Here: A Poetry Performance

About this video

Here was Wade’s first video. She produced and sold it herself, with editing by the artist and writer Pamela Walker. It was completed in July 1991 and distributed from 1992 on VHS and audio cassette, priced on a sliding scale so that people on low incomes could afford it. By her own account, more than 200 copies were sold.

According to Wade’s own description of her work, the video was reviewed in The Disability Rag, the Whole Earth Catalog and Mouth, was shown in KQED’s The Livingroom Festival as part of “Sisters Are Doin’ It”, and won four video festival awards.

The poems

Wade performs nine poems, which she titled as follows:

1. Hospital Litany
2. Marshmallows
3. Gimp Hands
4. Incongruities of Rainwatching
5. Sassy Girls
6. A Pair
7. Tonight
8. Here
9. I Am Not One of The

Each title links to the poem in this collection, where the text may differ from the version performed. Read the printed text of the whole performance.

Posted on YouTube by Peer Action.