Lisette Auton

Writing the Missing – The aDdress | MIMA, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art

Image credit Rob Irish

Lisette Auton's work focuses on identity, curiosity and play, kindness and access. Disabled, neurodivergent and Northern, some say she’s a word artist; she says she does stuff with words. She works as a solo artist, with collaborators, and alongside wonderful humans as a creative practitioner.

Lisette is an award-winning poet; the 2019 Early Careers Fellow for Literature at Cove Park; on the TSS Publishing list of Best British & Irish Flash Fiction; and winner of The Journal Culture Award 2021 for Performance of the Year for WRITING THE MISSING – A RIVER CYCLE commissioned by Durham Book Festival. Her debut middle grade novel THE SECRET OF HAVEN POINT was published by Puffin in February 2022, with her second to follow in February 2023.

You'll find Lisette’s work in galleries, online, in theatres and bookshops, laundrettes and railway station waiting rooms.

Web: lisetteauton.co.uk

I am not independent. I am not lacking. I am interdependent. I lack nothing.

Except equal rights, access, a seat at the table, your admiration.

Welcome, sit awhile.

Here is a star. I am beautiful. I unfold and take up space. I am silent. I write you a message. These are the voices. The voices of the Missing. I am The adDress. I am Writing the Missing.

Here, have a star. It is beautiful. Hidden inside is a Missing. Would you like to see it?

Would you like to destroy the star?

Write your Missings!

Please write your Missings.

You may whisper them to me and I will write them down and catalogue and keep and share and rage and love.

You may share them wide, hide them, gift them, activate them, nap with them.

Rest rest rest rest rest rest rest.

I will fold your Missings with love and care. Unless I am tired. Then my sister will fold your Missings with love and care. Unless we are both tired and then we will rest.

You can rest too.

My adDress is a call to action a quiet beckoning a take your time a you are safe here.

I was missing. Time disappeared elongated pain dark missing. I am not a Missing. I refuse to be a Missing. Sometimes the weight, the tired seeping creeping.

Sometimes it is a lot.

Be an ally. Be a friend. Be interdependent.

Unfold yourself into beautiful.

Share your Missings.

Welcome.

Sit awhile.

Web: lisetteauton.co.uk

Twitter: @lisette_auton

Instagram @lisette_auton

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