Two Remarkable Poets on Disability Poetics and Activism

The Poetry Center’s In Common Writers Series opens 2020 with a program featuring two remarkable poet/writers, each with significant work in disability poetics and activism. This event, with Jennifer Bartlett and Denise Leto, is supported by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund.

Jennifer Bartlett was born in the San Francisco Bay Area. Of her work, Nathaniel Tarn writes, “Jennifer Bartlett has created not a new form of surrealism, nor of magical realism, but a kind of supernal realism which leaves room for dreams, visions, and angels as well as the panoplies of both country and urban life.” She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and she works part-time in the Office of the President of New York City Transit. Here she works with a team on bringing accessibility to the New York City transit system. In addition to being a poet and writer, she is an activist for people with disabilities throughout New York.

Denise Leto is a multidisciplinary poet, writer, editor, and dance dramaturge. She wrote the book of poetry for the collaborative dance performance Your Body is Not a Shark, exploring feminist embodiment, voice, and disability poetics.  Denise is a member of Olimpias, an international disability performance collective. Her current project is an ecopoetic exploration of the San Francisco Bay. New poems are forthcoming in Quarterly West and Rogue Agent.