Our Right to Thrive: poems on the theme of social justice – Part Two

As part of our call out for poems for the Our Right to Thrive poetry competition we offered the poets who submitted entries the opportunity have their poem published on the project blog.

Here are a selection of poems from Megan Morgan, Sarah Hixon, GMJ, Kavina Pound, Sara Rivers, JSRC, Daneka Etchells and Genevieve Rudd.

Megan Morgan

Megan Morgan is a writer from South London. You can find more of her writing on her blog: steadyornot.mataroa.blog

Asking for help

Sometimes, asking for help
is two buses, a tube ride and
a march, leaning on my stick
surrounded by legs and wheels
and canes, masked faces,
signs emblazoned, restating
that we are worth helping
that our lives are worth living.

Sometimes, asking for help
is a teenager, still in his school uniform
who catches my eye and nods before
I can even open my mouth, holds open
the door to a shop he wouldn’t have entered
otherwise, light on his feet, grinning

Sarah Hixon

Sarah Hixon is a Liverpool-born poet now based in Shropshire. Sarah’s poetry provides a unique perspective, not only as a powerful form of self-expression but also bridges understanding for those unfamiliar with Narcolepsy’s daily challenges. When Sarah isn’t writing poetry she enjoys drawing, playing ukulele and making jewellery.

TIRED

Trying to remain awake.
It’s something many take for granted.
Really struggling now.
Everyone is with it but me.
Don’t tell me to drink some water,
get some air
and definitely don’t say: “Oh yeah me too.”

GMJ

G MJ defines themselves as an ‘art school scientist’. They started to explore creativity in the coronavirus pandemic, creating poetry with images and zines. G MJ is a professional science communications author and editor, but prefers using words for both liberation and silliness.
Instagram: @sadboyarts

access denied

I don’t deal with
People like you
Divergent, crip, queer

Me, an able white man
I’m a
disability confident employer

I need to know
What’s wrong with you?
Not making the away day

I’ll be there, talking garbage
at the
disability confident employer

I don’t approve
More sick leave
The funeral, not enough?

Your adjustments, unreasonable
denied by
disability confident employer

I need you to be
My type of disabled
Tell me I’m a good boy

Please satisfy the requirements
of the
disability confident employer

Kavina Pound

I am an older, disabled artist who dances, writes and acts. I have just graduated from the Access all Areas Performance Making Diploma. I’ve always been involved in Disability advocacy and arts, including my 2024 Artist Archive event at SDS speaking on my journey as a Disabled, older dancer. I have worked in inclusive dance for many years, teaching with Slide and Biodanza. My daughter and I have an inclusive dance brand, Danzability. I am in the Tramshed Steering Group for Disabled Artists, dance with Corali and regularly perform with Freestylers.

Dys Life

Fancy roads that look like a path
Somebody was having a laugh
but not me
Glass doors and glass floors
Yet another building that ignores
the needs of people like me

Sloping steps with no clear edge or a rail.
Why do designers fail
to see
me
Computers that have a mouse and keys
are not that easy
for me
And the cafes that put mugs on top of saucers
are not my cup of tea

As I struggle through the crowd
The conversations around me become increasingly loud
so I flee
Bumping into one thing then tripping over something
that is right in front of me

Mind the gap
too late I’ve gone
But there is nothing wrong
with me
Dys life in the making of society

Sara Rivers

Sara Rivers is a visual artists whose poetry forms part of her creative process.My poems frequently emerge from the space that occurs whilst making visual art and my attempts to self define as an artist with Bipolar.I have written for the first book by Survivors Poetry – From Dark to Light and written for the Open Mind publications also during that era.I am a member artist and Ambassador for Outsidein.

This Room

This room is unlike any other room.
It breathes and it has a skin.
A door unlocks inside my head,
that marks where I have been.

This room is quite invisible,
hidden from others’ probing eyes.
The walls are boundless, infinite,
and reach into the skies.

This room is a precious room.
I guard it, keep it safe.
The floor is like an ocean,
that mirrors outer space.

This room is a room of mystery,
that will remain so ‘till I die.
The room is like a friend to me,
and holds me when I cry.

This room is unlike any other room.
It breathes, it has a skin.
It is a place of beauty,
that lies buried deep within.

This room is a sacred room,
and when I enter in,
I discover it is the place
where All Life Springs.

Child-like, Sisterly, Motherly, Wise

I am a woman of many moods, emotions, dispositions.
I am a woman who has spent many hours being different
things to different people.
Child-like, Sisterly, Motherly, Wise:
a cleaner, a cook, a teacher, an activist, an advocate, a campaigner,
a lover, a rebel, a carer, an artist.
Child-like, Sisterly, Motherly, Wise.

I am a woman who
accepts the highs and lows
of all that life has to offer;
the joys and the woes,
the pain and the pleasure,
whatever the weather,
she travels alone,
Child-like, Sisterly, Motherly, Wise.

