The Subject in Pain: a Poetics

Petra Kuppers writes about the feminism/embodiment/disability/poetry/performance (FEDPP) research project, an arts-based inquiry conducted with a number of experimental feminist poets who see themselves in relation to disability. The essay uses a cultural studies lens to trace how acts of poetry-making situate themselves in community building and experimentalism. How can poetry-ing speak to experiments at the level of sociality? How can we find accessible forms of being open to one another? How to create art in the presence of pain and alienation, without causing it? How to provide artful comfort without closure? These are the FEDPP project's core questions.