A Fate Worse Than Death

by Nisha Patel

Poems that interrogate the complexities of disability, based on the author’s evaluation of her own medical records A Fate Worse than Death is a stunning poetic investigation of the worthiness of disabled life as told through the author’s evaluation of her own medical records over the course of a decade. Living with treatment-resistant diabetes, bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and complex chronic pain, Nisha Patel reveals how her multiple disabilities intertwine with her day-to-day life, even when care and treatments are not available. As she works through bouts of illness, neglect, and care, Patel reveals how poetry provides her a way to resist the sway of medical hegemony and instead offer complex accounts of pain, sickness, and anger, but also love. Navigating the menial and capitalist systems of health care and paperwork, documentation, and forms, Patel uses clinical texts in visual poems that show how words like patient and client underscore medical access and denial of coverage more than words like person and care . Patel asks us to consider if her life is worth living—and saving. The future of her disabled body and her desire for it is a building meditation as the collection progresses, ending not so much with a finite ending of cured illness and disease than with a look at how we can embody hope and joy in a disabled body, as it is the body that, like time, goes on.

Genres: Poetry, Disability, Adult, Queer, LGBT

160 pages, Paperback

Published April 2, 2024

About the author

Nisha Patel is a queer spoken word poet & artist. She is the City of Edmonton’s Poet Laureate, and the Canadian Individual Slam Champion, and has been performing and writing in her community for five years. In 2021, she will be acting as one of the Edmonton Public Library’s Writers in Residence. She is the founder of Moon Jelly House, a publishing house centering the voices of marginalized poets by publishing chapbooks for emerging spoken word artists. She is two-time Canadian Festival of Spoken Word finalist. During this time, Nisha was also recipient of the Edmonton Artists’ Trust Fund Award, and is the current Executive Director of the Edmonton Poetry Festival, Western Canada’s largest poetry festival.

Over the years, Nisha has performed across Canada and the world from small town Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan to metropolitan Seoul, South Korea. She has visited over 15 cities during her three Canadian and European tours. With over 175 performances, Nisha is committed to furthering her goals of writing and reading to audiences that need it. Her poetry speaks to themes of race, her disability, feminism, and identity, focusing strongly on her struggles and triumphs as a woman of colour. She strives to build strong relationships, mentorship, and opportunities for artists around her, believing in the possibility and forgiveness of the Edmonton arts scene. As well, Nisha has become a key member of the national poetry community, serving three years on the board of SpeakNorth, Canada’s spoken word collective, and founding a nationally-reaching queer femme South Asian artist collective, MAZA, in 2019.

Nisha is an alumnus of the University of Alberta School of Business. She seeks to combine her academic skills and knowledge with her artistic practice, offering workshops on financing, grants, and management for artists through a variety of organizations. She has mentored youth and mature poets alike during two back to back residencies at The Nook and The Sewing Machine Factory in Edmonton.

Nisha works to further her goal of building a stronger artistic community through the only way she knows how: living in her truth.

Reviews

[Jade Bartlett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you doesn’t cover it. While I can’t say I’ve experienced all of the disabilities covered in this book, the portion on mental health and PMDD really resonated with me.

TW: SELF HARM/SUICIDE

One of my favourite lines is “I didn’t find who I was in psych notes or release forms, but I did get to see what the system thought of me.”

As a teenager, I had visited the emergency room several times for mental health related reasons. While I was never admitted to a psychiatric ward, the way the nurses, doctors, and mental health “professionals” spoke to me has stuck with me for years.

When you are depressed, when you self harm, when you have suicidal thoughts, the system who is supposed to help you DEHUMANIZES you and will justify it by saying it’s “for your own good”.

The mental health system is severely broken, thank you, Nisha, for exposing its corruption in such a clever, striking, and elegant way. You made me feel heard. You make my trauma feel heard.

Endless love and gratitude for this book!

[Bree Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a stunning mix of poetry, visual art, and medical memoir. They paint a vivid picture (sometimes literally) of living as a disabled artist in a highly ableist world. At times it is hopeful, hopeless, grieving, spiraling, and persevering. I was lucky enough to obtain an ARC of this book through my job, and I’ll be immediately placing it on my staff picks so I can recommend it to other poets and poetry lovers.

[Alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of poems about illness and disability. Author Nisha Patel uses some of her own charts to illustrate the poems. Some of these are familiar- if you've ever seen a chart for emotional regulation, it will seem familiar to you.

These poems are gutsy, truthful and honest. I could relate to a lot of the poems, and couldn't remember when I'd last enjoyed a poetry collection so much.

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book did a fantastic job of shedding light on the numerous obstacles people encounter while navigating the healthcare system and striving to fit into society's idea of "normal”. Not only was it deeply relatable, but it was also eye-opening and thought-provoking.

I will definitely recommend this book to my friends and classmates, as well as to those working in the healthcare field.

[Ann Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nisha Patel (a Poet Laureate Emeritus of the City of Edmonton) explores what it’s like to navigate the world as a disabled person, using her own medical records as a starting point for her interrogations.

Whether she’s turning medical memos into erasure poetry, pushing against one-size-fits-all self-help advice, or documenting her symptoms via clinical notes, X-rays, or diagrams, she demonstrates that poetry can be a powerful form of resistance. The result is an innovative and thought-provoking collection that challenges harmful and reductive mainstream narratives about disability.

[Alli Vail · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a moving and vulnerable exploration of living with disability and illness. The multimedia deepened the work and made it even more relatable and rooted it in reality and experiences in the medical field (which, yikes, sometimes the medical system seems absurd). The poems also foster empathy and understanding. Highly recommend.

[Aspen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Patel's use of her own medical records for blackout poetry and other intertextual dialog are wonderfully engaging. Highly recommend for poetry about disabilty, mental health, and love. Also recommended for experimental and mixed poetry forms!

[Dirklancer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really connected with this one.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I think if I had military dollars, what I'd do after ending the wars is to cut open my own brain. the hungry scientists are as eager to get inside it as I am to get out of it."

[Maddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH is a poetry collection about mental illness, disability, the failure of profit-motivated healthcare in a capitalist society, and the intersectionality of sickness. How does being disabled intertwine with gender, sexuality, race, and class? How does being mentally ill affect the way we are treated in society? What everyday language do we use that is inherently ableist (and sanist)?

Wow, this poetry collection hit me DEEP. Nisha Patel and I share many of the same diagnoses and general mental health experiences, so my copy of A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH is completely annotated/sticky-tabbed. The mixed media format of the poems makes this a stand out collection. I’m so glad to have it in my library! Thank you to Arsenal Pulp Press for my gifted copy!