Blog
Power in Words (Forward - Autumn 2025)
Award-winning writer, poet and disability activist Bethany Handley, 26, from south Wales believes poetry is a powerful form of activism, one which gave her back her dignity and voice
“I began writing poetry when I was in hospital to encourage non-disabled people to bear witness. I couldn’t believe how I was having to fight for the same standard of care that non-disabled people receive. In a dehumanising system that stripped me of my agency and humanity, poetry gave me back my dignity and voice.
Since then, poetry has become a means of building community and raising awareness. I believe equality in the outdoors is possible and campaign for better access for all to green and blue spaces. Poetry creates a platform from which I can ask the reader to experience what it’s like to be shut out from paths by unnecessary stiles or kissing gates, or how it feels to have my day intruded upon by a stranger asking what happened as if there’s something wrong with my resilient, disabled body.
Crucially, poetry also invites the audience in to experience my joy. When you share a poem, whether it’s publishing that poem or reading to an audience, that poem welcomes people in. It invites the reader to build meaning together. It creates a community. Poetry is a very powerful form of activism.
Many non-disabled people assume becoming a full-time wheelchair is the most tragic thing that can happen. Poetry helps me to rip this assumption apart. In Cling Film, my poetry pamphlet I published this year, I show my life has never been so full of joy, for now I consciously work at finding it: in pushing my chair by the river, in the yellow pansies I had by my bedside during my most recent hospital admission, or in being still watching swallows swoop above me. In this new slowness, I’ve found intense gratitude and acceptance. I relish every second outdoors or with my family.
I want more disabled people to become empowered through writing. I recently edited Beyond / Tu Hwnt, the Anthology of Welsh Deaf and Disabled Writers. It was so beautiful being able to provide a platform for experienced and emerging deaf and disabled writers. The collection united our community, celebrating our diversity of experience and showing our voices belong together. I’m keen to keep building platforms for disabled writers, through teaching workshops, sharing my own work and creating similar opportunities for others. Given the current political context of benefit cuts, it has never been more important for disabled voices to be heard.
I urge disabled people to start writing, whether that’s writing a diary or poetry. You don’t have to write for an audience, you can just write for yourself. It’s such a potent way of retaining your autonomy. Writing also helps to train yourself to find joy in your every day.
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Follow Bethany on Instagram: @bethanyhandley_
Cling Film and Beyond/ Tu Hwnt are available to order from UK bookshops.
This article was featured in the Autumn 2025 issue of FORWARD magazine the only magazine dedicated to the spinal cord injury community.