You May Not Take the Sad and Angry Consolations
Conceived as an archive of wisdom written by a disabled man for his children, You May Not Take the Sad and Angry Consolations gives voice to the experience of living in an ableist society: "Why does it hurt when emotion spills out of a body? How does emotion spell ‘body’? What does it mean to be good? Why is the surplus of beauty everywhere? What is the password?" Weaving together reflections on fatherhood, Walt Whitman’s place in American history, art, and the lingering effects of past trauma, these ringing and raw poems theorize on the concept of shame, its intended purpose, and its effects for and on disabled body-minds.
Available format(s)
“Striking not just because of the relentless questioning, but because those questions are always pressing at the core of what it means to be here together. The clarity comes in realizing how few answers we actually have.” — Jordan Abel
“Like an AI algorithm gone haywire, Shane Neilson's work, with its beautifully bewildering rush of questions, breaks open the half-truths, the denials and evasions that we draw on when giving an account of ourselves to ourselves. It's a vision of consciousness as crossexamination, and a perfect expression of our polarizing era.” — Carmine Starnino
Shane Neilson (mad/autistic) is a poet born in New Brunswick whose work is inspired by rural land lapped by the Saint John River. His is the author of more than a dozen volumes of poetry and prose, including You May Not Take the Sad and Angry Consolations (icehouse poetry, 2022). Amongst a long list of accolades, Shane's work has been awarded the Hamilton Book Prize and the Miramichi Reader Book of the Year. He has also been nominated for the Trillium Poetry Prize. His poetry has appeared widely in international publications such as POETRY (US), Prairie Schooner (US), and Magma (UK). in 2025, he is serving as a judge for the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine.
