The Being Scene exhibition began over 20 years ago on the grounds of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). Since, Being Scene has exhibited a juried survey of over 100 artworks by Workman Arts member artists as well as artists with lived experience who have received services from CAMH. Last year, Workman Arts introduced a smaller curated portion as part of the overall exhibit. Working closely with a guest curator, artists gave shape to compelling ideas and narratives, covering a wide range of conceptual and material approaches from diverse experiences. The exhibition has been shown in spaces such as The Gladstone Hotel, Toronto Media Arts Centre (TMAC) and at CAMH.

To watch an interview between 2023’s curator Kat Singer, Estée Klar and Adam click here:

You are invited to an evening of tilted thinking, hydrated languaging, and trespassing truth. In celebrating braided and liberatory new books, Chris Martin, Adam Wolfond, and Imane Boukaila desire greatly to rally and gather, motion and scatter. Meet us here, where “the ways of threes are partly laking partly iridescent.”

Thank you to our chorus of readers for Adam and Imane’s poems: Kaur Alia Ahmed, hannah baer, Joselia Rebekah Hughes, Omotara James, Benjamin Krusling, and Aldrin Valdez.

Watch the full presentation here

The second book in Milkweed’s “Multiverse” series, Adam Wolfond’s The Wanting Way is a multi-sensory Crip adventure. Multiverse is comprised entirely of works written by Neurodivergent, Autistic, Neuroqueer, Mad, Nonspeaking, and otherwise culturally Disabled writers. I reviewed the first book in the series, Hannah Emerson’s The Kissing of Kissing, for Wordgathering.

Adam Wolfond was key note speaker for the April 2023 conference.

You can watch the presentation here: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/817698920

Whenever We Feel Like It presents a reading and discussion featuring poets Chris Martin and Adam Wolfond. Chris is also the author of the nonfiction book, May Tomorrow Be Awake: On Poetry, Autism, and Our Neurodiverse Future about his work to help autistic students, like Adam, find their voices. Please join us for their performance and audience-led discussion with the writers about the potential of writing and the lessons we might learn writing with and alongside one another

By Adam Wolfond Selected by Victoria Chang

Jan. 25, 2023

Adam Wolfond’s poem is mostly written in declaratives, giving it a sense of confidence. As a nonspeaking autistic artist, prose writer and poet, Wolfond uses language as an invitation to witness and engage where evanescence arises from multiplicity, not uniformity and convention. (Note: The blue line does not correspond with the original text but has been recreated in collaboration with the editors of the magazine.) Selected by Victoria Chang begins with an idea.

April 29, 2022

By Jeevika Verma

Adam Wolfond says that poetry is part of his body. "It is nature to me," he says through a speech-generating device. "And I think that non-speakers like me dance with language."

Wolfond, 20, identifies as a non-speaking, autistic poet; he types and moves to communicate. He's neurodivergent, which means he has variations from what might be considered "typical" — in how his brain functions and processes information.

In the United States, April is both National Poetry Month and Autism Acceptance Month. This convergence is appreciated by many poets who also identify as neurodivergent, among them Wolfond and Hannah Emerson. When Wolfand says poetry is in his body — he's pointing to a diversity of language that exists beyond the common speaking world.

Read the full article here: https://www.npr.org/2022/04/29/1095206261/for-neurodivergent-non-speaking-poets-collaboration-is-the-basis-of-language