Poetry, Poetics and Experiential Knowledge of Disability
A conversation with Tea Gerbeza and Emilia Nielsen: November 24, 2021

Poet and professor Emilia Nielsen, and poet and multimedia artist Tea Gerbeza explore the many ways disability shows up in life, art, and writing. Nielsen and Gerbeza urge for a rethinking of disability poetry so that it might include fierce love, pleasure, and even joy, all while unpacking ableism and ableist common sense logics. Here, the poetry and poetics of disability aspire to be as disruptive and unruly as the bodies and minds from which the work emerges.
Recent Scholarly Presentations
- 2025 “On Disability Arts and Culture,” What is Happening in Canada Series, Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, Keynote, York University, December 9
- 2025 “Exploring Illness Experiences through Life-Writing,” Roundtable Participant, Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, Wolfson College, Oxford University, Oxford, United Kingdom, October 21
- 2025 “Creative-Critical Writing as Method and Research-Creation as Methodology in the Health Humanities?” Creative-Critical Approaches to the Health Humanities Symposium, Perdu, Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 9
