Poetry Heals: Disability and Pain in an age of Climate Crisis

Ricky Ray launches his new chapbook: ‘The Sound of the Earth Singing to Herself’

We are living on the brink of the Sixth Mass Extinction, and New York poet Ricky Ray is not one to shy away from questions of mortality. In his latest chapbook with Fly on the Wall Press, Ray connects personal and planetary pain in a way that never becomes pessimistic. A sufferer of lifelong chronic illness, his collection is about the power of poetry to heal, and the many-voiced chorus making up the natural world, singing in spite of its own affliction.

For Ray the Earth is a being in itself: “one living us as much as we are living her.” In his own words, his collection explores “the all-important interplay between human and non-human species, the mortality of self and those dearest to us, and beauty as a form of heartbreak that both darkens the blood and sings it.”

Devin Kelly, author of ‘In This Quiet Church of Night, I Say Amen’ said: “Ricky’s poems ask the world to stay just a little longer. They admit, with grace, what they don’t understand. They offer thanks. But what they do most singularly is care.”

To pre-order, visit the Fly on the Wall shop, Amazon or Waterstones online.