May Tomorrow Be Awake: On Poetry, Autism, and Our Neurodiverse Future

Poet and educator Martin (Things to Do in Hell) braids contemporary neurological research and literary theory in this eloquent reflection on his experience teaching poetry to neurodiverse students. Through his students’ poems and endearing anecdotes, Martin, himself a neurodiverse person, seeks to help readers dismantle their conceptions of being “normal”—“to let [it] fall away like the oppressive husk it really is”—and to open their minds to other ways of being and interacting with the world. He gives readers glimpses into his nearly 20 years of sessions with a dozen students, most of them nonspeaking teenagers with autism, to explain how a neurodiverse student’s initial reluctance to engage with poetry can lead to gracefully patterned writing. As he analyzes his students’ work—highlighting often technically impressive and emotionally poignant poems—he lucidly examines the ways in which they confront societal perceptions of and challenges related to neurodiversity (for one student, “the most difficult aspect of writing is falling into the concentrated physical stillness necessary to type”), as well as broader issues like gender, race, and, most recently, surviving the changes wrought by the pandemic. Martin’s narration is empathetic and charming, and his students’ writings combine to offer moving, intelligent, and insightful pathways for understanding different minds. The result brilliantly proves that nonverbal doesn’t always mean voiceless. (Aug.)