6. 11. 2025
Villiform
Or: Refiguring Our Disabilities as Poetic Constraints
Jade Wallace
We are confined, the well and the
unwell, by the cadenced demands
our bodies make. Countable as
the beats of a villanelle are
the hours that pass until need will
compel us to pause and cast for
water to slake the thirst that con
stricts us, both well and unwell. While
we may delay, we cannot dis
pel the rhythms of hunger, of sleep
and wake, the metre of sonnet
or villanelle. And yet some of
the forms in which we dwell will for
give us the one or more rules we
break. Though we are all bounded, both
well and unwell, for some one care
less line will wreck the spell, while oth
ers less delicate can forsake
a few syllables in a vill
anelle. Envy of the freer feet
is hard to quell, but there is a
nother splendour in the ache of
constraint that fixes us, more or
less well, like velvet syllables
in a villanelle.
Jade Wallace (they/them) is a queer and disabled poet, novelist, critic, and non-profit sector worker. Their books include two poetry collections, Love Is A Place But You Cannot Live There and The Work Is Done When We Are Dead (Guernica Editions, 2023 and 2026), and a genderless novel, ANOMIA (Palimpsest Press, 2024). Wallace is also co-founder of the collaborative writing entity MA|DE, whose first full-length poetry collection ZZOO was recently published by Palimpsest Press. Keep in touch: jadewallace.ca + ma-de.ca