Because poems are stiletto heels in the hands of drag queens and femmes, ready to be thrown, ready to be worn, fierce and beautiful.

Hello, I'm Eli Clare, a white disabled genderqueer poet/writer/activist, weaving together words about disability, queerness, the natural world, and social justice. I've spent the last decade traveling across the U.S. and Canada speaking, teaching, training, and facilitating. I’ve read from my two books of creative non-fiction—the recent award-winning Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure and the groundbreaking Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation—and my collection of poetry, The Marrow's Telling: Words in Motion.

I’ve taught Social Work students and Queer Studies students, led anti-racism trainings for white disabled people and anti-ableism trainings for college administrators, facilitated storytelling workshops for activists, keynoted several dozen queer, trans, disability, and anti-racist conferences, and much much more. (For more about my traveling work, visit my website.) In my travels people have repeatedly told me that my writing has made a tremendous amount of difference in their lives, work, activism, and communities.

I love this work, using my words to build community and foster social change. But right now I need less time on the road and more time to write. Less of the stress and exhaustion that comes with travel and more time to craft the poems, essays, stories that stream through me.

Because poems are cracks, crevices, faultlines; Chinook salmon swimming upstream to their spawning beds; old growth Douglas fir dappling the ground in shadow.

This is where YOU can make a difference. By becoming a monthly subscriber, a patron of my work, you can gift me that time I so need. I am offering subscriptions on a sliding scale. Everyone, regardless of what you pay {whether it's $1/month or $100/month), gets access to all the work I post. Let me suggest:

If you're a community-based activist/artist, consider $3-$10/month.
If you're a professional who uses my work in your work (for example a tenured professor who teaches my books), consider $10-$30/month.
If you're a big donor who values art, cultural work, and/or activism, consider $30-$100/month.

Each $1,000 of monthly subscriptions gives me an additional 10 hours per week of writing time.

You get to decide—pick a subscription amount that fits your budget. Please know that I am a community-based writer/activist without an ongoing academic affiliation, and I pay all my bills through my writing and traveling work. Regardless of what you can pay, thank you for your support. The way Patreon works is quite simple:

Pick your monthly subscription amount.
Sign up on this page.
Come back here to read (and sometimes listen to) the poems, stories, drafts, and occasional audio recordings that I post regularly (1-3/month).

Because poems are kisses, fists, and underground rivers.

Ever wonder what I wrote when I was 15 years old, just starting out as a poet? Want to read stories about the cross-country peace walk I went on in 1986? Want to know what ideas and stories didn’t make it into my most recent book, Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure? Want a sneak peek at what I’m writing now? (See my video on this page for a reading of an excerpt of a recent unpublished poem. It starts midway through the video.) Become a subscriber and you’ll have access to all this and more.

Have you taught one of my books in one of your classes? Do you feel more hopeful or less alone because of my work? Through my words, have you learned new ways of thinking, feeling, strategizing? If your answer is “yes,” come join me here at Patreon.

Because poems are old protest songs and riotous graffiti, tattoos and sandhill cranes trumpeting at dawn.

Eli Clare

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