she doesn’t seem autistic by Esther Ottaway
Puncher & Wattmann, 2023

Sanctuaries by Diane Fahey
Puncher & Wattmann, 2024

Puncher & Wattmann, whose present proprietors are David Musgrave and Ed Wright, has, since 2005, brought forth over 200 titles, many of them of the poetry ilk. On the ABOUT page of their website, the press proudly avers that they are a publisher of “shit-hot writing.” As far as I can recall, this has been their guiding principle since inception. I am kind of tickled by this appropriation of the vernacular. Because shit is hot. Please note the steam rising off of a recent cow plop on a frosty morning. But here’s an odd thing that caught me with a back-handed synchronicity. I have always known that the name of the press is a reverent nod to one of the most luminous pieces of writing for the theatre, a work that celebrates and enables presence and voice. And here I quote from Lucky’s soliloquy from Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett, “Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua…”

So, while I have always known the provenance of Puncher & Wattman, and relished the way they give space to the performative side of things, somehow I hadn’t made the connection to my impulse to consider these two books in light of my experience of the poets enacting their work. See, the reason I was keen to delve into the page presence of these two poets is that I have recently seen and heard both of these poets reading their poetry. At the Spark! Poetry Festival, curated by Liquid Amber Press, Dianey Fahey strolled onto stage, looked us in our collective eye, lifted her voice, and nailed it. Now there’s a pro, I thought to myself. And then I was lucky enough to catch Esther Ottaway featuring on one of the Zoom readings Ross Donlon runs as a kindly adjunct to the Poetry from Agitation Hill readings out of Castlemaine. Once a month in the flesh and on Zoom, and once a month just us avid Zoom-ees. The full-face reveal can be pitiless, but Esther opened herself up to our gaze and, with poise and dignity, demonstrated absolute commitment to the vehicle of poetry.

she doesn’t seem autistic was published in 2023. And a book published back then would normally have had its moment in the limelight – a launch (or two) a review (or two) a longlisting maybe, a shortlisting hopefully, and then back into the box for the duration. Even winning one of the various prizes doesn’t often seem to save a book from sinking out of sight. And many wonderfully accomplished and enlightening books pass seamlessly through the digestive system of the poetry world without generating a hiccup, let alone kicking up a stink. But in December 2024, this book was longlisted for the Tim Thorne Prize for Poetry in Tasmania. (It didn’t make the shortlist but then so many books don’t.) This is a biennial prize, so that explains the long lead time. But it doesn’t explain the way I seized upon this recent acknowledgement as an excuse to have a go at an almost retrospective review. There is something about this book! It’s like nothing I have ever come across before.

Andy Jackson declares on the glossy, hot-pinkish, Barbie-fied cover — “A revelation.” This is a grab from his endorsement on the back which continues — “…not just in terms of our understanding of autistic experience, but of what is possible within poetry.” See, I am not all that interested in an individual diagnosis (well, of course, I am a little bit interested as a human being), but I am intensely interested in how poetry takes the edge off and transforms trauma, disability, all manner of hurt and difficulty, into the beauty of well-chosen words.

From ‘There is always a giraffe,’

Cool as a whale
Mrs Haydon is stepping backwards through water

patient with this small giraffe
who has failed at every sport

all neck and skittery hooves,
large-eyed, patterned with shame.

(27)

As a reluctant childhood swimmer, I was empathising like a mad thing as the poem progresses, as the dyspraxic child gasps at “the air that saves her life / / for another minute” (27). As “the certificate floats farther away than Africa” (27). Oh, the searing “plughole terror” (28). Oh, the scald of “a fury of incompetence” (28). And here is the kicker in the final couplet,

Wherever I am, there is always a giraffe
asking if it’s worse to drown, or fail.

(28)

The explicit simplicity of this poem is offering the reader a lyrical escape hatch, an easy-out. But when we come to poems like ‘The head-stacking caterpillar answers the question how are you?’ (54-55), well, then we are into the thick of it, into the grunt and the sweat and the muck of it, into an intense, refractive complexity of complication. I was taken aback. It is so hard, and confronting.

From ‘The head-stacking caterpillar answers the question how are you?’

Happy to be doing this activity with you, while I get worse from doing
it. Do you know how I split my face and head off, wrest it free of my
distressed body, reattach it with filament, make it smile? Do you know
how this unstitching dichotomy, this severing of wellness from happiness,
is done in the psyche’s inky cocoon? People feel unwell, they take the day
off and get better. I never get better, so I can’t keep waiting for that: I do
what brings me joy. I won’t go home after this and cook dinner, reply to 
emails, have a shower, make lunch for tomorrow. I’ll go to bed, and in
bed, I’ll experience distressing symptoms. I’m a many-legged complexity,
a walking trade-off, silken, elegant, ruthless. This head looks fine.

(54)

Is there an upside? Is there indeed joy to be found? It seems so. It seems that resorting to poetry can lighten the load and lift your spirits. This book has a rising trajectory, passing through ‘Joy to my world’ on page 74, to the clarion call of the last couplet of the last poem.

From ‘The autistic woman’s self-compassion blessing,’

Lay down the paper doll of stereotype.
May fierce determination create your singular success.

(80)