We haven’t seen her in weeks, our neighbor with white hair that tufts and spumes, not a trace of color in it, not even a sliver of gray. We never learned her name, but we noticed—the way you notice…
The concept of what is or what is not a weed is not precisely defined because it has both biological and sociological elements. Biologically, weeds are plants having the ability to colonize, inhabit and thrive in continually disturbed habitats,…
My mother never ripened. When she was young, they bit into her and stopped the natural ripening process. After they’d spit her out, she stayed green until she began to rot. At the end of her life she was…
I told my mom I loved her at a gas station in Minnesota but I’m not sure she heard. The cashier must’ve been stocking drinks or something so it felt like it was just me and her in there.…
The first time was an accident. She was slicing carrots, trying to keep them thin and angled, assaulted on her left by the blaring television in the living room, and on the right by her children squabbling in the…
By Duncan Whitmire • Nothing is more disruptive to a reader than the emergence of the cynical voice inside their head—and nowhere is this more true than with books that traffic in magic and speculation. Some readers call it…
By Devon Halliday • When I worked as a literary agent assistant, one of my tasks was to read (or skim) the manuscripts that my boss had requested from promising, unagented authors to determine whether my boss should offer…
Penny Guisinger and I met when we each served on the board of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance in the early 2010s, and I became a fan of her nonfiction soon after. Her work captured complex realities of…
Dark birds fly from my eyes. Disappear. Where do the kittens come from? We don’t have a cat. Just kittens lumped together like a single entity. A litter. In a box a blanket a bag on the passenger seat?…
“You’re a highly intelligent individual, and I’m sorry, but you probably know already that intellect and depression often run together.” The school counsellor raises her hand up and down to simulate a wave. “Your thoughts and your moods move…
When I sat down to write “The Lighthouse Keepers,” it was with the intention of pulling back a curtain. A year into my ADHD journey, I started thinking about ways to convey my experience that felt productive and perhaps helpful to others. As I state in “The Lighthouse Keepers,” I have lived most of my life feeling as though my brain was a comet to which I had been chained. The quiet, internalized desperation that drove my life and influenced my choices was, up until that point, invisible and unarticulated. It was important for me to not only discuss this subject, but also to invite the reader to venture inside the lived experience.
For me, ideas are often tangled but deeply meaningful. As a writer, I feel more comfortable operating in the poetic space than any other because it allows me to shift gears quickly. There is no universal style, length, or expectation—a poem only needs to be evocative; it can arrive at that destination in any way its author pleases. When considering ways to demonstrate the organized chaos of neurodivergent thinking, it made sense to apply the freedom I had found in poetry to a longer narrative form. I had no interest in holding back or attempting a logical progression. If I was going to honour my experience fully, it would have to be three things: unfiltered, chaotic, and raw.
I experimented with form, alternating between internal monologues, conversations, and journal entries. It was important to me that each episode feel unique. As the reader progresses through the essay, they begin to notice recurring themes and elements. By the end, the reader realizes that the seemingly disparate episodes were actually a stacking of ideas—that the experience of the essay was not random but curated. That I am not scatterbrained or dawdling but approaching the same ending from multiple points. I wanted to demonstrate how the multipolarity of neurodivergent thinking is not only a mark of difference. It can be miraculous, beautiful, and even revelatory. The chaos you see when you look at me stems from a deep-seated sense of interconnectedness. There is no need to concern yourself with a single thread because I am showing you the tapestry. Isn’t it wonderful?
JEN COLCLOUGH is a poet, novelist, digital artist, and ESL instructor from Nova Scotia, Canada. She holds a Master of Arts in Classics from Western University, and a Bachelor of Arts with Honours from Acadia University. At Western, she completed a thesis exploring trauma theory and cultural memory in Ancient Greek historiography. Her creative writing investigates these themes more abstractly, consistently seeking the past within the present. Jen’s poetry has appeared in several journals and anthologies, including: Tabula Rasa Review, Heimat Review, ionosphere, MORIA, OpenDoor Magazine, Tidewise Illustrated Quarterly, and Free the Verse. Her original short story, “The Opposite of Hunger,” was anthologised in The Petal Pages in August 2023. Additionally, her article, “Memorialization in Thucydides’ Plague Episode,” was published by the Journal of Ancient History in May 2023. In the winter of 2024, Jen Colclough held the Shannon Residency at Beinn Mhàbu in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. She is currently querying a debut poetry collection and developing a serial drama for a major streaming service. Jen Colclough is also a member of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia’s Writers’ Council. Find her on Instagram @jenmcolclough.
