I love poetry. It reminds me of music, in away that it has its own deep language and it has the power to move you like music does. When I came across poet Camisha L. Jones’ work, I was immediately moved and struck by its power and heart. I knew that I had to invite her on Painiac to share more of her art and her story. I hope you enjoy this conversation, and I know you’ll enjoy her poetry. Accessibility: to read a transcript of this episode, please go to: https://bit.ly/3kiPeTd

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Camisha L. Jones is the author of the poetry chapbook Flare (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and a recipient of a 2017 Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship from The Loft Literary Center. Through both, she breaks silence around issues of disability as someone living with hearing loss and chronic pain. Her poems can be found at The New York Times, Poets.org, Button Poetry, The Deaf Poets Society, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Typo, Rogue Agent, pluck!, Unfolding the Soul of Black Deaf Expressions, and The Quarry, Split This Rock’s social justice poetry database. She is also published in Let’s Get Real: What People of Color Can’t Say and Whites Won’t Ask about Racism, Class Lives: Stories from Across Our Economic Divide, and The Day Tajon Got Shot. A fellow of The Watering Hole and a representative of Slam Richmond at the 2013 National Poetry Slam, Camisha is Managing Director at Split This Rock, a national non-profit in DC that cultivates, teaches, and celebrates poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes social change. Find her on Facebook as Poet Camisha Jones and on Twitter and Instagram as 1Camisha. 

We talk about:

• The intersection between chronic pain and social justice
• Living with a chronically ill body and the grief that comes with learning how to live with a body that’s no longer like what it used to be. 
• Writing as form of release and catharsis and pain management

Enjoy the episode!