Camisha writes “dispatches from the intersection of hurting and joy,” says poet Sarah Browning. Her poetry explores the wonder, resilience, and betrayal of the body, and, in the words of Jennifer Bartlett, reminds us that “the body and mind are not static.” Born from the author’s experience with recurrent and escalating hearing loss and chronic pain, her writing breaks silence around unapparent disability as it grapples with what it truly means to be capable and to make peace with one’s limitations in a society that equates disability with brokenness. It shows us, even in struggle, there is light to be let in.

Camisha L. Jones is the author of Flare (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Her poems – which often center experiences of hearing loss, chronic pain, gender, and race – are published at The New York Times, Poets.org, Button Poetry, The Deaf Poets Society, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Typo, The Quarry, and elsewhere. Camisha is Managing Director at Split This Rock, a national non-profit in DC that cultivates, teaches, and celebrates poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes change.

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There is photography, video and audio documentation of this performance, available below. The video is captioned in English and features live American Sign Language interpretation.

All documentation is released under Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)