I'm a poet. I've been writing poems since the age of nine because poems always seemed a bit magic to me and offered a way of exploring experience that need not match the accepted view. I have three poetry collections and am working on a fourth these days. It is essential for my happiness that I keep writing as it helps me make sense of life. Not to write is for me is painful, not using a vital faculty, as if my own thoughts were forbidden to me. The thrill of it is in the flow state of making a poem. The next good thing is to find a poem has reached a reader and connected with their sense of life.

For people who want to try writing, the benefits are huge. Autistic people I have met often have a sense of discomfort at not getting through to others, so I feel a poetry workshop might help with that communication, especially as you can be as offbeat as you like in poetry and nobody minds. In fact, it's usually an advantage. Things like spelling and punctuation, which make lots of people nervous, just don't count. It can be a boost to morale to find that other people like the things you write, too.