2018 Massachusetts Poetry Festival

We must admit it is difficult to write about children without falling into the maudlin. How much harder when they are disabled? As poets, we face the double danger of the sentimental and the exoticization of their disability. This panel will address how do poets negotiate the topic and portraiture of autism. Each panelist will read a small selection of poems that they have written about their own autistic children or siblings, and speak to the difficulties of writing these poems. We will then open the panel for discussion. What is at stake for our children, our readers? What strategies do we entail to capture the ontological complexity of our most vulnerable citizens, during a time when they are too often categorized as less than? How do we speak our joys, fears, love in language whose intent is to nurture, to elevate, to challenge, and to sing.