Natalie Joelle is a transdisciplinary researcher, creative practitioner, and activist at Birkbeck, University of London, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Fund for Women Graduates. Her critical and creative publications can be found as part of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, the Routledge Environmental Humanities Series, Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature, The Goose and Plumwood Mountain. Further information about her work is available at www.gleaning.info.
Natalie recited the following poems at the Autistic Pride Online Celebration on the 20th June, 2020, and has given permission for them to be shared below.
ASP, or, Autistic Spectrum Pleasures
May I love the textures
May I love the patterns
May I love the vibrations
May I speak my mind
May I be heard in kind
May I not need to communicate
May I have time alone
May I turn off my phone
May I have the key to the quiet room
Please
May I turn the lights down
May I sit down
May I have this seat
May I have more time to eat
May I have something spicy
May I be safe to play
May I throw my personal alarm away
May I change this world
May I rock your world
May I stim with your head
May I interrupt your clock
May I taste your
May I hyperfocus on this specific
come AS you are
no sweet aspersions
shall the heavens
let fall
melting it down
and Zoming out
diversely or savagely
unmanning the mannerly
with my unruly speech
raising my rip-
raised micro-soft
hand raising it
and putting it down
in Piccadilly Circus
to my fiery juggler
they’re guarding
their jugulars
and do I oppress
to liberate this
so oppress this I
limiting what I
express sit for a
minute’s selective
muting in the encrypteric
closing down
not coming out
cancelling my noise and
zoning out
in Monty Python’s Flying Circus
nt the right room
for as argument
from too many screens
to alexithyme
losing the language
of my dreams
oh break my heart
for I cannot hold
my tongue
and my tongue
cannot hold my heart
in this room
ah Greta Thunb
this world is not ready
for some of us
yet
oh let
aspersions sweet
heaven shall fall