Poetry
Eric Gregory Award-winner 2026
“Cling Film is a collection that lifts many veils and lets in much-needed light and air…” – Carol Rumens, Guardian
“…deliciously rendered with vulnerability and rage, yanking us straight to the facts so that we cannot fail ‘to take[her] seriously’” – Poetry Wales magazine
“With these crafted, unflinching poems, deftly calibrated between rage, humour, pain and joy, Bethany Handley opens our eyes and minds to new ways of seeing and being. A bold, urgent and gifted new voice in Welsh poetry.” – Owen Sheers author of Skirrid Hill
Bethany Handley’s debut pamphlet, Cling Film, explores existing as a young Disabled woman within a crossfire of ableism. An opening line of the title poem reads: ‘Ableism. The act of wrapping the world in cling film.’ Here is the crux of the poems, as they document how inaccessible and exclusionary design exclude many Disabled people. 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. Joy is found in nature, including a wheelchair user leaving proud tyre marks across the beach in ‘Hiya Butt Bay’. Ultimately, these formally inventive poems challenge myths about disability in ways that are striking, astute, and devastatingly exact.
Bethany Handley
Bethany Handley (she/her) is an award-winning writer, poet and disability activist from Monmouthshire, South Wales. She campaigns for Disabled people’s rights and for better access to nature for all, especially for Disabled people. She won Creative Future’s Gold Prize for Creative Non-fiction 2023 and was named one of the ten most influential Disabled people working in politics, law and media in the Shaw Trust’s Disability Power 100 2024. Her work has been featured by POETRY, BBC Radio 4 and Country Living amongst others. Bethany co-edited Beyond/ Tu Hwnt, the first bilingual anthology of Welsh Deaf and Disabled writers. She is an Ambassador for Country Living’s Access for All campaign, for Ramblers Cymru and for Wales Coast Path.
Her debut poetry pamphlet Cling Film was published in February 2025.
“Cling Film holds up to the white light of the page the multi-layered micro-aggressions of ableism and asks us as individuals and as a society to do better… be careful, these poems will change the way you see the world.”
Kim Moore author of ‘All the Men I Never Married’
“A breathtakingly raw and beautiful collection of poetic snapshots that scream of authenticity throughout. Cling Film gives so much empathy and humanity in its pages making it not only a refreshing read but also a vital one, for a real depiction of the world.”
Connor Allen author of ‘Dominoes’
“These poems are mirrors, reflecting the ways society hasn’t been designed with disability in mind… Bethany’s sharp observation and wit points out injustices but also transcends them… these poems aren’t just for those of us who have experienced ableism and discrimination, but for anyone who values life.”
Joshua Jones author of ‘Local Fires’
“These poems are, apparently, for me because I laughed for an hour alongside Bethany Handley and, while I was laughing, I forgot about my pain.”
The Cyborg Jillian Weise
“Innovative, subversive, filled with wit and rage, these poems resist and reframe ableist tropes, offering an alternative, politicised perspective with warmth and grace. This is the collection I’ve been waiting years for.”
Kaite O’Reilly, playwright, writer, and disability arts pioneer
“At turns witty, surreal, razor-sharp, joyful, scathing, celebratory and unsparing, Cling Film brilliantly testifies to the mundane absurdities and ableist micro-aggressions of day-to-day life as a disabled person, at the same time as skilfully and subtly drawing the reader into its perspectives. Glorious, necessary reading.”
Polly Atkin author of ‘Much With Body’ and ‘Some of Us Just Fall’
