Dreaming Otherwise Workshop Anthology

DREAMING OTHERWISE
Workshop Anthology

Editor / Facilitator Jody Chan
Layout + Design Kianna Mkhonza
With thanks to Marina Fathalla + Sean Lee

The poetry in Dreaming Otherwise, Workshop Anthology are results of collective and individual writing during a virtual workshop held in the winter of 2023. 

With works by: Elaine Cagulada, Rob Colgate, Meghan Eaker, Cass Myers, Aysha Natsheh, Jasmine Noseworthy Persaud, Andi Raquel, Namitha Rathinappillai, Harmeet Rehal, Kitty Rodé, Hayotha Thillairajan, and flora valeska woudstra. 

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP

Dreaming Otherwise was a virtual, six-week poetry and collaborative writing workshop for a cohort of 12 sick/disabled/Mad queer people. Dreaming Otherwise was co-hosted by Whippersnapper Gallery and Tangled Art + Disability, with support from the Images Festival and Canada Council for the Arts.

INTRODUCTION

Our ability to dream beyond the oppressive conditions of the present has always been a condition of our survival. We, here: sick, disabled, queer. We: anyone who has revised the world’s limitations on our lives. Who has made the waiting room beautiful. Here, we cite Saidiya Hartman, who says, in a panel discussion on the poetics of abolition, Poetry is not a luxury. Dreaming otherwise is as essential as food for us to survive. 

We invoke Audre Lorde too, of course, through Hartman’s words. We invoke June Jordan: I will love deeply, Andi insists, in their poem “Resolution #5,789”, I will not be afraid. And again, in shared song with Aysha and Jasmine, My body and its limitations / I want to be gentle with them all. 

Again, yeah, Rob nods, and in three syllables unfolds a world of crip exhaustion. Knowing that we move with pain, with Cass’ zoo of unknowable ache, but need not be alone inside of it. And though home is not always easy—as Namitha reminds us in the lines, I am still standing still / pretending that I am not petrified / by her home’s welcome to me / and what it wanted from me—Elaine, Meghan, and Namitha affirm, We bring ourselves home to us. 

We write together, letting our sick disabled queer voices intermingle and exist in multiplicity. again and / again i retrace myself until / i know my mind like a relative—Meghan, wandering. Hayotha adds, no more questions about me. No explanations or obligations. We can come to know ourselves and each other more gently. Become a palm, to rest in, as flora so beautifully lays before us.

In their essay, “To Hold the Grief & the Growth: On Crip Ecologies”, Kay Ulanday Barrett writes, Disabled people are less than in a world where disabled people, especially Black and brown people, are told to just be so grateful that normies/ableds let us live, let us even be on stage, let us be in the anthology or retreat, let us be included. Their knowing, our knowing: inclusion is not the same as intimacy. Let us live, let us be, is not the same as community. 

Where do we belong? in the cavities, the marrow, answer Rob, Kitty, and Hayotha. Which is to say, beside each other, beside each other. Or, as Jasmine echoes, I want my friends to find home.

We dream of ease, of writing from bed and white flower oil. We make ritual out of gathering. We check in, chat react, crip tip, cameras off. I dream of breaking loose, offers Elaine, of arriving at a place called freedom. Yes, we dream of intimacy and community, care and resistance, softness and solidarity. By holding this work, in your hands, on your screen, you dream with us. 

Jody

*If you would like to purchase a physical copy, send a message to: programming@whippersnapper.ca and we’ll mail you one! X percentage will go towards supporting peer-to-peer intimate learning spaces like this one.