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Karl Knights Profile picture
Karl Knights
@Inadarkwood
Queer autistic writer with ADHD and Cerebral Palsy. Currently building a database of disabled poets. He/Him 📸 @ThomBartley
Dec 31, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Happy new year to disabled people and disabled people only. This year, more than ever before, friends, colleagues and the government wholly committed themselves to pretending that the pandemic is over. It's been a brutal, horrifying, isolating year. Every single day, disabled people have been ignored and gaslighted about the severity of the pandemic. Our very real concerns for our safety are ignored. This year, infections are rampant yet again, virtual events have dwindled, and shielders' isolation has deepened.
Jul 7, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I'm just thinking about how Johnson didn't resign because of his government overseeing and enabling over 100 thousand preventable deaths in the pandemic. He didn't resign because disabled people were left to rot, he didn't resign because he prorogued parliament unlawfully. He didn't resign because of continually misleading and lying to parliament. He didn't resign after saying that he'd rather 'let the bodies pile high in their thousands' than go into another lockdown.
Dec 3, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
The neurodivergent urge to simply wait for the single scheduled event of the day to start and do nothing else in the meantime ADHD waiting mode, we meet again
Oct 23, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I've tweeted it before, but this is autistic culture ID 1/2: a picture of a post-it note which reads, 'can you hang this out please, Ta Mum x.' The next picture shows the post-it note hung on a washing line.'
Oct 6, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
It's #WorldCerebralPalsyDay, so here is your reminder that adult services for folks with CP are non-existent, and very little research has been carried out into things like, say, how my CP will change as I age. CP is oddly categorised as the most common childhood motor disability, yet those kids grow up to be adults, who find that there's no support, services or even any real information for adults with CP.
Sep 9, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I have a Google alert for the word 'disabled' and a story about 'benefit cheats' landed into my inbox. This line from the story is utterly chilling: 'days before and after the home assessment of her level of disability, DWP investigators secretly filmed her at the supermarket.' I'm not going to link to the story, but it's from the BBC News site. Just an idea, but if broadcasters gave the same space to the thousands of disabled people who are denied benefits, people might actually have a better bloody idea of what it's like to be disabled in England
Sep 9, 2021 • 22 tweets • 4 min read
Forty years ago today, Christy Brown died at the age of 49. He was the author of four novels, and three collections of poetry. Here is a thread on Brown, and what his work has meant to me as a disabled writer. A black and white photograph of Christy Brown, a white man w In his lifetime, Brown feared he would be remembered by My Left Foot, a book he published in his early twenties. By the time his bestselling debut novel, Down All the Days, appeared 16 years later, he called My Left Foot 'the bleating of a naive cripple.'
Sep 7, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
How did I not know that Atos, the very same organisation that regularly destroys disabled people's lives, are a leading sponsor of the paralympics and have been for years? Looking into it more, Atos, who's benefit assessments regularly force disabled people into poverty or suicide, have been paralympic sponsors since 1992. Disgusting would be an understatement.
Jul 16, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This Tim Dlugos poem has been on my mind a lot

