A Writer's Notebook, Day Seven-Hundred-And-Eighty-Eight

As someone whose disabilities are not, in general, physically apparent, I often find that their is a lack of recognition for the reality of certain issues I contend with.  Though handwriting is not my only difficulty, it is one area where this becomes quite apparent.  I've had numerous times when people will see my handwriting, recognize it as the scrawls of a child and respond adversely.  Many times I get people acting as if it is intentional laziness and just unacceptable.  I had a college professor once tell me "if you can't improve your handwriting, how can you expect anyone will ever hire you?"

There is something very hard about being a writer who is distanced from the physical act of writing, even more so to feel, as I often do, that it becomes a marginalizing factor with other poets.  This was driven home to me at a poetry reading I participated in a few years back.   When the reading began, the venue's manager got up to speak for a moment and discussed the importance of acceptance and community to their organization.  At another event a week prior some incident occurred where a reader was mistreated because of some content they shared of a political nature, and the manager wanted to express the commitment to inclusivity, openness, and free-expression that the venue was hoping to foster.  All this discussion of creating a safe and supportive environment for people of all sorts was undercut when the reading's host got up and began his routine.  He grabbed the clipboard with names of people waiting to read, looked at it and began to joke about how illegible the writing was and how difficult it was to read the names as a result.  Most everyone else found this quite funny, which made me feel even more of an outsider.  I know this man was not targeting me, and I am sure he was not even aware that what he said might be offensive, however, it did not change how I felt in that moment.

I can recognize the reality that people are not always aware of their actions, or of how hurtful a comment might be to someone else.  It is impossible for any of us to be sensitive to everything at all times; no one is aware of every potential trigger for another person, or the issues that are being faced by the people before us.  What is more significant to me is considering why it is that I did not feel it would have been safe to say anything, that the response would have been, at best, to make excuses and not take real ownership of what had been done?  What is it about the many years I've been in poetry communities that made me certain this would turn out that way?

I may be wrong about this.  It is not fair of me to assume that those I am mentioning here wouldn't have recognized the legitimacy of my response, but I have taken those steps many times and found the opposite, and I didn't feel like it that day.  Who is up for that all the time?  It would be one thing to feel that the poetry community had a deep empathy for those members with differences of all sorts, where environments really are as safe as they often claim to be, but experience has shown me this is very often far from the truth.  I would like to believe this is getting better, but anyone paying attention can see it remains an entrenched problem.  Making room for those who face alternative challenges can require thought and effort, and it needs to be done, especially now.  I cannot believe that in this time when so many are turning to online communities for support due to the isolation of our quarantine existence, I am hearing stories about how online readings are not being made accessible for the disabled(not to mention various issues with platforms being used for online teaching).  Now is a time for us to be making efforts to create connection, to work together to rise above circumstances, and it is clear that many poets are not comfortable creating inviting environments for others even if it only requires providing written versions of poems for the hard of hearing.  Poetry is about communication and connection, and it would be lovely to feel the ethos of the poetry community was a genuine reflection of this.