about the project
eff-able is conceived and run by George Parker and JP Seabright, and funded by a National Lottery Project Grant from Arts Council England.
The project aims to shine a spotlight on the lives and experiences of queer disabled people in the field of sexual play, desire, and sensuality from a positive perspective.
Too often this marginalised community (within an already marginalised community) is portrayed as ‘less than’, unable, incapacitated and unsexy. We know this is not true!
eff-able is a project in two parts – an anthology of poetry from the best contemporary poets identifying as queer and disabled, and a touring showcase of this work partnering with local queer disabled community groups and performers – bringing our sexy a.f. LGBTQIA+ disabled bodies into queer spaces.
We will use this showcase as an opportunity to highlight good accessibility and practice in queer venues and spaces, as well as provide resources and links on this site to promote good accessibility and inclusion for disabled people in the queer community.
some definitions
We use the Social Model of Disability which describes people as being disabled by barriers in society, not by our impairment or difference. We understand disability to include those who are D/deaf, neurodivergent, and those with mental health and chronic health conditions.
We also recognise that many disabled people have adopted terms that in the past (and often still now!) have been used as slurs and terms of discrimination, such as ‘cripple’, ‘handicapped’ or ‘mad’. We embrace those terms also where they are being reclaimed and used by disabled individuals.
Similarly, we reclaim and embrace terms previously used to slur the queer community, such as ‘queer’, ‘faggot’, ‘dyke’, ‘poof’ etc. Our use of the word queer is intended as an umbrella term, and we welcome submissions from all poets who identify themselves under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella.
However, though we might choose to use these terms in a reclamatory / celebratory way, we do not permit discriminatory language in the anthology. This is a prejudice-free zone. See our submission guidelines for details.
Crip time is a concept arising from disabled experience that addresses the ways in which disabled, chronically ill and neurodivergent people experience time (and space) differently from able-bodyminded people. In her essay on Crip Time, Ellen Samuels quotes her friend Alison Kafer, who says this about crip time:
“rather than bend disabled bodies and minds to meet the clock, crip time bends the clock to meet disabled bodies and minds.”
“For crip time is broken time. It requires us to break in our bodies and minds to new rhythms, new patterns of thinking and feeling and moving through the world.” — Alice Wong
We endeavour to make this project in its entirety as accessible as possible, including to ourselves, and we therefore operate on crip time. This allows us to listen to our bodies and their needs. We appreciate your patience as we navigate our daily capacity and hope you afford yourself the same.
why eff-able?
Effable means the ability to describe something in words; something which is capable of being uttered or expressed. We found it interesting that ability of expression has its own term, yet the sexual, erotic and sensual lives of queer disabled people is something we rarely find expressed, and even less published or heard. We want to change that with this project.
Effable is also slang for being fuckable (or ‘sexually attractive’ as Wiktionary puts it) and we know that queer disabled people are eminently effable.
We felt it was important to have a word to describe the project and anthology that had able – ability, capability, fuckability – upfront and centre, to emphasise that disabled people are disabled by society, but able in so many ways. We decided to hyphenate the word to place equal emphasis on the eff and the able.
George & JP
eff-able 