“Whose Flame Is It Anyway?” Anthology
A celebration in words and pictures
Not my book, sadly, but an anthology by Disability Arts Cymru, with poetry, prose, art and pictures of various productions. I’ve been lucky enough to have two English poems accepted for the book, and I’m told there’s a very fetching pic of me in my ‘Queen of the Birds’ Eryr Euraid regalia 
Here’s the official blurb: ‘Through “Whose Flame is it Anyway?” Disability Arts Cymru has uncovered a wealth of talent amongst young disabled people in Wales. For four years, our young poets, painters, performers and musicians have never ceased to amaze & inspire. This anthology is a celebration of their skill and passion.’
Good eh? I’ve been invited to the book launch, where I’ll be performing sign language poems, but sadly, the event is RSVP only. Sorry, folks! The poems – which I still need to compose… – will reflect the English poems I have in the book – ‘When the Dead Are Cured’ and ‘Lament of a Bilingual Poet’. If you wanna read them, you’ll have to buy the book! Speaking of which, you can order here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Whose-Flame-Anyway-Macsen-McKay/dp/1907476091
Just to whet your appetite, here are the first three lines of ‘When the Dead are Cured’, affectionately known as the ‘Zombies Haiku’.
Zombies surround me:
Bodies, faces, say nothing.
Only their mouths move.
Ooh, I wonder who / what I could possibly be talking about?
P.S. The blog is probably going to be slow for a while, am knee-deep (or I should be) in my MA dissertation. The working title is “Demonising genes: this way the future?” and my argument is that blaming everything on genes; pathologising and normalising them based on factors we don’t yet fully understand (take the debate on epigenetics for example) and concerted efforts to eradicate increasing numbers of genes and random mutations are misguided. Especially as technology that can help people with disabilities integrate into society has also moved on: we need to have faith in human ability to adapt. In the future, accidents will still happen, genes will slip through the net, some people will still have ‘disabilities’ compared to the rest of ‘normal’ society, society will still need to adapt to those who fall outside of their ‘normal range’. Basically I’m arguing that people with (non-life-threatening) disabilities deserve a chance at life too! To clarify, I’m arguing for a spectrum of ‘fatal — non-fatal’ and ‘difference — disease / disability’ as opposed to ‘disabled — normal’ or ‘abnormal — normal’. Deafness, for example, would be an example of a non-fatal disability that doesn’t deserve to legislated against *ahem, HFEA Clause 14, ahem* whereas life-threatening diseases such as Tay-Sachs, where a sufferer will live a very short life (rarely living past the age of four) should absolutely be tested for and guarded against. It’s a dissertation that takes in arguments about value of life, aspects of medical law, genetic ethics or genethics, social commentary and disability rights. And it’s due in at the end of August. Forgive me for not updating regularly for a while
