Autism is a lifelong neurodevelopmental disability that affects every aspect of a person’s life, most notably our cognition, how we communicate and relate to other people, and how we experience and process the world’ (2020, p3). 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. With thanks to my mentor Victoria Gray for her encouragement in this project, and to Ellen and The Poetry Business for hosting me as Digital Poet-in-Residence in October 2021. Julie Brown (2010). Writers on the Spectrum: How Autism and Asperger Syndrome have Influenced Literary Writing. Jessica Kingsley Publisher. An inspiring story of a Deaf man’s life journey in a hearing world, as he learns to get by while gaining a deeper understanding of his own identity. An adaptation of the Mr & Mrs Clarks' celebrated stage show Louder Is Not Always Clearer, where performance art and physical theatre is used to recreate moments from Jonny’s life. The show created by Gareth Clark, Catherine Bennett, Marega Palser and Jonny Cotsen was described as a "brilliant exercise in empathy” by Lyn Gardner and shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award for Innovation, Experimentation and Playing With Form.

Each of the commissioned artists will be assigned an Executive Producer from digital support agency The Space, in partnership with Unlimited, an arts commissioning programme that enables new work by disabled artists to reach UK and international audiences. The Executive Producer will mentor and support the artists throughout production and delivery of their work to BBC platforms this summer. For you, what is the relationship between being autistic (or neurodiverse) and your creative practice?

That said, it is essential to recognise and adopt the language preferences of individuals talking about themselves. While we refer to non-neurotypical people in this article as ‘neurodivergent’, many individuals might describe themselves as neurodiverse, or using other language altogether, and these preferences should always take precedent when referring to a specific person. The neurodiversity paradigm and movement Michael Fitzgerald (2005). The Genesis of Artistic Creativity: Asperger’s Syndrome and the Arts. Jessica Kingsley Publisher. To Martin, collaboration is at the heart of the Multiverse series. A community is growing around the books, not just between the authors—who, by engaging with one another’s work, are becoming friends—but among the editorial team supporting them as well. “I knew the series would need far more than my limited viewpoint, and I also genuinely wanted company and a diffuse ecosystem of curious, accountable decision-making,” says Martin. “It’s more work, but it’s the kind of work that’s endlessly generative. And healing. As scholar and author Ashon T. Crawley writes, by way of Foucault, we endeavor to practice ‘friendship as a way of life.’”

It lets me notice little details that other people often don’t, and turn these tiny details into poems. In my more joyful poetry, this has allowed me the chance to rewrite much of what happens to young neurodivergent people, and give myself and the characters in my poems things that in reality might only be dreamed of. Kate Fox in her collection The Oscillations says that many of her poems in the collection ‘touch on neurodiversity – the idea that, as in biodiversity, there is a strength in the differences of people with conditions such as autism and ADHD who think and experience the world differently’. (2020, p69). In this post, I write with a similar emphasis on some of the perceived strengths and differences of neurodivergent writers. ‘Diagnosing’ autistic writers?I’m inspired by Joanne Limburg (who wrote ‘The Autistic Alice’ poetry collection and the innovative feminist history of autism ‘Letters to Her Weird Sisters’), Katherine May who wrote ‘The Electricity of Every Living Thing’ and Laura James who wrote ‘Odd Girl Out’. They inspire me with their writing but also as working writers I’m friends with and share tips and frustrations with. 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. Face It, filmed comedy drama monologues by writer Miranda Walker about two women exploring how they feel about their faces in the modern swipe-right world, and the impact of wearing face masks to protect against Covid-19. Produced by Michaela Hennessy-Vass. Relaxing or scrapping school uniform policies supports pupils with sensory issues who cannot tolerate wearing the uniform. Poetry becomes not only somewhere to escape but somewhere to create and imagine different possibilities. I ask myself how could things look different, and question what are the things that I barely dare to dream about.

But the one that resonates most for me when it comes to describing how different people’s brains experience the world differently – and which I think is a particularly useful word to know when thinking about why the world of live poetry is so hospitable and accepting to many of us who haven’t fitted in elsewhere – is neurodiversity. This comes from the idea of biodiversity. Just as nature benefits from as great a variety of flora and fauna as possible, so humanity benefits from as great a diversity of brains as possible. We need the big picture thinkers and the small details people, we need the abstract dreamers, the concrete ponderers and those who combine the two. We need people who get obsessed by words and will spend hours finding just the right one for something, and those who would much rather be wrestling a woolly mammoth and can spot the “Where’s Wally” in a millisecond. A manifesto by a ‘human-octopussy’ of a more creative and equitable future. Blending discourse with mythology, interview with autobiography, geomancy with geopolitics, the intimate and the celestial, this essay is a retort to our troubled moment of multiple crises, and call to imagine and act on how things could become. Prepared to be disorientated, surprised, provoked, and re-energised. I asked the following writers and artists to answer two questions: ‘Are there any neurodivergent or I read whatever I could that showed a flow, a tingle, that stirred a lasting correlation or change within me. Some words or imagery simply cascaded into my life, the poetry of Yeats, the paintings of Burne Jones or Asger Jorn and the CoBrA movement were like fireworks in my mind. I see it as natural to document a research project in poetry, illustrate emotions in metaphoric birds or transcribe psychological experiences combined with time space or place into a performance work. Take my autism you take my life.Trawling through the Internet in search of autistic writers, I found it really hard to come across people I didn’t know already, especially autistic poets. So, after the wonderful interview with Karl Knights ( here) and the thought-provoking mini-interviews from six neurodivergent artists, writers and performers ( here), this is the third and final post in the series about neurodivergent writers. In this post, I write about some of my favourite writers, in the context of some of the strengths and differences in their writing, which I associate with their neurodivergence.