Narrative predominates in medical education contexts, to the point that there is even a field of practice called ‘Narrative Medicine.’ But there is no corollary field of ‘Poetry Medicine.’ When poetry is used in medical education, it appears as an empathy-generating tool or as a quick reflective exercise. Students are rarely given the straight stuff, so to speak, from practising, professional poets who identify as disabled or have a care relationship to disability. In this performance, 4 such poets will read their work. Ottawa-based Nancy Huggett will read poems about caring for an adult daughter with multiple disabilities and medical intransigence; Ottawa-based Conyer Clayton will read poems about their vocal disorder; Jim Johnstone will read poems about his recent diagnosis and recovery from a meningioma; Shane Neilson will read autistically about autism. We hasten to add, however, that we have differing views about disability and we also will deliberately complicate the title’s conscious framing of one another as occupying a specific, discrete disabled identity. A short discussion with audience engagement will follow the readings and will concern topics like how disability influences poetic form, how disability as an identity can be represented in poetry, and how poetry by disabled people might be used in medical pedagogy.

(bios of other participants provided because they matter):

Conyer Clayton is an Ottawa-based writer and editor from Louisville, Kentucky whose third book of poetry, the lake-shaped excuse, is forthcoming in fall 2026. They are a 2025 MacDowell Fellow and Tin House Scholar.

Nancy Huggett, winner of the RBC PEN Canada 2024 New Voices Award, is a settler descendant writing and caregiving on the unceded Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.

Jim Johnstone is a poet and critic. He is the author of seven poetry collections, including The King of Terrors (Coach House Books, 2023).

Shane Neilson is a poet and physician from New Brunswick who currently practices in Guelph, Ontario. His work has appeared in Poetry (Chicago) and the Best Canadian Poetry series four times, including Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (Biblioasis, 2017). Having served as judge for the 2025 International Hippocrates Poetry Prize, he is currently the poetry consultant for the Canadian Medical Association Journal, and his most recent book of poems from Goose Lane Editions is The Reign.

COI Disclosure: I do not have an affiliation (financial or otherwise) with any for-profit or not-for-profit organizations