Sundress Academy for the Arts Presents "The Dis-Form: Disability and the Embodied Mode"

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “The Dis-Form: Disability and the Embodied Mode,” a workshop led by Abigail Raley on Wednesday, July 8th from 6:00-7:30 PM EST. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can register for the event here.

In “The Poetics of Disobedience,” Alice Notley says, “Like many writers I feel ambivalent about words, I know they don’t work, I know they aren’t it.” Notley is using what she calls the “Dis word” or the “Dis form,” that is, what language is not, what we cannot do, what we must refuse. Notley’s “Dis form” is especially evocative when paired with a long history of expansive, disabled poetics. We are encouraged, through Notley’s “Dis word,” to imagine the inabilities of language and the body, constraints which allow us to imagine beyond our realities. In this workshop, we will take the inabilities of our languages and our bodies and use these as dis-modes to generate new, original work. By emphasizing what the body cannot do, we will attempt to complicate a poetics of embodiment.

Abigail Raley, white femme-presenting person with long, wavy red hair in a black shirt.

While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Abigail Raley via Venmo: @Abigail-Raley-2

Abigail Raley (she/they) is a writer from Bowling Green, Kentucky. Her work has appeared in The Offing, HAD, Hanging Loose Magazine, The Stone Circle Review, Identity Theory, and elsewhere. They are a 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee and a 2026 artist resident at Ragdale Residency. She holds an MFA from the University of Montana and is pursuing her PhD at Case Western Reserve University. Their debut poetry collection, Wet Specimen, was published with Sundress Publications in 2026.