensuing dysfunction in families and of course, attempts at reclaiming joy.
* * *
Ashley-Elizabeth Best is a disabled poet and essayist from Kingston, ON. Her work can be found in the Capilano Review, New Welsh Review, CV2, Ambit, Mslexia, and Chatelaine. Recently, she was a finalist for the CBC Literary Award for Poetry.
* * *
Bad Weather Mammals is available now, here or from your favourite indie bookstore.
