So the 24 autism poems on this blog are going to be in a book. The title was originally going to be CircleQuirk but I have changed it to First…Then… after the most popular poem in the collection.
The book is coming out in April 2012 (Autism Awareness Month) and will be published by Ginninderra Press. At that point I will be taking most of the poems down and providing a link to where you can buy the book.
Between now and then they will remain here, free of charge for anyone to read (still copyright (c) Melinda Smith though 🙂 ). While they are all still here, I thought it might be helpful to have a Table of Contents page linking to the poems in the order they appear in the book (which is different to the order they were written and posted on this blog in).
So here ’tis. Enjoy. And I should remember to thank ArtsACT for supporting me one day a week while I wrote the poems.
First… Then… | poems from planet autism
Table of Contents
Poetry appearing on this blog was generously supported by the ACT Government
Beach cricket with four year old
autistic child with acute auditory processing disorder
On holding the baby of a friend
Social Stories for Neurotypical Adults #27: No Dogs Allowed
An autistic woman explains the terror of affection
CircleQuirk 
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[…] Colquhoun read an early draft of one of the poems in 2010 and told her that it needed to be a book. You can catch a sneak preview of the book here and Melinda’s general poetry blog is […]
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Poem about life with autism-
if I was to sum it up
•depression•anxiety•overwhelming panic.
Heightened emotions which depression encompasses everything that you think of on a daily basis.
What can I do to fit the mould of society, ANXIETY is my erosion of the dam that I create to keep at bay the reality of my miserable existence before I put on my kendoll smile and leave for an interview after lying on my resume so I’m not judged immediately or treated as a third class citizen as I begin to overshare, sweat, then pass out for the second interview of the week.
Why are we autists so damaged many people often beckon?OVERWHELMING PANIC is something we can’t turn off, it festers like bacteria in the wound slowly killing and eating away at you so much that suicide is a comfort,
one must often want to stay in bed and sleep if that’s how you feel; ahh yes sleep would be great but insomnia is the bane of our existence as we often can’t stop thinking, or run through what our life could have been had we had a strong charisma and social skills like those we see running around outside playing as we lay in bed crying as nobody seems to notice having autism is to be tortured on a daily basis …..and after 32 hours awake we finally drift to sleep, for two hours!!