Any anthology that brings together voices from across the disabled community gets a thumbs up from me. Moving Mountains brings something more that I hadn’t come across before. Not only do the writers have the freedom to express how they view the world and what it’s like being in nature in their bodies, Louise Kenward, the editor, has curated a place for disabled authors to experiment with their writing.
I hugely enjoyed the broad range of writing in Moving Mountains. I’m confident that if you enjoy reading about nature or any writing that contemplates the body, you will find some new authors whose work you’ll want to seek more of. As a poetry lover, I most enjoyed the gut-punching unfurling of Hannah Hodgson’s An Ode to Climbing Over Fences Instead of Needing Them Open and the brilliant depiction of chronic fatigue in Louise Adjoa Parker’s This Is Not Just Tired. The closing serenade of poems and poetic essays from Eli Clare, Jamie Hale, Alec Finlay, and Kate Davis was a real treat.
Of the longer pieces, those that stayed with me included Khairani Barokka’s essay The Clocktower and the Canopy which offered a brilliantly interesting perspective on indigenous approaches to caretaking, both of people and the environment. I found a lot to relate to in Victoria Bennett’s essay On Becoming Ocean which featured both the difficulty of travelling to very remote areas and the trials of moving house with a body that needs pacing and consistency. Rowan Jaines’ Endometriosis and the Female Trinity in the Peak District was filled with raw emotion depicting the physical, emotional and social impact of endometriosis.
And the rest? There wasn’t a single piece I didn’t like. I genuinely felt joy in seeing the more experimental works by Cat Chong and Abi Palmer. How rare a thing it is for disabled people to not only be given the opportunity to express themselves genuinely, but to do so in forms that go against the grain.
I have come away from this anthology with a huge list of works to turn to next. Expect to see more from these authors reviewed on the blog later this year!
And if you’ve already read and enjoyed Moving Mountains, I think you’ll like Some of Us Just Fall by Polly Atkin who is one of the contributors in the anthology. You can read my review here.
Tori Pearmain 