Don’t miss the last edition of Draft for 2023
Please join us at 3 p.m. EST. Sunday, November 26 2023 for a wonderful afternoon of work-in-progress curated by Lillian Allen.
This is the fourth in our Mixed Tongues season featuring work-in-progress which contemplates language(s). Mixed Tongues will be a hybrid, lexical, aural experience that builds bridges between Canada’s multilingual literary communities. Our goal is to stretch our minds and hearts by hearing other perspectives and various iterations of human expression.
The authors are Lillian Allen (curator), Kyo D’Assassin, Kandace Walker, Blaine Thornton and Jennifer Kasiama. For more information, see below.
Many thanks to the Ontario Arts Council as well as to our generous audiences, for funding this reading.
EVEN THOUGH THE EVENT IS TITLED “ONLINE” THIS IS A HYBRID READING
Please register here.
A limited number of tickets are available for those who wish to attend in person at the St. Matthew Clubhouse, 450 Broadview Ave. Those who register for the in-person event will also receive the Zoom link. If you feel unwell, please attend on Zoom.
For the sake of accessibility, masks are strongly encouraged at the in-person event. Tap-water is available for you to fill your own water-bottle if you bring one. Thank you so much for helping make Draft a welcoming space for everyone!
The 7th Poet Laureate of Toronto, Lillian Allen is a professor of creative writing at Ontario College of Art and Design University. An activist and lecturer, she is also a two-time JUNO Award winner and trailblazer in the field of spoken word and dub poetry, Allen artistically explores the aesthetics of old and new sounds in music to create her distinctive leading edge brand of Canadian reggae with new world sounds in her poetry recordings. Her powerful reggae dub poetry/spoken word recordings include her latest single Woken & Unbroken (2018) and her album ANXIETY (2012), among many others.
Allen’s debut book of poetry, Rhythm An’ Hardtimes became a Canadian best seller, blazing new trails for poetic expression and opened up the form. Her latest collection Make the World New: The Poetry of Lillian Allen, was published in Spring 2021 as part of the Laurier Poetry Series. Her other collections, Women Do This Everyday and Psychic Unrest are studied across the educational spectrum. Her writings for young people include three books: Why Me, If You See Truth, and Nothing But a Hero.
Allen, who grew up in Jamaica, moved with her family as a teenager, studying in New York and Toronto. Founder of the Toronto International Dub Poetry Festival and a variety of cultural organizations such as Fresh Arts that empower youth, Allen has spent over three decades writing, publishing, performing and doing workshop presentations of her work to audiences around the globe.
Kyraan Gabourel/Kyo D’Assassin is an Entrepreneur, author and Spokenword Poet (1991). He is the co-author of the book + DVD, ‘We Gat Sonting Fu Seh’ (2013) and has won numerous national poetry contests. Gabourel has participated in international poetry festivals and readings such as: II Encuentro de Poesia de San Salvador (2020) in El Salvador, XIII Encuentro Internacional Poesia Migrantes (2020) in Mexico, XV and XVII Festival Internacional de Poesía de Quetzaltenango (FIPQ, 2019 & 2021) in Guatemala and III Festival Internacional de Poesía Los Confines (FIPLC, 2019) in Honduras.
He has been featured in the art e-magazine series, Voces Insurgentes (2021) and Revista Kametsa (2021) and has also published in various anthologies in Belize and internationally. Kyraan is the co-owner of Kyo’s Internet, Stationery, and Books. He holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Galen University. He resides in Belize City where he is currently working on his forthcoming anthology of poems.
Jennifer Kasiama (she/her) is a contemporary poet/writer currently enrolled in the Creative Writing Program at OCADU. The themes that frequent her work are healing, beauty, and aesthetics, with an emphasis on carving out space for Black communities. Jennifer wants to dedicate her practice to uplifting herself and the people around her and hopes she accomplishes that through her work. Jennifer’s poetry was featured in Dreams in Vantablack, a poetry series that is currently streaming on CBC Gem. The project features Black youth poets and artists expressing themselves through words and animation. She was also a participant in the Brickyard Mentorship program as a youth poet in 2021-2022. Her work has also been featured in publications such as NarCity Media and Puritan Magazine.
Blaine Thornton (they/them) is a non-binary community-based writer from Sudbury, Ontario. Their book, Here’s To Letting Go, was awarded the 2023 OCAD U Medal for Creative Writing. They are interested in how writing can be used as a tool for self-healing and creating vibrant artistic spaces for people to experiment in. During their degree, Blaine was the Managing Editor for the first edition of Pulse Literary Journal, and co-host of Friday Night on the Mic. They facilitate workshops surrounding how writing can be used to heal.
Kandace Siobhan Walker is a writer and poet of Jamaican-Canadian, Saltwater Geechee and Welsh heritage.She writes fiction, poetry and non-fiction, and creates moving image and installation works. She is the author of Kaleido, published by Bad Betty Press in 2022. Her debut collection Cowboy was published by CHEERIO in 2023. In 2021, she was the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award and the winner of The White Review Poet’s Prize. In 2019, she won the Guardian 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize. Kandace Siobhan Walker’s ‘Everything I Will Give You‘ can be viewed on the Parthian Books YouTube channel and ‘Notes on Dreaming as Praxis‘ can be viewed on Peak Cymru.