Hi everyone,
I have been sitting here, writing out a funny little anecdote for you, with accompanying analysis that would prove both entertaining and profound. However, I am simultaneously supporting Marvin to write an essay about gendered and racial exclusion in 1920s Canada, while listening to Baz's band play me their new song -- an angry yet humorous folk tune about political tyrants, in which they tell our mayor: "You want to kill our art just to pay your bills!" Needless to say, this is all very distracting. Or is it my writing that is distracting me from the joys of the parenting present? Either way, the anecdote will have to wait.
I'm honoured to be performing at E. Fry's Rebel With a Cause event this Wednesday evening, and delighted that we have rescheduled our Decolonial Poetry workshop for December 6. I'll also be sharing at the Hope Abides service on Dec 1. More below.
If you are in Peterborough, please call your city councillors and urge them to support the arts. They are currently planning to cut ALL funding to our local arts council, which would mean no funding for Artsweek, no arts awards, no arts grants.... and, yes, you guessed it, no poet laureate! They have also voted to not maintain the canal. No poetry and no ice skating, it's like they want us to be sad?? (Meanwhile, they add millions to the police budget.)
Hard to know how to sign off these days, but I just keep coming back to the assertion I've felt my entire activist life: I can keep going as long as I'm in good company. Reach out to your people, we need connection more than ever.
<3 Ziy
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E-Fry Peterborough Rebel With A Cause
Nov. 27 from 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. at Showplace
Grateful to be a part of the Elizabeth Fry Society's annual fundraising event. Rebel With A Cause honours "outstanding individuals who have shown advocacy and action to address issues of criminalization, challenged practices in the criminal justice system to make them more equitable, and/or worked towards making changes towards gender equality."
Excited to finally see Babe Chorus perform, as well as to cheer for the honoured activists, and bid in the silent auction.
Tickets available here or at the Showplace Performance Center Box Office.
Proceeds from this year's event will be used to support EFRY's vital but threatened Morning Drop-in Program. If you can't make the event, you can donate to keep it going here.
All Our Relations: Writing with the Land
December 6 from 1:00 - 3:00 at Nozhem First People's Performance Space.
In this workshop, Sarah and Ziysah will share their own experiences, offer tools and ideas for bringing land-based relationships into our writing, and invite you into writing and sharing in circle.
This workshop is for anyone interested in decolonizing their understanding of poetry, writing, and self-expression, whether or not you are Indigenous, and whether or not you consider yourself a writer.
Sarah Lewis (Anishinaabekwe, Curve Lake First Nation, 1st poet laureate of Nogojiwanong) and Ziysah von Bieberstein (unsettled settler, Ashkenazi Jewish, current poet laureate of Nogojiwanong) both use spoken word poetry as a way to connect across time and space, and to offer healing as well as provocation.
Trans Day of Remembrance
Thank you to KSAC and Nogojiwanong Friendship Centre for inviting me to co-host this annual vigil. As tough as this gets, may we always remember that the lands we are struggling on have honoured gender diversity for millennia. Miigwech to the Indigequeer and Two-Spirit leaders who remind us we are no accident.
Peterborough poetry slam - Thursday, November 28, 7pm, Dreams of Beans
Treaty Knowledge - Thursday, November 28, 7:30pm, Aron Theatre (yes, you'll need to clone yourself to be in both places at once)
Chet Singh CD Release - Read about the Kawarthas' "accidental dub poet" here.
Hope Abides - December 1, 221 Romaine St., noon-1pm. Sponsored by: The Oasis, Abraham Festival and St. James United Church. In-person & online.
Welcome to the Alhroub family who have recently arrived to Peterborough as refugees from Palestine. Anas Alhroub and his brother Mohammed are starting a catering business here. They will be at the Downtown Peterborough Farmers Market on Saturdays, selling their homemade hummus and falafel, as well as Palestinian olive oil, Zeitun, Zataar, and dates. They are friends of friends, and they catered an incredible shabbat dinner at the synagogue last week.
More Words...
In closing, here is a heavy post I wrote a year ago... Still resonant... Maybe after you read it, you'll put away your device, step outside, and let the birds sing you the truth of your belonging.
***
Over the past five weeks, I have felt fear, grief, frustration and sadness every second of every day… and night. Sometimes, it is the background as I continue to go through the motions of feeding my children, walking the dog, emailing students, canceling the dentist appointment… Other times, it is paralyzing in its intensity.
time or energy to call. I compose posts and articles I don’t have the will nor patience to write.
A few days ago, I lost it completely after receiving a deeply upsetting email late at night. I wanted to give up on it all. On my community. On expressing myself. On any kind of activism. On difficult relationships. On being a bridge.
Luckily, I was not alone. A generous friend offered me smudge and hugged me and whispered reminders until I could feel my feet on the ground again, and my ancestors at my back. Still, I sobbed well into the night.
Today, I feel hopeful again. And the reason is that I connected with people in more spacious ways. Lengthy text conversations. Phone chats. In- person meetings. I have been able to put things in perspective and make decisions about where to put my energy and how to be supported to continue the work.
This pattern has repeated several times over the past five weeks. Connect and interact on social media - get depressed and scared and angry - experience something difficult or unjust - give up. Connect with people in real life - gain a wider view and a belief in the goodness of people - remember and re-commit to my purpose.
This - social media - is where I can connect with the widest range of people, and i can do it at any time. But if I am not mindful of balancing it with real life interaction, it can lead to a really skewed view… It feels as if everyone is righteous and angry and fixed in their positions, ready to attack. Even that anyone out in the streets might want to kill me. Or someone I care about. In reality, most of us are just trying to figure it out. And are still more than willing to offer a helping hand or a soft shoulder to our neighbour, regardless of whether they see things the same way we do.
If you are feeling anything like this, I hope desperately you have someone to talk to and ways to go out and be in good company.
Of course, what I wish most of all is that every child, every human, every living being could sleep in peace and comfort and love tonight.
But I fear that even as we each attempt in our own ways to bring about peace and justice, we are allowing ourselves to be manipulated and torn apart in ways that will be hard to recover from. Please show me that this is not so.