Kaiden Wilde is a twenty-three-year-old queer transmasculine nonbinary person, disability and autistic self-advocate, and an artist. Their main medium, spoken word poetry, is used as a tool to discuss and reflect on their intersecting identities as well as trauma, poverty, and resilience. Their art allows them to pursue activism, social justice, and to speak about intersectionality. However, it’s when they perform their poetry on the stage that they inspire others to become artists and activists as well.

One of Wilde’s earliest positive influences in poetry was a workshop in high school, with published local poet Fernando Albert Salinas. They were inspired to jump into the art of writing poetry after looking deeper into how they could express themself and their own experiences through writing.“I was really drawn to that form of expression. I had always been very quiet, and it allowed me to express a lot of things that I tend to bottle up, or that I’m not able to express just by talking. When I went to Ventura College, I took a creative writing class, and I had a really amazing professor, Jaclyn Walker, and I did a really big project for that class and then from there I’ve never stopped writing.”

Wilde has performed at the Poetry Slam during the Ventura College Diversity and Culture Festival two years in a row and won first place in their second year. They also share their poetry at local poetry events and open mics in Ventura. Wilde has performed at The Ventura County Arts Council’s Arts Stars Awards and at the California Lutheran University Arts and Learning Symposium in 2017, where they spoke on a panel with other autistic artists on the subject of reaching and teaching students with autism. They have performed at a lot of the local pride events and participated in Loud and Queer at the Ventura Majestic Theater in June 2018.

Their passion for the medium has led them to use their poetry as a tool for reaching others. It’s a way to begin a conversation about various issues and to connect with other people who may be going through the same things that they have traversed.

“Sometimes it’s a struggle because I worry that what I write about might make people sad or angry based on hearing the experiences that I’ve gone through and, maybe if other people have gone through similar things, that it could be triggering for them,” said Wilde. “That may be my internal worries, but I get a lot of feedback that my work helps people and that it touches people’s emotions. I think if the art you create creates an emotion then that’s a good thing and I hope that, for people who hear my poetry that hasn’t had that experience and it upsets them, then I would hope that they would do something.

Maybe that it would push them to action and to get involved. Maybe it’s an experience that they have had. I hope that they would know that they are not alone and there are so many ways to heal, and writing is just one way that people can heal. That’s how I heal. For every room that I perform in, I perform for the one person who needed to hear that poem.”

As an advocate for those with disabilities, Wilde’s work especially highlights the importance of presuming competence of an individual, which means that rather than assuming that someone is less intelligent, less emotional, less capable, you assume that they have the ability to think, feel, and interact with the world in a meaningful way. Wilde stresses providing adequate support to those who may need it when appropriate and to help facilitate an environment where everyone has a chance to communicate and have their voice heard.

“Being an autistic person and an artist who has autism I think that it’s important for people to always presume competence,” said Wilde. “There’s a really good quote that says, ‘my disability is not the problem; the problem is how people perceive my disability.’ It’s really important to provide adequate support, particularly for individuals who are non-speaking because support is so important to their quality of life.

Communication is a human right, and I think there are so many autistic folx who are non-speaking and they don’t get the support that they need. They inhabit a body that does not comply with what their brain wants. People perceive them in a way that is just not true. That’s why it’s important to make an effort to give as much support as that person needs so that they can communicate and participate with people. We have so much to share that sometimes gets locked away years and years without any support to communicate.”

Wilde also encourages others to use writing as a medium and a tool for expressing thoughts and emotions. Their advice for those who want to jump into writing poetry is to start by journaling and to write what is true to you and your experience.

“Go to readings or go to open mics, and if you’re not too afraid to, maybe read one of your poems. Or maybe you haven’t even started writing, and you want to, you just go to a reading or an open mic and just listen and get inspiration from the energy and all the things people have to say there,” said Wilde. “I know that for me I get very inspired when I listen to other people’s work.  In terms of writing, the most success I’ve had with writing is just writing my truth and writing about my experiences because it’s a little easier for me to write about them than to just talk about them. I find that I can express more fully and process also. I think writing can be a tool to process. So maybe start by journaling your emotions or a story or a memory. Starting with journaling can be really helpful to process those memories or stories you have. I like free writing and just following your train of thought. It gets a lot of stuff out, and I think from there you can have the building blocks for a poem.

When I write poetry, it’s a little different from maybe how other people do. Because for me it’s wrapped up in the sound and how I speak, and the way that I read it. It’s almost as if I hear it in my head before I really have the words because of how my brain processes language. Sometimes I really think it’s about going with your intuition. I have these bursts of very strong emotions, and my words might come from that. So, It’s a combination of different strategies.”

You can catch Kaiden Wilde perform more of their inspirational poetry at the 2nd Annual Loud and Queer Event at the Ventura Majestic Theater on July 20, 2019. Various artists will be there in performance with a focus on celebrating queer identities. You can keep tabs on the upcoming event by following The Majestic Ventura Theater on Facebook.