poems of the neurodivergent experience

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In general, poetry is a way to explore an obsession or a fascination with something I’m fixated on and discover more about it – and, inevitably, myself as part of the process. I don’t really like seeing “autistic” and “inspire” in the same sentence. I’m inspired by good art whoever does it but I don’t want to see autistic people as “inspirational”. How To Thrive In 2050! 8 Tentacular Workouts For A Tantalising Future! Film by artist Kai Syng Tan. A call for action for a more creative, equitable and neuro-fantastic future by a ‘human-octopussy’. We were not really mainstream sort of people. Maybe we’d get called odd, weird or quirky by others, but in the open mic nights above pubs, at the tents in festivals or drama studios in arts centres, we found somewhere we could connect with others and feel a sense of power and choice. A space we could truly express the word-passion and other interests we had. We would be accepted, heard and understood in ways that resonated deeply with our loneliest core and which healed the parts of ourselves that had always felt alone- isolated – like we didn’t fit in. For you, what is the relationship between being autistic (or neurodivergent) and your creative practice?

Since my diagnosis in 2017, I’ve reflected that my performance and movement practice had perhaps always been a way of stimming, although I wouldn’t have known to call it stimming at the time. Stims are often described as techniques for sensory regulation, particularly to ameliorate sensory overload for autistic people. For example, in my experience, swaying from side-to-side helps me to process what’s incoming, if it’s too much. Only after working with neurodivergent learners for several years did I fully realize the special reciprocity between poetry and autism. I had been conditioned to expect a connection between autism and STEM subjects, but being a poet I was eager to experiment. Five years ago I co-founded Unrestricted Interest, an organization dedicated to helping neurodivergent learners transform their lives through writing. The results have been staggering. Not only do autistic writers have a unique penchant for poetic language, but many of them, especially the minimally speaking and nonspeaking among them, possess their own intrinsic idiolects and choose poetry as their central means of expression.

About us

First, variability between people in how they learn is natural, and indeed this variability is a collective strength for the human race. Second, there is no one better or correct way to be, and all neurotypes are equally valued. In the words of autistic scholar Jim Sinclair: ‘Grant me the dignity of meeting me on my own terms – recognize that we are all equally alien to each other and that my ways of being are not merely damaged versions of yours.’ Third, neurodiversity, just like other dimensions of diversity such as ethnicity, gender or sexuality, is something that needs to be understood in the context of social and interpersonal dynamics. In other words, the lives of neurodivergent people are heavily dictated by the reactions of others; by stigma, prejudice, discrimination and ignorance. The neurodiversity movement is a catch-all term that refers to any efforts to apply these ideas in policy and practice, just as the feminist movement aims to apply and realise the concept of gender equality. Becoming neurodiversity-affirmative I love the detail in this, and the anthropomorphism of everything. Even the air is ‘as puffed out as the robin’s chest’, suggesting the pride and excitement of spring. In fact, I never thought you could write poetry about these things at all – besides, I was too busy and self-conscious to write poetry as a teenager, struggling every day to just get through school and survive.

Beyond these basic facts, neurodiversity has socio-political implications for education. These implications have largely been described by autistic scholars but are now embraced far more widely. The neurodiversity paradigm has three main components – all consequences of the basic fact of neurodiversity as applied to society. About: Kate is a stand up poet from the North, who has been poet in residence for Radio 4’s Saturday Live, the Glastonbury Festival and the Great North Run. Her latest collection ‘The Oscillations’ is out now from Nine Arches Press. Hen Night, a short film by award-winning theatre and screen writer/director Vici Wreford-Sinnott, inspired by the writing of award-winning journalist Frances Ryan. Jessica has just had her hen night - a last night of freedom but not in the ways she, or any of us, might have imagined. Erin Ekins (2021). Queerly Autistic: The Ultimate Guide For LGBTQIA+ Teens On The Spectrum. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.Ford, T., John, A., & Gunnell, D. (2021). Mental health of children and young people during pandemic. British Medical Journal, 372.

As we can see, neurodiversity starts as a simple idea but immediately poses some radical shifts in thinking. What would this look like when applied in a school context? I think you would like the chestnut tree I met in my walk. It hit my notice suddenly, and I thought the skies were in blossom. Then there’s a noiseless noise in the orchard that I let persons hear’ (2011, p172).

Help and support

I’ve been interested for a long time in how other people ‘process’ words, images and feelings at different speeds and in different ways. It seemed important to try to understand this about audiences or the children I worked with when I’d parachute into a school to run a performance poetry or comedy workshop. It became obvious that poetry could reach the parts that other art forms couldn’t reach for some kids, when a teacher would breathlessly say of one of their students “I’ve never seen them so interested in something before – they were like a different person!”.