I am a woman who can dive to the depths or fly round the moon.

My life is a Circle of Spirals and Cycles.

A natural flow of Nature’s Rhythms.

I carry with me a label, a diagnosis of ‘Manic Depression’.

Not many people can tell of my invisible disability.

The complications, conflicts, complexities – and creativity.
My strengths and weaknesses, skills and talents –
this depends on how others see me,
and how much I’m allowed to be.

Child-like, Sisterly, Motherly, Wise.

JSRC

JSRC is a Manx-English writer, artist, and human who lives near Bristol, UK. She spent her career as a Copywriter and Journalist, and her poems and memoir have been featured everywhere from Sick Magazine to Knee Brace Press. She writes on neurodivergence, mental illness, disability, relationships, addiction, queerness, gender, class, and nature.

Ghosted

“I have a psychotic illness” I say. And they falter.
“How does it affect you?” some of them ask next.
Others simply stop replying at that point,
a cliff edge of conversation; they have fallen off
the crumbling figurative stone into the abyss.
My friend says he fares better with bipolar,
they have some understanding of it.
“Like Stephen Fry?” many ask, feeling original.
Some are more brazen to me: “As long as you’re not a
serial killer,” they say snarkily, but this stands out to me
as something a man would not usually say while courting.
Then there was the philosopher I met on Bumble
who couldn’t get over the words
“Universal Credit”. He stopped replying soon
after I mentioned benefits. His passion for
mental health awareness (sub-clinical anxiety and depression)
maybe-perhaps only extending to people who were still
able to work full-time.
I delete numbers when people stop replying,
so I do not have a phonebook of
graveyard contacts, instead I hold onto these
ghost memories of connections. And remind myself
that the people in my life still love me
when I’m floridly psychotic.

Daneka Etchells

Daneka is a disabled working class writer from Cumbria. Mostly a playwright, her plays ROGUE COMET(S) and BED BITCH have made an array of finalist, shortlist and longlist for major UK playwriting prizes. Daneka is a secret poet who’s looking to be brave and share more poetry publicly.

weapons of the state

theorised
then
immobilised
an army of sleeping whales
like upright submarines
undiffused bombs
suspended in sticky viscose of false promise and distraction

your enemies are not us
not us
it’s those
they say
then eradicating industry
prospect
wiping mobility out of aspartame laden mouths
choice from oily fingers
additive pregnant brains
gravid with pledge and
make britain great again

intoxicated with £2.47 pints
drugged with nationalist mania
then
deployed
roused into venomous action
them aroused by the hysteria
hard and wet
nailing like tudor buffets
gorging purging
swollen gilded promiscuity
whilst pennies and debt fight
pittance pointedly pitted in opposition
pounds sterling taxlessly printed
and the pricks get richer

yet those with no teeth and colour ran tattoos
demonised by years of jeremy kyle matador spectacle
disparaged disabled daughters of estranged dads
walking tightropes and atop rolling globes
at the chance of a chance
of getting clean
reuniting family
righting decades of generational destitution
by selling dignity for one night in a travelodge
hope delicately placed in the grabbing hands of gambling addict with a vampiric thirst for
daytime tele power they’re not the enemy
nor the aggressor
they’re a victim
too

the ones who know graft by the grooves in their hands
and knowledge by contemporary version of a folk song
advice in old wives’ tales
deprived of education
dentistry
food
economic opportunity
because when you decentralise a public service
or in this case all
greedy silk stocking plutocrats profit from the poverty
pull voices out of throats and force them still to scream
dissolve the enamel and suck out the dentine
stripping them of plosives and words and mastication
to pour liquid putrid poison down throats
feeding their anger with pureed lies
because
because

this is how we make our army
this is how we make our money
this is how we keep them down
this is how we keep them
down

Genevieve Rudd

Genevieve Rudd is an experienced community artist working in creative health and nature-connection, more recently, rediscovering her arts practice voice in light of Acquired Brain Injury, which is opening up new creative directions in movement, animation, drawing and imaginative links between human and more-than-human experiences.
Watch Genevieve’s new moving image animation artwork, Becoming on YouTube.

Tree Body

My winter body bends and twists
As the rigor mortis sets in,
Baclofen eases the tensioners,
Swaddled under a canopy
Sunken into the mattress litter.
Mulch from industrial white linen,
That’s not a blanket, it’s a counterpane,
Counter this pain with the ease of afternoon sunlight casting shadows across horizons – making me take up more space than i’m allocated in my curtain draped plot, not a bed rot but nesting in recuperation, soft and eased cotton and warmth, passive movement like a summer breeze. From every scar sprouts forth new life.
Vein-like tendrils pollarded and grafted to make new maps.
Mark me before you start your brutal carve up.
I can’t remember what my shape was meant to be so I reach towards the new light path.
Velcro straps now where suppleness once was.

Read the other entries: Part One and Part Three