Shane Neilson & Roxanna Bennett's Collaborative Poetry Collection Explores Ableism in the Pandemic & CanLit

The pandemic lockdowns were an isolating, complex time that were difficult in myriad ways for everyone effected. But for people with disabilities, mental health challenges, and neurodivergence, there were added challenges.

Shane Neilson and Roxanna Bennett weathered those challenges through the lens of their friendship, writing to one another in the height of uncertainty as the world held its breath. The product of that writing is The Suspect We (Palimpsest Press), a book of poetic reflection, friendship, and madness that unpacked complex social politics of the CanLit community in relation to disability, access, and inclusion, as well as the pandemic experience.

Neilson, a scholar, physician, and writer whose work engages with representations of pain, and Bennett, who refers to themself as a "poem-making entity" and who has written two acclaimed poetry collections. A journey of connection, caretaking, and truth telling, Neilson and Bennett's collaborative collection is fierce, raw, and lyric. They're speaking to us today about the book, which is written in the first person plural.

They tell us how "the title is a direct reflection of that experience of having your lived experience doubted", discuss how they largely structured the collection as "a daisy chain of poems responding to the collaborator’s previous poem", and share why they're grateful to their publisher for allowing them to dig into concerns about ableism in CanLit, saying "Palimpsest let us reject conformity".

Open Book:

Tell us about this collection and how it came to be.

Shane Neilson:

Once upon a time, a boy was born in a rural place to blue collar parents. He faced ableist abuse within and outside the home. He persisted. He dreamed of having his own family in which his children were loved. He met a neurotypical person and had his own family. He loved his children, one of whom is disabled. He stuck up a poetry conversation with a colleague and wrote about his experiences in disability and CanLit with this colleague, whom he nicknamed “the poetry-writing entity.”

Roxanna Bennett:

Shane shared his poems with me & I responded.

Open Book:

Can you tell us a bit about how you chose your title? If it’s a title of one of the poems, how does that piece fit into the collection? If it’s not a poem title, how does it encapsulate the collection as a whole?

SN:

The title is a deliberate reclamation, a rhetorical strategy designed to repatriate agency. We are the suspect bodyminds, the ones deemed wrong, bad, and lacking. We challenge the default suspicion intrinsic to ableism, that is ableism’s premise and program. By flagging “suspect” and speaking in the first person plural, we frame a text that grieves suspicion and prejudice while singing care for self and community.

RB:

Skepticism & suspicion are our culture’s default response to... pretty much everything but especially the suffering of other people. The title is a direct reflection of that experience of having your lived experience doubted & challenged by EVERYONE. Even & especially those that love you.

Open Book:

Was there any research involved in your writing process for these poems?

SN:

Yes, one could say so. 47 years of living in this universally maldesigned world.

RB:

Yes, five decades being systematically unenabled by our culture.

Open Book:

Did you include an epigraph for the collection and if so, why did you choose it?

SN:

Because the book is largely, though not exclusively, a daisy chain of poems responding to the collaborator’s previous poem, we decided upon one epigraph apiece. These epigraphs reflect the respective spirits of their choosers. In my case, I chose a snippet of Larkin’s "Aubade": "An only life can take so long to climb / Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never".

The entity chose this bit of Hans Christian Andersen: "And they both sat there, grown up, yet children at heart; and it was summer – warm, beautiful summer." The difference of futurity conjured here is telling in contrast. There is a parallel difference in dedication, with the entity writing "May you be free of suffering" and me writing "May we be free of suspicion."

RB:

'Why' is a reductive, unanswerable question, truth is as multi-faceted as a diamond.

"May you be free of suffering" is part of a longer, Metta meditation that exchanges self for others & wishes for the liberation of all beings.

Open Book:

What advice would you give to an emerging or aspiring poet?

SN:

Be kind to yourself and to others. Be merciless and severe upon your own work.

RB:

Never take advice from other poets. Never take advice from anyone, point blank. You don’t need it. Trust your own experience. Develop your intuition & guard that relationship with your life. Treat your work like a garden, know when it needs nurturing & space to flourish, know when it needs prudent pruning. Don’t be afraid of the stinky compost, that’s where the treasure is. Other poets are not your competition or your enemies. There is enough space for everyone to play on the playground, we can all hang out & have fun. Be kind to everyone, particularly yourself.

Open Book:

Was there a question or questions that you were exploring, consciously from the beginning or unconsciously and which becoming clear to you later, in this collection? 

SN:

There is nothing exclusive about this book in terms of thematic exploration from a zoomed-out view. Still thinking through disability. I do come out of the closet as autistic in this book, however, meaning the first time I’ve done so in poetry. There are small variations in terms of subject too – commenting on the ableist toxicity of CanLit and prize culture are perhaps the first opportunities I’ve been permitted in a book of poetry. Palimpsest let us reject conformity, which is a relief since we already live our lives in that regime.

RB:

The same old questions: What is the point of me? What is the point of our tragedies? How to be a friend while wanting to die? How to be human? How to live in constant pain with a little bit of humour & dignity? How to share the load of suffering? How to keep myself alive? How to keep other people alive?

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The disabled poem-making entity known as Roxanna Bennett gratefully resides on Indigenous land. They are the author of The Untranslatable I (Gordon Hill Press, 2021) and the award-winning Unmeaningable (Gordon Hill Press, 2019).

Shane Neilson is a poet, physician, and scholar who completed his Ph.D. in McMaster’s English and Cultural Studies Department on the representations of pain in CanLit. His most recent book of poetry, You May Not Take the Sad and Angry Consolations, was published by Icehouse in 2022.