Inside the Little Plastic Castle

Poet Tanya Davis collaborates with filmmaker Andrea Dorfman to create poetry "music videos." From 2010, their How To Be Alone invites someone who may start with being lonely to embrace aloneness. From October 2020, How To Be At Home re-mixes that embrace of solitude with the sorrow of the current moment. An anonymous Philippine blogger transcribes the 2010 poem. No captions nor audio description, and the poet’s voice is so soft I can’t check the accuracy of the transcript.

Davis and Dorfman collaborate on more videos at Davis’ site: http://tanyadavis.ca/video/

( How To Be Alone embed — no CC )

( How To Be At Home embed — no CC )

I’m a big fan of mrissa’s humane and thoughtful science fiction stories. In the last month, she’s been posting verse that helps me cope and hope.

What Remains: the COVID Checkouts captures the strange relationship we have with the books that happened to be in our house when stay-at-home started.

In the Isolation Grocery explores how, even in that temple of mundanity, every moment has changed.

COVID Spring: Underlying recognizes our individual human worth, no matter our immune-system status.

Post Apocalyptic imagines the better world we could have when the current crisis has passed.

I bet there will be more!
https://mrissa.dreamwidth.org/tag/covid+poems

Three excellent items from my Dreamwidth travels:

seperis lets us know that Amazon accepts SNAP in NY state, and offers discounts for people with federal EBT cards.

https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1059318.html

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I’m in awe of petra’s skill with fannish poetry:

You can see it in progress at this prompt post https://petra.dreamwidth.org/840970.html

This one blew my mind:

Higgledy Piggledy
Hercules Mulligan
Renegade tailor tied
Tories in knots,

Managed his shop full of
Haberdashderringdo
Carefully measuring
Breeches and plots.

All the villanelles https://petra.dreamwidth.org/tag/poetry:+villanelle

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ljwrites writes on DW about many things, including this helpful meta about "Policing and woobiefication: two sides of the same coin".

https://lj-writes.dreamwidth.org/99391.html?format=light

Fandom policing and villain woobiefication/apologia seem to be polar opposites, but at heart they agree on one thing: That your morality is defined by the wholesomeness of the content you make and consume.
[… snip …]
If you truly disagree with the fandom police's premise, then actually disagree, and don't validate the flawed and harmful premise by spinelessly seeking a loophole for yourself like "Yeah people who like immoral shit and deserve to be mistreated/shamed, but I'm nothing like those immoral people because [horrible validation of real-life immorality]."

capri0mni is an expert monster wrangler. Her poems explore the monstrous as warning, as pastime, and as creatures to embrace.

From her book of poetry: Monsters Rhapsody: Disability, Culture, & Identity by Ann Magill http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/Ann_Magill

begin quote

Anthem (for the People of No Nation)

“All borders are invisible from space.”
This is our prayer for peace,
Our song of hope,
The story that we tell ourselves,
Trying, with the telling,
To make it so.

( five more wonderful verses )

There's lots of disability-themed fiction, memoir, & poetry online, but as with any search on "disability," it's hard to separate medical stuff from writings by us about us.

Now there's an umbrella org to make stuff easier to find:
Disabilities Literature Consortium
http://dislitconsortium.wordpress.com
dislit666@gmail.com

Some of the mags I've enjoyed:
( Breath and Shadow )
http://www.abilitymaine.org/breath
breathandshadow@gmail.com

( Kaleidoscope )
http://www.udsakron.org/kaleidoscope/issues.aspx

( Pentimento )
http://www.pentimentomag.org

( Wordgathering )
http://www.wordgathering.com
submissions@wordgathering.com

( Intima )
http://www.theintima.org/

One of these days, I'll post my Think Galacticon notes. Adrienne Maree Brown and N K Jemison were the Honored Guests, and Adrienne's exploration of Octavia Butler's Parable novels as religious text blew my mind wide open.

So I added Ms Brown's thoughts to my Twitter feed Adriennemaree

So today I saw her anniversary writing: http://t.co/XRPK0i7

Here's an excerpt:

I understood everyone that day
every maneuver
I understood the taxi drivers
immediately and perpetually flagged
I understood the broken angry men
who had destroyed my home
I understood the strangers
white men and women
white flesh or white ash
walking up the east side
as I walked down
I understood that whatever they had been
now they were grief

I walked so far that day
maybe I even flew
for all I remember it

we walked so far that day
never looking away
never looking back