NEIL
LEADBEATER Reviews
Evidence of Fetus Diversity edited by Eileen R.
Tabios
(Locofo
Chaps, Chicago, 2018)
In
mid-December 2017, media coverage revealed how, under the Trump Administration,
officials at The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the nation’s top public
health agency, were discouraged from using seven words or phrases: vulnerable, entitlement, diversity,
transgender, fetus, evidence-based and science-based.
While
reported as a “ban,” the matter was subsequently fleshed out to be one of
gauging the political temper of the times and CDC staff concluding that these
words would be best avoided in order to garner Adminstration support for its
various (proposed) programs.
In an
exploration to determine what it might mean to avoid using these words, this
anthology was created within seven days after Eileen Tabios sent out a call for
submissions. The response was swift and to the point and, given the strength of
feeling exhibited here, just the tip of the iceberg.
Twenty-four
poems by twenty-four poets (including the editor) make up this anthology. The
contributors bring with them a wealth of experience and come from a variety of
backgrounds: a folk musician, web-designer and cartographer; a Latinx public
health professional; a student of somatic practices and writer on teaching and
ecopoetics; a professor of Theatre and teacher of theatre history, research and
directing; a librettist; an ESL instructor and visual artist; a math teacher
and a graduate pursing a Masters in Asian American Studies and a Masters in
Public Health. In keeping with the
spirit of the anthology, diversity is key.
What is
so immediately striking about it is the freshness of the writing – you can
sense the anger before the ink has dried on the page – and the variety of
styles in which the contributors put across their views. There are long and
short poems, the short ones being made up almost exclusively of the “banned”
words. Each in their own way offer up a tightly-constructed argument. In "[Fetus]"
Barbara Jane Reyes gives us a prose poem consisting of a single paragraph on
each “banned” word; in "banned mots," Mark Young offers us a piece of his unique brand of humour as a way of making a
point:
Outside
the verdant
Meadows Funeral Home
in Atlanta is a sign that
says Go out in Style at a
budget price. &,
slightly
smaller: In Coffins, Caskets
& Urns that have fallen
out of favour because their
design is science-based.
In "Shoptalk," Aileen Cassinetto charts in
footnotes the number of times these terms have been used in peer–reviewed
journals and / or tweets by the President of the United States; Sacha Archer
offers us a vispo – patterns of a fetus in the womb – made up entirely of the
“banned” words; Janice Lobo Sapigao gives us a sestina, (evidence-based, of
course!); and Eileen Tabios provides us with a poem whose text sits inside a
Google Translate box: English to Filipino.
The
anthology is neatly structured. The placing of each poem has been carefully
selected to offer variety and contrast. Jose Padua’s contribution, "To My Father on What According to
Evidence-Based Assumptions Would Have Been His 102 Birthday", makes for an
excellent opening poem because it harks back to a previous age and helps to set
the present time in its proper context or show just how much it is out of
context. Its emphasis is first and foremost on language. It opens with these
lines:
You’re
not here to see this.
A
president you would
have
called a son of a gun,
not
knowing the harsher, more
colourful,
more beautifully
profane
curses we have
in
the English language.
This is
one bookend of the anthology. The closing one is by Veronica Montes and is
appropriately called "The Year in Review"
– a term used to head up an essay frequently used in academic circles and
peer-reviewed journals to sum up the year’s achievements…a title that is, in
this case, a quiet irony in itself.
Behind
these poems a number of themes are explored. Many are to do with vulnerability.
The vulnerability that comes from having to deal with issues of discrimination
in all its forms, of finding one’s place in an increasingly alien society, the
push for social justice and positive change.
The
fact that the “banned” words are the most frequently used words in the whole
anthology, that they often appear in the titles of the poems for extra emphasis,
that the title of the anthology itself manages to make use of three of the
“banned” words is proof of the notion that, as any parent or teacher knows,
attempts to ban something or discourage something often have the opposite
effect. These words, however, are vital
to our humanity. What is the point of getting a handle on the truth if science
and education is not science or evidence-based?
Diversity is everything, we have no right to deny anyone their life. To
pretend that vulnerability does not exist is to be in deep denial. It is a very
real fact of life and a part of being human.
The reverse
alphabetical order in which the biographies of the contributors appear at the
back has not escaped attention. In keeping with the rest of this book, even
this small change in the way we do things is sending out a signal. Another take
on the last shall be first and the first
last. Fully recommended.
*****
Neil
Leadbeater is an author, essayist,
poet and critic living in Edinburgh, Scotland. His short stories, articles and
poems have been published widely in anthologies and journals both at home and
abroad. His books include Librettos for
the Black Madonna (White Adder Press, 2011); The Worcester Fragments (Original Plus, 2013); The Loveliest Vein of Our Lives (Poetry Space, 2014) and Finding the River Horse (Littoral Press,
2017).