Chris Martin and Imane Boukaila — On Poetry, Autism and Our Neurodivergent Future: March 21, 2024

Imane Boukaila's poems, from her first book, Tressing Motions at the Edge of Mistakes, are voiced by Chris Martin. At her request and owing to an affinity with "quiet fish," Martin reads her "trout poems" from the book.

Chris Martin reads from his poetry, including work from experiments writing in Welsh, and reads the Afterword, "Belonging to the Future," from May Tomorrow Be Awake.

Questions are elicited from the in-house audience at The Poetry Center and from the online audience (the latter voiced by emcee Shaina Ghuraya), to which Chris Martin and Imane Boukaila respond. Martin tells of the chapbook series published through Unrestricted Interest, the collective at which he and others teach, and via the Multiverse series from Milkweed Editions. 

Jaimy Mann, teaching in Race and Resistance Studies and whose students are present, remarks that many students have family members and friends who are neurodivergent, and Martin speaks of the "neurodivergent revolution" and need to embrace many divergences from dominant notions of culture and value. Imane, via Rashida, responds, saying "Treasure your weirdest thoughts, trespass grammar to tilt truly."

A question from Martin's sister asks whether "neurotypicality" exists, and Martin gives the question to Boukaila, who responds brilliantly that we must "listen to our inner trapped motions," which Martin amplifies by calling for "embracing our neurodiverges as much as possible....unmasking."

The poets are asked of their process and practice for writing, and Boukaila tells of listening to music ("Yes, I pace my creativity with music") for "expanding possibilities." She adds:

"I trust my lazy thoughts to pave the way to my mind's periphery." 

Martin notes Boukaila told him, "I trust Chris because he meets me at the periphery." He emphasizes that we don't write alone, and the possibilities for connection and "rippling further" speaks to collectively imagined and realizeable futures. 

The conversation between poets and audience continues at length, with intensive listening and patience shifting perceptions of time to open a divergent sense of presence to one another and to a shared future. From the audience, online and in-house, come expressions, spoken and otherwise, of gratitude for this shared space. 

"Time is a true limiting construct imposed. I trust inner motions to travel freely. Homing truth is timeless." (Imane Boukaila)