How to Explain This and The Construction of Disability in British Female Poetry in the 1990s-2010s: How Susan Wicks and Jo Shapcott Typify the New Generation’s Attention to Body and Difference A thesis submitted to The University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2018 Eleanor C. Ward School of Arts, Languages and Cultures 2 Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................... 4 Declaration ............................................................................................................................... 5 Copyright .................................................................................................................................. 5 Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................... 6 How to Explain This ................................................................................................................. 7 Part I. .................................................................................................................................... 8 2013 - Three-Hundred Afternoons at the Neurology Hospital ........................................ 8 2016 - Three-Hundred Days to Explain .......................................................................... 18 2016-2017 Three-Hundred Days Outside the Neurology Hospital ................................ 21 Part II. ................................................................................................................................. 25 September 2014 - How to Explain This .......................................................................... 25 March 2015 - Reluctant ................................................................................................. 31 June 2015 – Over my shoulder ...................................................................................... 34 August 2015 - Which Way is Home, Now? .................................................................... 37 September 2015 - Unsharable Pain ............................................................................... 45 October 2015 - Busy Grieving ........................................................................................ 50 Part III. ................................................................................................................................ 54 The Depth of Love .......................................................................................................... 54 The Construction of Disability in British Female Poetry in the 1990s-2010s: How Susan Wicks and Jo Shapcott Typify the New Generation’s Attention to Body and Difference .. 59 Chapter 1: Introduction: Identifying Poetry: Reading Jo Shapcott and Susan Wicks in the Context of Disability Studies ................................................................................................. 60 1.2 “Moving On” from Identifying Dysfunction ................................................................. 62 1.3 Disability Studies and the Impact of Gender and Feminism ........................................ 68 1.4 Normal and Abnormal Bodies: How Wicks and Shapcott Explore Difference ............. 78 1.5 The New Generation and their “New” Bodies ............................................................. 80 1.6 Opening a door to disability ......................................................................................... 85 1.7 The Public Body in Shapcott’s Collection ..................................................................... 87 1.8 Naming Disability: How Wicks and Shapcott Categorise Disability ............................. 88 1.9 The Micro Details of Disability ..................................................................................... 90 Chapter 2: Introduction Susan Wicks and the cultural “myth” of disability. ...................... 92 2.2 Owning Stories: the Strangeness of Disability ............................................................. 99 2.3 “Marked” and “Stigmatised”: The Relationship Between Female Bodies and Language ......................................................................................................................................... 103 3 2.4 Doing Disability Differently: Wicks’ Representation of Disability, Treatment and Iconic Images of Disability .......................................................................................................... 108 2.5 Other Models of Disability: Wicks and Helen Keller .................................................. 114 2.6 Family History: Disability Close to Home ................................................................... 117 2.7 The Collective Language of Disability ......................................................................... 124 2.8 Images of Identity: Disrupting Conventions of Representation ................................ 128 Chapter 3: Jo Shapcott and a New Generation of Self-Identification. .............................. 137 3.2 Criticism of Shapcott: An “Elastic” Cultural Poet ....................................................... 138 3.3 Shapcott’s Early Collections and the Language of Science ........................................ 140 3.4 Identifying as Disabled in 21st Century Britain ........................................................... 145 3.5 Inspiring the Body: Multi-Dimensional Poetry ........................................................... 149 3.6 How Disability Poetics figures in Shapcott’s forming of Breast Cancer ..................... 154 3.7 The Linguistic Impact of Disability through the Inclusion of Science ......................... 158 3.8 Gender and Disability in Shapcott’s Representation of the Body.............................. 161 Chapter 4: Conclusion: Shapcott and Wicks as examples of the New Generation ........... 170 4.2 The Voices and Stories of Open Diagnosis ................................................................. 172 4.3 Resisting the Marks of Identity in Of Mutability ........................................................ 175 4.4 The “Next” Generations ............................................................................................. 176 4.5 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 178 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 181 Word Count: 39,783 4 Abstract This thesis is in two parts. The first section is a poetry collection called How to Explain This, and the second section is a critical essay that explores the questions of how Susan Wicks and Jo Shapcott typify the New Generation’s attention to body and difference. My critical essay takes its cues from the academic fields of Cultural Disability Studies and Medical Humanities and understands disabled identities to be both constructed and porous. It considers the influence of cultural scholars such as Judith Butler, who influenced how we consider the fixity of boundaries and identities. By concentrating on the collections Open Diagnosis by Susan Wicks and Of Mutability by Jo Shapcott, it argues that both poets borrow from the context of Disability Rights and Culture, as well as the attention to the body that was popular among The New Generation of Poets in the 1990s-2010s. This period of social and legislative changes in British law meant that the attention on disabled bodies was increasing. Wicks and Shapcott’s collections incorporate the heightened visibility of disabled bodies in this period. They write authoritatively about their experience of illness and disability by encompassing multiple cultural, academic and legislative perspectives. Additionally, by using scientific language and imagery Wicks and Shapcott present collections that incorporate a variety of perspectives on disability distinct to the strict demarcation of identities found in critical work. Instead, Wicks and Shapcott rely on the use of myth and culture to present rounded and complex illustrations of “deviant” bodies. How to Explain This is divided into three sections and explores the interconnected themes of love, identity, and disability through a series of sequences. This poetry collection incorporates similar ideas to the critical work, rejecting simple and straightforward identities. Instead, How to Explain This considers how disability is affected by relationships, family, and other life events, in poems which construct and reflect on difference and stigma. 5 Declaration No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning. Copyright The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. 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