Milkweed Editions’ “Multiverse” is a series edited by Chris Martin dedicated to “different ways of languaging.” Martin, who is neurodivergent, leads the series that focuses on the creativity of neurodivergent, autistic, neuroqueer, mad, nonspeaking, and disabled cultures. The books in the series call into question what literary culture is, has been, and can be.
We caught up with Martin via email to get to know him and the series a little better.
Multiverse resists the idea of a single, “normal” way of making literature. How do you hope these different ways of languaging might reshape what literary culture looks like in the next decade?
My hope is that it’s already reshaping literary culture, though I imagine this happening on a mycelial level. I would love to see fruitings that grow beyond Multiverse in a decade. What I’d love most is for there to be a dozen other series like Multiverse. There is a wild abundance of neurodivergent writers out there with breathtaking work. Hopefully, other presses are taking notice and will begin to fill in the gaps.
I also imagine that with every new Multiverse title, poets and publishers are awakening to new questions about what a book is and what it can do. I can’t tell you how many poets I’ve known for decades who come across a Multiverse book and are just beside themselves at what they find. It’s so rare to find something truly new, something that offers permissions and opportunities that span beyond neurotypical culture or established poetry, even or especially the established poetry of the experimental scene. And there’s no question how much we need it.
When you read submissions or think about future titles, what makes you feel: Yes, this belongs in the Multiverse?
This is a hard question to answer, because the series itself grows and changes continually. Perhaps the simplest way to articulate it would be that a Multiverse title reinvents (or remembers) something fundamental about writing or language or languaging. As Sid Ghosh writes: “I am not smarter than others. I am simply privy to a new road.” It’s not enough to publish neurodivergent writers; we need neurodivergent literature, writing that flows from other aquifers and opens new paths. I see in the series a collective and visionary unmasking of language.
How do you balance honoring the singularity of each writer’s voice while also building a shared conversation across the series?
Is it possible that it’s precisely the singularity of each writer’s voice that builds the shared conversation? I’m inclined to say yes. Yes yes. The singularity of each voice, but also the openness each writer has to be inspired and influenced by the others. And authors in the series have contributed editorial labor toward each other’s books, ensuring that my own voice as an editor is never too decisive. JJJJJerome Ellis helped with Adam’s book. Latif Askia Ba and Lauren Russell helped with Sid’s book. Sid helped with Ampersand Organ, the forthcoming Multiverse book by heidi andrea restrepo rhodes. Anna Nygren translated Hannah Emerson’s work into Swedish. The braided momentum continues to build.
What does liberation look like for literature? For language itself?
That’s a great question. And a question I think we can only answer together. Unmasking language is a really interesting provocation to me. What language/languaging is our own and what kinds of language/languaging carries the punitive baggage of our neurotypical, ableist, white supremacist, heteropatriarchal culture? As an editor, I can begin with the premise that my job isn’t to “correct” the writer or “standardize” their writing. My job is to steward the relationship between the writer and their readers, to ensure that their books represent their visions and desires as fully as possible.
Each writer in the series offers us new liberatory possibilities. Hannah Emerson offers us both a radical nothing and a wildly affirmative yes yes. Adam Wolfond offers us ways to language in the rally, buttressed always by the atmospheres and their facilitation of facilitation. JJJJJerome Ellis offers us the clearing, a place where we can find new names and give thanks to the floral elders that surround and support us. Imane Boukaila offers us the possibility of tilted thinking, while we tress and trespass a troubled abled world. Lauren Russell offers us multidimensional lyric and diagnostic creativity. Latif Askia Ba offers us choreic grammars that seek tongue after tongue after tongue, all of them gathering in the urban ecotone. Sid Ghosh offers us queer vortexes where we can choose to be so free that it scares us. Anna Nygren offers us otherwise siblinghood, translating the possibilities at every syllable.
Has editing Multiverse changed your own writing?
Tremendously so. My own writing and my own living. It’s fundamentally altered the architecture of my thoughts.
What’s something a contributor or collaborator in the series has taught you that you carry into your everyday life?
Each writer in the series has taught me something that I carry. Many things. But if I were to pick one, I’d say “tilted thinking.” Imane’s beautiful phrase has become central to my understanding of myself. I’m writing a book now called A Field Guide to Tilted Thinking.