Disability and resilience through the eyes of the poet-researcher

By Lisa Labita Woodson

I see poetry as a vehicle that not only challenges the way I see the world, but that offers a glimpse into the reality and lived experiences of others. I am drawn to poems that speak to my passion for global health, especially those that deconstruct Western concepts of health and provide a richer understanding of wellness (and illness), often rooted in specific cultural contexts. I am a collector of these poems and use the BGH platform as a repository, with the hope that others find them informative and that it will help foster dialogue around important issues affecting marginalized groups. BGH is a safe space for sharing and exploring through research and art.

Recently, I came across this paper by a Kuwaiti-Palestinian scholar, Shahd Alshammari, who uses autoethnography to center her experiences living with MS, her grandmother’s fight with breast cancer, and intergenerational trauma as cultural references to understanding how Palestinians view resilience and disability.¹ She writes from a place of vulnerability, and uses poetic inquiry as a tool for academic and embodied activism and to engage the reader in a way that “allows [her] disabled body to move on paper, effortlessly without obstacles… moving into a process of fluid movement between past and present narratives” (p. 364).¹

I was particularly drawn to the discourse around resilience and dysphoria, where the narratives of her mother and grandmother, presented through poetry, provides a different perspective on disability – one that is largely absent from Western disability studies discourse. It resonates with how Faulkner, a prominent researcher in poetic inquiry, describes the mechanism in which poetry and social justice intersect.  She explains that “Poetry taps into the universal through radical subjectivity. The poet’s use of personal experience creates something larger from the particular; the concrete specifics become universal when the audience relates to, embodies, and/or experiences the work as if it were their own words” (p. 210).² I want to share the final poem from Alshammari called A Poem for Teta¹ where she weaves the most poignant pieces of her essay to provide a space for self-reflection, renewed strength, and healing.

A Poem for Teta

Dear Teta, 
I carry the trauma within my body, I carry your pain, and I write about it. 
I write about it to rid myself of it, to free your ghost.
I still speak to ghosts, remember? I wrote it ages ago, I confessed that I speak to ghosts. 
I hear your voice reminding me to keep walking, limp or no limp, eyes squinting,
       voice trembling. 
I want to heal. All the research out there reminds me of your words, although
       those weren’t your words. You knew better than theories I’ve read and you
       offered me a way out of the woods.
Writing is the manifestation of resilience. 
The way out of trauma is through uncovering the wounds, speaking back writing
       your words into academic research. I live through my body, but I also live
       through your body’s memories. There is separation, and in that, I find healing. 
In writing against dominant understanding of resilience, I create a new narrative. 
I bring you back to life. 
I bring my disabled body back to the center.
You raised my mother, and you passed on Palestinian resilience to me. 

(p. 371-372)

Author's permission was obtained to reproduce material. Link to the article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2022.2114528

References

1. Alshammari S. Disability as metaphor or resilience: A Palestinian poetic inquiry. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication. 2022;15(4):362-73.

2. Faulkner SL. Poetic inquiry. Handbook of arts-based research. 2017:208-30.