poems of the neurodivergent experience

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Like Limburg, Whiteley describes the mismatch of understanding between the autistic child and the (probably neurotypical) adult, contrasting with the child’s extraordinary affinity with animals, which extends to understanding their language. Next steps

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? Using the terminology of neurodiversity, we can describe the biggest group of people as neurotypical. They tend to flourish fairly easily in our education system and beyond – because they are in the majority, these systems were often built by people like them, for people like them. Neurodivergent people (also referred to as neuro-atypical, or neuro-minorities) can struggle in these systems because of the mismatch between the way their brains process information and the way the system implicitly expects them to operate. Both Fitzgerald and Brown describe ‘an affinity with animals’ as a characteristic of autistic writers (Fitzgerald, 2005, p72; Brown, 2010). This is evident in Dara McAnulty’s work: An affinity with animals and nature can also bring with it an appreciation of the subtler aspects of the senses. Some autistic people have heightened sensory experiences. Rhiannon describes ‘over-responsive’ and ‘under-responsive’ sensory profiles (2020, p28). For example, ‘over-responsive’ individuals might experience an increased sensitivity to senses such as sound or light, while ‘under-responsive’ individuals might seek out sensory experiences like loud noise (p28). While being ‘over-responsive’, or very sensitive, may be uncomfortable or even overwhelming, it can also be seen as a huge strength in a writer, who can then write about things on a more subtle level of detail.

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Writing is my safe space. As my brain doesn’t make enough dopamine, I get bored easily, but creating fictional worlds is far from that! Growing up, when things happened (or failed to), writing took the clamour out of my head and kept it above water. I re-wrote upsetting things, invented better scenarios, gave myself happier endings. Jonny Cotsen. Image credit: Jorge Lizald I’m thrilled that, as part of Culture In Quarantine, these pieces will be brought to life across BBC platforms. It’s imperative that D/deaf, neurodivergent and disabled professional artists are supported to carry on making brilliant work, as the constraints and continuing effects of this pandemic threaten to silence their vital creative voice.” — Lamia Dabboussy, BBC Head of Arts I started to judge myself for these responses and wished that I was different or more ‘normal’. But through writing poetry, I’ve learned to – at times – love how finely tuned and sensitive my senses are.

About: Victoria Gray is an artist and practice-led researcher, based in York, UK.Her work includes actions, interventions, time-based sculpture and video, being presented in museums, galleries and festivals in performance art, fine art and choreographic contexts. For you, what is the relationship between being autistic (or neurodivergent) and your creative practice? Chris Martin, a neurodivergent poet and editor-at-large for Multiverse, developed the idea for the series in his role as a teacher-writer with Unrestricted Interest (UI), an organization he cofounded seven years ago to help neurodivergent learners, particularly autistic students, express themselves through writing. Martin, whose book about his pioneering educational work, May Tomorrow Be Awake: On Poetry, Autism, and Our Neurodiverse Future (HarperOne), comes out in August, says UI expanded his capabilities as a listener and better illuminated “the reciprocity between poetry and neurodivergence.”I didn’t receive my autism diagnosis until age 36, but it’s significant to note that from an early age, the absence of linguistic language to describe my differences in sensory perception led me deeper into my body, and more specifically, led me to develop a somatic language; an artistic practice whereby my body was the primary material and mode of communicating. 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? Relaxing or scrapping school uniform policies supports pupils with sensory issues who cannot tolerate wearing the uniform. Fink, E., Deighton, J., Humphrey, N., & Wolpert, M. (2015). Assessing the bullying and victimisation experiences of children with special educational needs in mainstream schools: Development and validation of the Bullying Behaviour and Experience Scale. Research in developmental disabilities, 36, 611-619. However, it would be unfair and perhaps enraging to suggest this is an easy utopia to create. It’s easy to worry that permitting – or rather, encouraging – children to self-advocate and offering support on a universal-design basis without clinical diagnosis would make your classroom into a free-for-all. Crucially though, we just don’t know much about what a classroom that really delivered on the principles of the neurodiversity paradigm would look like. How much of the difficult behaviour teachers struggle with in class right now is motivated by children trying to hide their difficulties, or push adults away because they don’t feel they can be trusted?

Mollie Russell (2020). ‘My Nephew’s Second Birthday: A Saga of Self-Stimulatory Behaviour’ (poem). Published in The Emma Press Anthology of Illness. The Emma Press. Michael Fitzgerald (2005). The Genesis of Artistic Creativity: Asperger’s Syndrome and the Arts. Jessica Kingsley Publisher. I wish I knew about more autistic writers. I know the ones that write about being autistic (they were part of my journey to and through diagnosis), but where (or who) are the ones that just write? The video by Amanda Baggs, ‘In My Language’ always moves me. I identify with the rich textural language in the film. Everything speaks, but not necessarily in the verbal or linguistic sense. The work of philosopher Erin Manning on autistic perception has been fundamental to my artistic practice, and has helped me to see that my innate understanding of process philosophy is inseparable from the way in which I understood the experience of being autistic. I could also recommend the books, ‘Autism and Sensing: The Unlost Instinct,’ by Donna Williams, and ‘Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness’ by Melanie Yergeau. He continues: “As a first reader, my role is explicitly not to correct anything. My role is to listen and study and glean how they wield patterns. Once I understand [the writer’s] particular modes of languaging, then my role changes from listener to steward. I am simply there to make sure that the process by which their words find readers is consensual, joyful, and minimally limited by any preconceptions regarding what a book is or how it should move.”Though sharing identities shaped by autism and or ADHD, the writers in Making a Difference are very diverse indeed, in both poetic terms and in terms of individual perspectives on – and approaches to – their unique personal experiences. It’s an eye-opening and engaging anthology which, rather than looking at the ‘issue’ of neurodivergence, speaks from points within lived experience and it’s been immensely rewarding to work with this mix of established and new writers.

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. Efforts to correct atypical development onto a more neurotypical pathway, or to encourage children to blend in, cannot be considered neurodiversity-informed. For example, many schools require a child to sign a 'behaviour contract' after a period of exclusion as a pre-condition for returning to school. This is an unacceptable approach for a neurodivergent child who isn't 'behaving' but is simply 'being'. Another common example of this in practice involves the teaching of “social skills” based on neurotypical norms to autistic children. Most egregiously, this is sometimes recommended as a solution when an autistic child is being bullied at school – a devastating neglect of duty of care to the autistic child, when the focus should clearly be on changing the behaviour of the bully. In moving away from a normative model of education support, it is important to permit variability in outcome as well as process. Children are not just following their own paths, they are headed to different destinations too. A child who is struggling with handwriting may not need more time to get it right – give them the option to get really good at typing instead. 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.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. Iain Munro, CEO, Creative Scotland, comments: "Creative Scotland is thrilled to support this incredible range of talented artists and inspiring commissions as part of our partnership with BBC Arts and The Space, bringing the work of talented D/deaf, neurodivergent and disabled artists to BBC platforms. We celebrate the way diversity of thought and a diversity of experience feeds innovation and creativity and are delighted that thanks to National lottery players, audiences will enjoy and be inspired by the wide range of stories, perspectives and experiences supported through this initiative." Friskney, R., Tisdall, E.K.M. & Aitken, D. (2019). Communication matters: Three scoping studies about the experiences of children with learning difficulties, and their families, in Scotland. Salvesen Mindroom Centre and University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh. About: Jon is both a contemporary Artist and researcher. He works in many differing media including sound, drawing and performance, often referencing his autism, synaesthesia and dyslexia, all interwoven with history, science, time and his past experiences.