{"id":4568,"date":"2022-01-13T12:45:46","date_gmt":"2022-01-13T12:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/applesandsnakes.org\/?p=4568"},"modified":"2022-02-14T18:13:34","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T18:13:34","slug":"kate-fox-this-is-a-neurodivergent-poet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/applesandsnakes.org\/2022\/01\/13\/kate-fox-this-is-a-neurodivergent-poet\/","title":{"rendered":"Kate Fox: This is a Neurodivergent Poet"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a Neurodivergent Poet\u2026<\/span><\/h2>\n

I know a lot of other poets feel, as I did, that whenever they first encountered the world of poetry, they had found their tribe.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I had glimpsed my tribe before. I found them in the amateur drama groups I joined from being a teenager. They were in the green rooms of the stand-up comedy gigs where I dissected how the night had gone with the other open mic-ers, and later to other pro comics. But it wasn\u2019t until I found the other quirky people who cared deeply about words and stories that I really felt I belonged. Other people like me that had a strange mixture of anxiety\/fear\/lack of confidence about communicating alongside a strong urge to express themselves to fellow wordsmiths and audiences.<\/span><\/p>\n

We were not really mainstream sort of people. Maybe we\u2019d 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 –\u00a0 like we didn\u2019t fit in.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been interested for a long time in how other people \u2018process\u2019 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\u2019d 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\u2019t reach for some kids, when a teacher would breathlessly say of one of their students \u201cI\u2019ve never seen them so interested in something before – they were like a different person!\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I could see that some performers played a lot with the sounds of words and created textured pieces which pulled on an audience\u2019s emotions. Others loved puns and clear narratives or quiet, still pieces that drew others in. I thought how this was probably a lot to do with how they processed the world. My quick, impatient brain meant I made poems buzzing along with words and ideas which seemed to wake some people up and excite them. Meanwhile, they were just ‘too much’ or too irritating for others. I learned not to take this too personally.<\/span><\/p>\n

Working people out in this way was also important in my personal life. I would puzzle over how some people were so quick and adept at picking up body language and nonverbal cues. I\u2019d be the one watching a film asking \u201chow did they both know they wanted to kiss each other at that exact moment!\u201d. This may have explained my very unsatisfying dates of course\u2026 I noticed that whereas I could read a page of a book hyper-quickly and have finished it by the time someone else was on the first paragraph, it always took me a while to work out what the pictures on toilet doors meant. Did they mean anything other than the standard male and female outlines? I could feel my brain working slower than other people\u2019s when it came to the visual. I began to realise that not everyone would enter a room full of people and experience an overwhelming cacophony of visual, auditory and other sensory stimuli, all coming in at once. For me, this meant needing to step back or get into a quieter space in order to make sense of it all and filter what was happening.<\/span><\/p>\n

But I also knew that most people weren\u2019t trying to work out how different people processed the world. They were categorising people by whether they were introverts or extroverts, happy or sad, anxious or easy-going simply by whether they liked or felt comfortable with them or not. Most people, I think it\u2019s fair to say, expect that other folk experience the day to day world in pretty much the same way as they do.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Finding a word for these differences has felt like a massive relief. In 2017 I found quite a specific word for some of the ways I think and experience the world differently to the majority (autism) and it\u2019s been very useful and would be a whole other blog post. Another word that I suspect applies is ADHD\u00a0 which explains all those quick, buzzing poems. (And, I\u2019m currently loving the new word for the many of us who have characteristics of both – AutDHD).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But the one that resonates most for me when it comes to describing how different people\u2019s 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\u2019t fitted in elsewhere – is neurodiversity. This comes from the idea of biodiversity.\u00a0 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 \u201cWhere\u2019s Wally\u201d in a millisecond.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Neurodiversity can just be an umbrella term for conditions such as Autism, ADHD, OCD, Tourettes, dyslexia and acquired states like PTSD, depression, anxiety and dementia. But it can also be an activist movement (see here for an interview<\/a> with Nick Walker who came up with this idea) . A liberatory one that recognises the creative potential in those of us who see and feel and speak (or not) the world differently. I would argue that live poetry has always provided a radical space of neurodivergence and I am proud to be part of a wave of people who are now making that explicit.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Image credit: Colin Potsig.<\/p>\n

Follow Kate:
\nwww.katefox.co.uk<\/a>
\nTwitter: @katefoxwriter<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Back to Behind the Words Project Page.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a Neurodivergent Poet\u2026 I know a lot of other poets feel, as I did, that whenever they first encountered the world of poetry, they had found their tribe. I had glimpsed my tribe before. I found them in the amateur drama groups I joined from being a teenager. They were in the green…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_surecart_dashboard_logo_width":"180px","_surecart_dashboard_show_logo":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_orders":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_invoices":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_subscriptions":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_downloads":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_billing":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_account":true,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[],"article_type":[9],"class_list":["post-4568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-this-is-a-poet","article_type-read"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":112,"label":"This is a Poet"}],"article_type":[{"value":9,"label":"Read"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/applesandsnakes.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Kate-Fox-web-banner-1024x576.png",1024,576,true],"author_info":{"display_name":"Fiona Simpson","author_link":"https:\/\/applesandsnakes.org\/author\/fiona\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":112,"name":"This is a Poet","slug":"this-is-a-poet","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":112,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":8,"filter":"raw","term_order":"0","cat_ID":112,"category_count":8,"category_description":"","cat_name":"This is a Poet","category_nicename":"this-is-a-poet","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/applesandsnakes.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/applesandsnakes.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/applesandsnakes.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/applesandsnakes.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/applesandsnakes.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/applesandsnakes.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/applesandsnakes.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/applesandsnakes.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/applesandsnakes.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/applesandsnakes.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4568"},{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/applesandsnakes.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=4568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}