Posted on March 18, 2026 | Poetry

Seamless: A Neurodivergent Weave

Edited by Shriram Sivaramakrishnan and Chris Martin

They say sunlight is secretly a mixtape. And each raindrop a tiny prism. When a ray of light enters a raindrop, it gets dispersed: every color bends at a different angle. And so, what exits the drop will not be a ray but a fan of colors. Send it through enough raindrops, and you get a festoon of wavelengths, each wholesome than the whole.

This reflective weave began in much the same spirit. We wondered what might happen if language were allowed to bend through neurodivergent minds, each poet a prism with their own angle of refraction. What textures of thought, what cadences of perception, might appear when language is not required to pass through an ableist lens?

Chris Martin and I began the project by providing the first poet with a pollinating prompt, an invitation rather than an instruction. The response arrived in its own form: an interlacing of poems, poem-like reflections, and conversational moments. This was then passed on to the next poet. Each poet could build upon what came before, redirect it, or leave it unanswered. The chain did not demand uniformity. It welcomed divergence.

What emerged is less a sequence than a weft-and-warp of voices in relation. Each contribution stands fully on its own, and yet, when read together, they refract one another. The result is not a single statement but a stunning spectrum. A reckoning.
Shriram Sivaramakrishnan

Amelia Bell is 18 years old and lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she is a sophomore at the University of Virginia. She is the author of the chapbook Other Together.

Hannah Emerson is the author of The Kissing of Kissing, as well as the chapbook You Are Helping This Great Universe Explode. Her work has recently appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, and The Poetry Project Newsletter. Emerson is a nonspeaking autistic poet who lives in Lafayette, New York.

Sid Ghosh is the author of Yellow Flower Gills Me Whole. He is a levitator of language, meandering through the rivers of Down Syndrome, grilling himself through poetry.

Graciela Lotharius is a fierce believer in hope and justice. She works in numerous ways to shape her changemaking thoughts into transformative poems that she hopes will be life-giving to others.

Joel Nyland is a poet, songwriter, and friend to many. He wants the world to be a kinder place for all living creatures.

Nadia Sohn Fink is a poet, painter, and dreamer from Gaithersburg, Maryland. She is studying at Georgetown University and observes light and fog and forests.

Rowan Wilde Riggs frolics on the lily pad of verse, dunks the nomenclature of tousled punctuation, and floats through the social whimsy by enjoying the bounty of Vermont. His chapbook, Atomic Wonder, was published in 2023.

Adam Wolfond is a non-speaking autistic artist, poet, university lecturer, and the author of Open Book in Ways of Water and The Wanting Way.

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