Poetry, Neurodivergence, and Access to Work

- the true story of my personal assistant, in her own words!

January is, to put it lightly, a packed month. I’m currently working on at least twelve separate projects, across more than fifteen organisations. If anything, that’s slightly less than usual. My workload reflects my ADHD – I’m always buzzing with bright ideas, and my passion for my work means that I find it very hard to say no.

This is Clare speaking, in case you didn’t already know. And until 2023, ADHD was conspicuous in my admin – in my packed email box, my unsent invoices; in my tardy tax returns and hefty penalties. In the opportunities I missed, the professional relationships I neglected, the deadlines I missed and the money I lost – and in the heavy burden of anxiety and failure I carried, acutely aware and ashamed of my incompetence.

Of course, my administrative struggles were not a personal failing; they were the result of executive dysfunction, a primary symptom of ADHD. In 2022, exhausted by the challenge of managing a freelance career alongside my neurodivergence and mental health issues, I contacted Access to Work - ,

‘a grant that funds practical support if you have a disability, health or mental health condition’ – and I was awarded money to employ a PA.

The rest of this blog is written by the PA I appointed. Olivia Tuck is a wonderful poet in her own right; you can find her work here: https://poetrynonstop.com/tag/olivia-tuck/

I agree with every word Olivia says, especially about the crucial role of karaoke in a PA/ client relationship. Olivia, by the way, has a wonderful voice. And my invoices, these days, arrive on time.

Thank you so much, Olivia. You’re a star.

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In May 2023, a friend messaged me a link to a Facebook post on the profile of a certain poet named Clare Shaw. Clare was looking for a PA/support worker. Someone ‘efficient, friendly, organised’ (words I’d tentatively used in my CV). Someone with a bit of arts administration knowledge – I’d gleaned this from my years of poeting, of helping out at literary journals and running a national young poets’ competition. Someone with experience of neurodivergence: I’m Autistic.

I messaged Clare. We agreed we’d give working together a go. I can only speak for myself, but I feel we hit it off straightaway. There’s a certain kinship you feel as a neurodivergent person talking to another neurodivergent person. It feels so much more fluid than the stiltedness I feel (the stiltedness that may not be immediately obvious to the rest of the world, but nonetheless, I feel it). I never thought I’d be able to be unapologetically weird in the workplace. It felt like coming home.

My work – which is almost entirely remote, although I did once join Clare as a supportive presence at a brilliant reading in Bristol – involves booking and interacting with clients, sending and chasing up invoices, organising online folders, and generally keeping track of Clare’s exciting projects.

Crucially, my job involves making sure that Clare’s Access and Safeguarding needs are met by anyone who works with them. It also involves supporting Clare with life admin as well as work admin (such as booking medical appointments) and checking in with Clare regularly via Messenger and/or email. I am the Keeper of the Google Drive – a shared space for us to keep track of what we’ve got done and what we still need to accomplish.

Put simply: if there’s anything I can do to take the pressure off Clare, I do it.

Where possible (luckily, most weeks it is possible) I meet Clare via Zoom, usually for a couple of hours, to catch up and discuss what would be most helpful to them. In these, we create our own co-working space. Sometimes it’s a karaoke booth. We often sing our way out. One favourite tune is ‘Let It Go’ from Disney’s Frozen. We’re also certified ABBA fans – we’ve belted ‘Dancing Queen’, ‘Super Trouper’, ‘Waterloo’. I’m talking hairbrush-microphone in the mirror vibes. We don’t hold back. As corny and as cliched as this is to say, we sing like no one’s listening. There should be a space for ABBA in every PA/client relationship. As in Brian Patten’s ‘The Orange’, an acknowledgement and an appreciation of life’s fun, delicious things – like Seventies Swedish pop, in our case – is a ‘safeguard against imagining / there [is] nothing bright or special in the world.’ Tackling admin can feel the very opposite of ‘bright and special’. Doing a Mary Poppins and finding and celebrating the ‘element of fun’ among the pressures of work – and of life – allows us not only to build the working relationship, but to create our own, more effective (for us, at least) definition of it.

The unique quality that a poet PA must have, of course, is the ability to talk poetry. To be someone to bounce ideas off. A poet PA can send an invoice and talk about whether or not a metaphor is violating its terms or not. A poet PA can check up on what has or hasn’t been done admin-wise, but also we look at manuscript drafts and frail, newborn poems in all their vulnerability. We compile weekly admin reports, then look at sustained images and narrative arcs. We phone the doctor’s surgery, then listen as our clients thrash out their central idea for their next collection. The ability to move fluidly between the practical and the creative is what makes the poet PA useful.

My parents often refer to the time they took eleven-year-old me to an induction evening at my new secondary school. One of the speakers made the point that a lot of us kids would one day be working in jobs we didn’t know existed – some of which that, as of then, hadn’t yet been invented. I like to think I’ve invented a brand-new job: ‘Poet PA’. Although I’m sure there are other poet PAs, flung across this big wide planet. And there should be more of us, in my view.

Here’s why. Poets should have all the time and (emotional and physical) energy as possible to write poems. Poetry takes a great amount of time and energy. It’s such a psychological process. Many poets are a) neurodivergent and b) freelancers. These things combined means life’s bureaucracy often collides with executive dysfunction and crippling anxiety towards doing the things that ultimately get you paid for your hard work (such as invoicing clients) or the things are, legally and morally, non-negotiable (paying tax). A supportive PA is a buffer, a cushion, to stop the two colliding. They take care of the anxiety-inducing stuff and leave the poet with the space to do the only thing that makes a poet a poet: writing poems.

The fact of the matter is that poets often don’t have the wherewithal to hire PAs. We all know that poetry in and of itself doesn’t generate huge wealth, and we’re expected to do it all ourselves. This is, maybe, just about manageable for some. But many poets aren’t aware that there are options available if your physical or mental health, or neurotype, means that you need extra support so you can focus on creating. My work with Clare is funded by Access to Work. The scheme can pay for things like special equipment, communication support in work situations, or a support worker to assist with matters ranging from personal care, to (like me) admin. Access to Work allows Clare to hire me for a set number of hours each week for a period of twelve months, and it covers all the work we do together. You can find out more about Access to Work here: https://exceptionalindividuals.com/about-us/blog/what-is-the-access-to-work-scheme/

Access to Work hasn’t only given Clare the opportunity to hire me…it’s given me the opportunity to get to know Clare. I must end this by thanking Clare, for everything they are…thank you for everything you’ve shared with me: the laughs, the poems, the songs. Here’s to many, many more. My job is awesome.