Poets identified with Bipolar Disorder

Through the whirlwind of mental suffering, poets identified with bipolar disorder build the utmost reality of vulnerability and empowerment with their risk-taking creativity, raw honesty, and crafted nuance.

My curation of this special issue takes the perspective of feminist disability theory to include “discourse of body marked as deviant”. Poets identified with bipolar disorders are multiply identified across a spectrum of cultural categories — females, queer, disabled, and racial minorities. Just as these cultural categories are viewed as social constructions, bipolar disorder also needs a politicized discourse away from pathology. Hence, I would love this special issue to forward the minority model toward mental disability rather than the medical model.

The featured poets identified with bipolar disorder root their poems in self-awareness and translate what creative muse means to them as writers, poets, and living beings. The poems show heartfelt and powerful experiences: their reality of bipolar disorder is not merely prescriptions of pills, chemicals within neurons, and difficult terms in medicine. Rather, their reality is located in “prejudicial social attitudes and exclusionary institutions” rather than in bodies assumed as inferior and unfortunate.

While poems in this issue center on the particular experience of mania and depression, my curation philosophy also takes the position of crip theory. Poetry eludes definition. Crip eludes definition as well. Crip, as a way of thinking, positions against able-bodiedness. I’m excited to see the sparks from the collision of poetry and crip (on the spectrum of which locates bipolar disorder). The curation intends to present a flow of crip that decomposes discrete or binary categories and constructs a fluid spectrum from disabled to non-disabled. Poems in this special issue challenge the compulsory able-bodiedness and question the desired state of being within normalcy assumed as fortunate.

The following featured poems, to a certain extent, show common human experiences. These humane and sensitive experiences may not only be inclusive to people diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but may also include people identified with bipolar disorder, and moreover, people identified as non-disabled. I hope poems in this special issue evoke resonance and creative muse in all audiences.

Embrace the rhythms of a beating heart — ups and downs in mania depression. Embrace the possibility that non-disabled can be crip. Embrace the beauty in bipolar and in poetry.

— Wenxin Tang
Emerging Voices Poetry Intern

Note: ORP supports people in marginalized groups. This 2022 poetry special issue, themed Creative Muse, features poets identified with bipolar disorder. Due to the large number of high-quality submissions we have received, I cannot resist but accept multiple poems from one author. I’m thrilled to come across so many beautiful poems on this specific theme. I hope you can share this delight and care of the creative muse.