&Now 2019 Conference

The human mind comes in endless variations, but those that fall outside the neurotypical norm are often dismissed as incapable, unreachable, or unworthy. Could “deficits” also double as lyrical gifts? Could an atypical orientation to the world generate surprising possibilities for poetry? As Chris Martin writes, “Poetry is sensory-rich, patterned language. Autism is characterized by sensory-rich, patterned thought. All the so-called deficits of autistic thought turn out to be strengths in the realm of poetry.” But the world at large is not a realm of poetry. Or is it? Lauren Russell asks, “What if the mind that gives me an intuitive sense for repetition and musicality in poetry is also the mind that holds me hostage to sometimes nearly debilitating OCD?” If some neurodivergent poets experience a tension between celebration and survival, between limitation and possibility, how does that tension manifest on and off the page? And how does neurodiversity intersect with other identities and experiences, in/through poetry and outside it? Naima Tokunow writes, “While our neurodivergence does not define us, it is a part of us. It is too often silenced, erased, made invisible.” What can those silences and erasures yield? Or can poetry transform them? “How might poetry lure a person into language,” DJ Savarese asks, “offering them a chance to be in two places at one time: the linguistic and the sensory, the human and the non-human?” In this roundtable, we will explore these and other questions at the intersection of neurodiversity and poetics.