Body Unbound: Poetry of Illness, Gender, and Disability in torrin a. greathouse’s Wound from the Mouth of a Wound (2020)

Abstract

torrin a. greathouse’sdebut poetry collection Wound from the Mouth of a Wound (2020) articulates the oblique language of pain, trauma, and suffering emanating from the flesh. greathouse’s poetry of the wounded body deals with the impact of the gender and ableist biases contained in medical, social, and cultural discourses on her identity as a chronically ill and disabled trans woman. The analysis of a selection of her poems reveals her pains-taking deconstruction of the male/female, ability/disability, healthy/ill, and normal/ab-normal binaries that govern her world. This poet unbindsa body whose gender and poten-tial are hidden behind the dominant biomedical essentialism, diagnostic terms, and tenta-tive treatments, reflecting on the analogous medicalisation of disability, illness, transgen-derism, and trauma. greathouse poetises her reconciliation with a body oppressed by the dominant discourses that regard trans and disabled bodies only in terms of deficiency and imperfection.