Rachael Boast's Versus Versus anthology launch events
Versus Versus: 100 Poems by Deaf, Disabled & Neurodivergent Poets, edited by poet and disability advocate Rachael Boast, was published by Bloodaxe Books on 22 May 2025. It is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Summer 2025. The anthology was launched online with Bloodaxe Books on publication day, with further events to take place at festivals around the UK and worldwide.
The anthology brings together poets from the international arena, from emerging voices to world-renowned authors. Most of the work is by contemporary writers – writing in many different styles and from varying traditions – alongside a sampling of historical poets. Also featured are poems translated from Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, German, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, and French Sign Language (linking to a video of a signed performance of Levent Beşkardès’ poem ‘V’).
Particular prominence has been given to poets of the Global Majority, and LGBTQIA2+ poets, who are not only underrepresented within the publishing industry and elsewhere, but whose access to healthcare, provision and support may be inadequate or non-existent for their needs.
Versus Versus presents a wide range of work, from poems which challenge cultural, medical and political agendas and policies, to poems addressing war and the impact of the climate emergency. Alongside these sit poems of love, pain, self-care and companionship, as well as humorous poems and poetry celebrating the natural world.
Versus Versus is supported by the Royal Society of Literature through their 2023 Literature Matters Award.
Rachael Boast is a British writer, editor and disability advocate, navigating Ichthyosis and related conditions. She has published four collections of poetry with Picador, most recently Hotel Raphael (2021). Her anthology Versus Versus: 100 Poems by Deaf, Disabled & Neurodivergent Poets is published by Bloodaxe Books in May 2025 and is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Summer 2025. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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Versus Versus was well reviewed in Disability Arts Online on 6 May 2025.
'I think this is one of the main remits here – a dialogue between the speaker and the listener, the reader and the writer, the disabled and the non-disabled.’ – Richard Downes, Disability Arts Online
https://disabilityarts.online/magazine/reviews/versus-versus-anthology-of-100-disabled-poets-that-demands-to-be-heard/
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FORTHCOMING EVENTS
In-person/hybrid events will be taking place at festivals around the UK and internationally from Autumn 2025, including at London’s Southbank Centre on 25 October 2025.
Details to follow.
PAST EVENTS
ONLINE LAUNCH FOR VERSUS VERSUS
Thursday 22 May 2025, 7pm BST
With Rachael Boast, Karthika Naïr, Chisom Okafor and Daniel Sluman, and filmed contributions from 12 other poets from the anthology
The online launch for Rachael Boast's international anthology Versus Versus: 100 poems by Deaf, Disabled & Neurodivergent Poets took place on publication day, 22 May 2025. Rachael was joined by the three poets who helped on the book as its Advocacy and Advisory Panel, Karthika Naïr (India/France), Chisom Okafor (Nigeria) and Daniel Sluman (UK), who also have poems included in the anthology.
The event also included film clips of twelve other poets reading their poems from Versus Versus: Han Mac Tu (Vietnam), Kathryn Gray (Wales), Andy Jackson (Australia), Kate Davis (England), Riyad al-Saleh al Hussein (Syria), Khairani Barokka (Indonesia/UK), Naomi Ortiz (Mexico), Levent Beskardes (Turkey/LSF), Jack Mapanje (Malawi/UK), Jamie Hale (UK), Lateef McLeod (USA) and Nuala Watt (Scotland), with a brilliant bonus film from Karl Knights (UK).
This free Bloodaxe launch event was streamed on YouTube Live and is now available on YouTube below or here: https://youtube.com/live/07usVjBxJo8.
Rachael Boast is a British writer, editor and disability advocate, navigating Ichthyosis and related conditions. She has published four collections of poetry with Picador, Sidereal (2011), Pilgrim's Flower (2013), Void Studies (2016) and Hotel Raphael (2021). Her poems have been anthologised in Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches, 2017), Staying Human (Bloodaxe Books, 2020) and 100 Poems to Save the Earth (Seren, 2021).
Karthika Naïr was born with RDEB inversa, a rare disorder of the skin and mucous membranes. Even minor friction – sneezes, handshakes – can result in erosions or blisters resembling third degree burns. When not combating triffids in hospital, she can usually be found around dance studios. Sometimes, that results in books (A Different Distance, The Honey Hunter…), sometimes in dance/theatre productions with colleagues (Beneath the Music, ROOH, Mariposa…). Sometimes, all of the above (Until the Lions). Originally from India, she lives in Paris.
Chisom Okafor is a Nigerian poet and clinical nutritionist, presently living in Alabama where he is an MFA in Creative Writing candidate and Graduate Council Fellow. His poems, which mostly explore his chronic illness, appear in The Ending Hasn’t Happened Yet, an anthology of disabled and neurodivergent poets (ed. Hannah Soyer) and In-Between Spaces: An Anthology of Disabled Writers (ed. Rebecca Burke). He has received support from the Sundress Academy for the Arts and Commonwealth Foundation.
Daniel Sluman is a 38-year-old poet and disability rights activist. He co-edited the first major UK Disability poetry anthology, Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back, and has published three poetry collections with Nine Arches Press. His most recent collection, single window (2021), was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.
[16 April 2025]
