Poetry

(Bethany) has the reader consider what it means to cross out and erase the experiences of those whose bodies are considered to be different.

-Poetry News

Cling Film

Cling Film

Bethany Handley’s debut pamphlet, Cling Film, will be published by Seren Books in Feb 2025 and explores existing as a young Disabled woman within a crossfire of ableism.

The collection lays bare the barriers that disable people from physical inaccessibility to the discrimination of others, such as incompetent doctors, ignorant passers-by or in dehumanising interviews for Universal Credit.

Set in familiar Welsh places – from the Heath Hospital in Cardiff to Mynydd Mawr, Handley asks the reader to travel in her skin in these witty and profound poems. 

I’m not advocating for all beauty spots to be tarmacked, Country Living (February 2024)

Hiya Butt Bay, Poetry Wales (November 2023)

When I say I’m tired, Nine Arches Press (November 2023)

Cling Film, Poetry Wales (January 2023)

Note to my Daughter, The Welsh Agenda (November 2022)

The Heath, Poetry Wales (Summer 2022)

Umbug, POETRY (May 2022)

Children’s Poetry:

‘You’re too young to grow wings’, in ‘And I Hear Dragons (Firefly, 2024)

Bethany Handley, a wheelchair user, reads her poetry at the Southbank Centre