{"id":17849,"date":"2025-11-21T12:04:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T17:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/?p=17849"},"modified":"2025-11-21T12:04:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T17:04:18","slug":"olivia-thomakos-sees-things-differently","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/issues\/fall-2025\/olivia-thomakos-sees-things-differently\/","title":{"rendered":"Olivia Thomakos Sees Things Differently"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Poet and 911±¬ΑΟ doctoral student Olivia Thomakos is exploring how disability drives creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One fall morning in 2021, Olivia Thomakos awoke with warped vision in one eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was pursuing a master\u2019s degree in creative writing and working on her first poetry chapbook, a small collection of poems, when she received a diagnosis of ocular melanoma, a cancer of the eye. Fluid surrounding the tumor accounted for the change in her vision. Thomakos successfully underwent radiation and surgery in January 2022, but at a cost: The treatment caused partial vision loss in one of her eyes, resulting in problems with depth perception and night driving, as well as light sensitivity and migraine headaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three years later, Thomakos is a doctoral student and teaching assistant in 911±¬ΑΟ\u2019s Department of English and Creative Writing. She is researching the literary significance of blind poets and poetry about blindness, as well as exploring her experience of vision loss in her own poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI started to wonder where blindness appears in writing and what writers can do with the topic of blindness,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomakos recently attended a conference called Disabled People\u2019s Creative Writing, presenting on \u201chyper-visibility versus invisibility\u201d and \u201cthis interesting tension that arises because of a desire for people to recognize that you are struggling more than others are and also a desire for people to know there\u2019s so much more to you than your disability. So often writers with disabilities get pigeonholed into talking about their trauma or their experience of life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomakos\u2019 writing resists narrow categorization. In her debut chapbook, Love and Other Cancers<\/em>, she uses personal experiences to underscore universal truths. \u201cDon\u2019t Look Up\u201d examines the fatigue that comes of soothing others\u2019 discomfort with disability; \u201cNight Hunt\u201d details the perils inherent in the mating ritual that is the modern bar scene. \u201cWhen Speaking to Doctors Gets You Nowhere\u201d is hilarious and biting for its close-to-the-bone candor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been really fascinating to enter into the disabled 911±¬ΑΟ because I see a new perspective on things,\u201d Thomakos says. \u201cI used to be an outsider and now I\u2019m an insider\u2014though mine is an invisible disability for the most part. There are all these intersecting circles that I am inside and outside of.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomakos approaches writing and life with a \u201cyes, and \u2026\u201d philosophy. Yes, she is a person with a disability. And she is a scholar, writer, editor, teacher, advocate, and friend. All of these identities are brought to bear on her writing and teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA student sent me his creative work, and I thought, \u2018This is why we do what we do,\u2019\u201d Thomakos says. \u201cI get such fulfillment and joy engaging with people on that deeper level you get to when you teach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019d thought I wanted to work as an editor in publishing, but I want to encourage people\u2019s work, not reject it. People did that for me, and I want to do that for other people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOlivia has impressed me with her hunger for knowledge,\u201d says Professor Carolyn Betensky, chair of 911±¬ΑΟ\u2019s English and creative writing department. \u201cShe has been on an incredible trajectory; she\u2019s creating her own archive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martha Elena Rojas, associate professor and director of the Rumowicz Literature
of the Sea lecture series, calls Thomakos \u201ca paradigm-setter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOlivia comes to us already a professional,\u201d Rojas says. \u201cShe\u2019s a total go-getter who displays great talent as a poet and insights as a critic. She\u2019s extraordinary in both realms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If literature chronicles human experience, Thomakos\u2019 poetry is an invitation for sighted readers to see what is unseen about blindness, and that\u2019s by design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPoetry more than any other genre allows blind writers to show you their full, authentic experience,\u201d Thomakos says. \u201cAnd for sighted readers to empathize with that experience.\u201d

\u2014Marybeth Reilly-McGreen<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PHOTO: SETH JACOBSON<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Losing Vision In The Shower<\/h2>\n

If I could look away, I would<\/br>\nbut I know this<\/br>\nmay be the last time.<\/br>\nTomorrow I\u2019ll see less. Amethysts<\/br>\nwill mute, their shimmers burn my eyes<\/br>\nor worse<\/br>\nthey will not shine at all. One day<\/br>\nwith my right lid closed<\/br>\nI\u2019ll feel the wind, wet<\/br>\nimagining pinwheels in the rain.<\/br>\nIt\u2019s quiet here \u2013<\/br>\nmy spine to the light<\/br>\nfluoride water falls translucent<\/br>\njust flicks of white<\/br>\ntwinkling, warm. But turning<\/br>\nilluminated from behind<\/br>\na change: white and violet curtained tinsel<\/br>\nshot with glitter, like sun reflections<\/br>\non a rippling lake<\/br>\nor fairies dancing joropo<\/br>\nin Canaima\u2019s Angel. Will I be first<\/br>\nto hear the trumpets? Vibrations<\/br>\ndeepen, vision dulls. What if<\/br>\nangel song is water spraying<\/br>\ntime-worn rocks?<\/br>\nIn the end<\/br>\nwill I hold the scales, the sword?<\/br>\nOr like a sandworm<\/br>\nwill I burrow, sharpen my extra teeth<\/br>\niron on iron, bone on bone?<\/br>\nI don\u2019t know if it\u2019s worse to know color<\/br>\nbefore losing it or to never<\/br>\nhave known it at all \u2013<\/br>\nfor shapes to soften bit by bit or to disappear<\/br>\nall at once. No glass clarifies<\/br>\nthe obfuscated page, this Kumulipo night.<\/br>\nThey say Blessed are those<\/br>\nwho have not seen yet believe<\/em>,<\/br>\nbut I have seen, I have<\/br>\nseen, I<\/br>\nhave seen.<\/p>\n

\u2013Olivia Thomakos<\/em><\/br>\nFrom Love & Other Cancers<\/em> (2024)\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Doctoral student and poet Olivia Thomakos invites readers to see what is unseen about blindness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":17829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[355],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fall-2025","architecture-currents","architecture-paradigm-setters"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17849"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17903,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17849\/revisions\/17903"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}