The Ehlers-Danlos syndromes (EDS) are a group of thirteen individual genetic conditions affecting connective tissue in the body. Connective tissue is the glue that holds the body together, and is present throughout the body, from the joints to the gut, the brain to the heart. People with EDS experience a wide range of symptoms, which are often debilitating and impact everyday life.
All the writers reading at CONNECTIVE TISSUE have Ehler-Danlos, and their writing emerges from and is refracted through this experience of being ill. There are common themes – messy misbehaving bodies, animal bodies, liminal states between waking and sleep, marginalisation – that connect these writers’ work, almost amounting to a poetics of EDS.
YER BARD POETRY is a SE London poetry night that has been running for almost 2 years. It is hosted by VIDA ADAMCZEWSKI. Vida was diagnosed with hypermobile EDS when she was twenty one. Her first book Amphibian and Other Bodies was an exploration of abortion, chronic illness and the body as messy territory.
DAISY LAFARGE
Daisy Lafarge is a writer and artist based in Glasgow. She is the author of a novel, Paul (Granta 2021), which won a Betty Trask Award and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and a poetry collection, Life Without Air (Granta 2020), which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Lovebug, a book on the poetics of infection, was published by Peninsula Press in 2023.
ABI PALMER
Abi Palmer is an artist and writer. She uses film, text, sculpture and sensory intervention to explore sick bodies, viscous textures and ecological landscapes. She is the author of ‘Slugs: A Manifesto’ and ‘Sanatorium.’ Artworks include slug-centric solo exhibition ‘Slime Mother’ (Chapter, Cardiff); film series ‘Abi Palmer Invents the Weather (Artangel) and interactive gambling arcade ‘Crip Casino’ (Tate Modern, Somerset House, Wellcome Collection, Collective Edinburgh). Abi’s work featured in ‘Crip Arte Spazio’ at La Biennale di Venezia 2024, the first major international exhibition of the UK Disability Arts Movement. She is a Bloomberg New Contemporary Artist and a recipient of Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s ‘Awards for Artists. ‘Sanatorium’ was shortlisted for the Barbellion Prize.
JASMINE COORAY
Jasmine Cooray is a poet, psychotherapist and facilitator. After spending her 20s oversharing on London’s poetry circuit, she has delivered creative writing projects for The Barbican, The Southbank Centre, First Story, the National Literacy Trust and The Arvon Foundation. She has also been a WOW Festival speaker, BBC Performing Arts Fellow, and Writer-in-Residence at the National University of Singapore. Her debut poetry collection ‘Inheritance’ was published with Bad Betty Press in November 2023, received a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and is shortlisted for a 2024 Forward Prize for Best First Collection. She can often be found up a tree, dancing to Mariah, or elaborately collaging a bird.
KATIE BYFORD
Katie Byford won the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition in 2020 and their debut pamphlet, He Said I Was a Peach, came out with ignitionpress in 2021. Their poems appeared in bath magg, Poetry Wales, Magma and The London Magazine among others, and they were shortlisted for The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2024. Katie is an alum of the Barbican Young Poets and The London Library’s Emerging Writers Programme, and is a Britten Pears Young Artist under the mentorship of David Harsent. They’re currently writing poems about bats to explore queer corporeality, chronic illness and climate breakdown.
THERE WILL BE A 30 MINUTE OPEN MIC TO CLOSE THE NIGHT. Sign up on the day from 6:30-7:00
ALL TICKET MONEY WILL BE DONATED TO EHLERS DANLOS SUPPORT UK (EDS UK), who provide invaluable support to people with EDS and their loved ones, as well as advising on treatment and research.
PAY WHAT YOU CAN (£5 recommended donation)