Alt text: My Death by Tim Dlugos.
'when I no longer/feel it breathing down/my neck it's just around/the corner (hi neighbor)' My Death by Tim Dlugos. 'when I no longer/feel it breathing Dlugos was writing from the height of the AIDS epidemic, an epidemic that would claim his life in 1990, at the age of forty. This poem really seems to nail what I'm feeling so much these days: that sense of being hunted by forces beyond your control.
Jul 16, 2021 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
So, let's recap: 1,200 scientists have signed a letter published in The Lancet, saying that the lifting of all restrictions on Monday is an 'unethical experiment' that encourages new covid variants. Meanwhile, I and every other disabled person I know has been haunted by the fact that 60% of the UK's Covid deaths are disabled people. Just yesterday, it was reported that people with learning disabilities are eight times more likely to die from Covid than their peers.
Feb 19, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Can you imagine posting a trash take like this while 60% of the UK's Covid deaths are disabled people? Just say you care more about your holiday than disabled people's lives. It's certainly been an...experience to find out just how many people value their trip to Spain more than my life
Feb 19, 2021 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Ever since the news came out last week that a majority of Covid deaths in the UK are disabled people, I've been able to think of little else. Despite making up less than 15% of the population, disabled people make up 60% of the UK's Covid deaths. I've been wondering why I've been so desolate, sluggish, and unable to concentrate. Watching eugenics become casually mainstream might have something to do with it.
Feb 18, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
How many disabled authors have won the Carnegie Medal, I hear you ask? Precisely one, as far as I can tell: Rosemary Sutcliff, in 1959. What makes it more enraging is plenty of nondisabled authors have won the award via their books about disabled characters. 🙃 Rosemary Sutcliff (1920 — 1992) wrote dozens of bestselling historical novels. Many of her books were set in Roman Britain. Her best known books now are The Eagle of the Ninth series and her retellings of the King Arthur legends.
Feb 18, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Well, I finally sent my manuscript away today, which means I can put this wad of paper away in a drawer. I can honestly say I've done the very best I can at this very moment.

ID: A white hand holding a thick stack of paper. A white hand holding a larg... I started working on the manuscript more intensely as the pandemic began, really to give myself something to wake up for, as all my work vanished. I can honestly say that I know why every full stop, comma and line break is exactly where it is.
Feb 13, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
In case there was any doubt, DNR orders are still being imposed on disabled people. Someone just tweeted at me saying that 'it's hardly an immoral choice to make.' The fact that disabled deaths have been seen as acceptable or inevitable by so many is disgusting beyond words. I repeat:

Feb 12, 2021 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Yesterday, it was revealed that 60% of Covid deaths in the UK were disabled people. The same day, Tory MP Charles Walker was on Channel 4 News, arguing that disabled people like me are acceptable losses. Disabled people in the UK are not fine. Check in on your disabled friends. Meanwhile, almost everything in this earlier tweet of mine is still true. I repeat, disabled people are not okay.

Feb 11, 2021 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
In 2008, Scope asked disabled children for their views on books. Here's what they had to say. To quote the kids, 'we think there should be more disabled people in books.'

youtube.com/v/x_7zLhaUoNI&… Subtitles are in the video, but they're a bit difficult to read, as the video is 240p!
Feb 9, 2021 • 21 tweets • 3 min read
In 2006, nondisabled school children (in Years Two to Six) were asked for their thoughts on whether disability appeared enough in the books they read. Here's what they said. These quotes are from a 2006 Booktrust Report. The schoolchildren noticed disability wasn't in the books they read. They commented,

'The world is portrayed in a different way than it is.'

'If I was disabled, I would feel that books are made for the rest of society and not for disabled people.'
Feb 9, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I am so excited to read @BooksandChokers's second novel!! I read A Kind of Spark on Christmas Day in one sitting. Elle's one of the most thrilling literary voices to emerge in a long, long time. If you haven't had the pleasure of reading her work, go read her essential words! A white hand holding a book in front of a bookcase. The book ID: A white hand holding a book in front of a bookcase. The book is Show Us Who You Are, by Elle McNicoll. The cover shows two girls with a backpack. One side of the cover (and one girl) is blue, and the other purple.
Feb 7, 2021 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
You know those books where they're so good you're furious at yourself for not knowing the book before, not reading it sooner? Reading one of those at the mo And this line! 'All at once, a door slammed. Everyone jumped, but Sal, partly because she'd been lost in a world of her own and partly because of her cerebral palsy, leaped a good two inches higher than everyone else.' There's that startle reflex, being written about in 1962!
Jan 24, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
One of the clearest childhood memories I have is getting out of a car in a disabled space. As I got in my wheelchair, an old man started spitting, 'you're too young to be in that parking spot, too young to be in that wheelchair.' Well, guess what, #DisabilityHasNoAgeRequirement If I had a penny for every time someone's said I'm too young to be disabled, I would be richer than my wildest dreams. As an adult and a child, people always tell me I'm too young, or that I must be faking. #DisabilityHasNoAgeRequirement