WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.708 --> 00:00:10.291 (Deanna Fong) Hi and welcome to everybody here tonight. My name is Deanna Fong and I'm the literary editor of The 2 00:00:10.291 --> 00:00:15.583 Capilano Review. This reading series, Dear Friends &, has been a vital lifeline for me to stay 3 00:00:15.583 --> 00:00:21.125 connected to this city and this community that is so important to me and I am truly exhilarated to 4 00:00:21.125 --> 00:00:26.541 be in your company tonight. A wave to all of those within our larger "hearts geography," to cop a phrase 5 00:00:26.541 --> 00:00:31.583 from Roy Kiyooka, who are joining us tonight virtually by livestream. Specifically Trudy and Rhoda who I 6 00:00:31.625 --> 00:00:38.250 ran into at Benny's Market today so hi Trudy and Rhoda. We're gathered here tonight on the unceded 7 00:00:38.250 --> 00:00:42.791 ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. Nations who have been 8 00:00:42.791 --> 00:00:49.166 living creating and gathering in community on this land since time immemorial. As we bear painful 9 00:00:49.166 --> 00:00:53.666 witness to the violence genocide and land theft that is ongoing in Gaza we're also thinking deeply 10 00:00:53.666 --> 00:00:58.166 as an organization about what it means to be doing this work, this work of art making and sharing 11 00:00:58.166 --> 00:01:02.833 through publishing as an organization primarily run by settlers within the context of settler 12 00:01:02.833 --> 00:01:09.083 colonialism and all its reverberations from Palestine to so-called Canada. We hold fast 13 00:01:09.083 --> 00:01:12.750 to the belief that poetry and art have the capacity to make space for actions of protest 14 00:01:12.750 --> 00:01:19.166 and solidarity, for expressions of outrage and grief and provisions of a feature of our refashioning. 15 00:01:20.458 --> 00:01:25.625 In her poem "Edging in the Abyss" forthcoming in the summer's TCR digital folio on collective care 16 00:01:26.250 --> 00:01:32.083 edited by Emma Jeffery, poet Christina Hajjar writes "I am brimming with the solace of surrender 17 00:01:32.416 --> 00:01:37.458 the reverence of leaning in and seeping out that I might live another day to gaze at the altitude 18 00:01:37.458 --> 00:01:44.750 of desire beyond the gardens of grief at my shore." The Capilano Review is a fifty-two-year-old 19 00:01:44.750 --> 00:01:50.416 non-profit literary and visual arts journal based in Vancouver originally founded by artist Pierre 20 00:01:50.416 --> 00:01:56.583 Coupé at Capilano College in 1972 and independent since 2015 the review is dedicated to experimentation 21 00:01:56.666 --> 00:02:02.000 across genres, media, boundaries and forms with particular emphasis on promoting dialogue between 22 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:07.916 the literary and visual arts. Each issue of the review features poetry, fiction, essays, interviews, 23 00:02:08.166 --> 00:02:12.250 criticism, art folios and artist projects by both emerging and established contributors, 24 00:02:12.875 --> 00:02:16.958 many who are based locally in Vancouver and in BC and many from our wider geographic networks. 25 00:02:17.375 --> 00:02:22.791 Alongside our publishing program we also partner with other organizations in the city like 26 00:02:22.791 --> 00:02:27.375 Western Front to offer a variety of year-round public programs including the monthly reading series 27 00:02:27.375 --> 00:02:32.208 you're attending tonight, an annual writer-in-residence program, and numerous contests, 28 00:02:32.416 --> 00:02:38.000 workshops, and educational initiatives. All this being said our work as a community driven 29 00:02:38.041 --> 00:02:43.125 non-profit is ever precarious especially as the cost of production continues to steadily rise 30 00:02:43.791 --> 00:02:47.333 and as we continue to commit to fair contributor fees and living wages for staff. 31 00:02:48.875 --> 00:02:54.500 Even as our small magazine has made incredible strides in recent years, even as it remains as 32 00:02:54.500 --> 00:02:58.791 vital and as vibrant as ever we recently made the difficult decision to adjust our publication 33 00:02:58.833 --> 00:03:04.125 schedule to just two issues a year down from the previous three to streamline costs as we look 34 00:03:04.125 --> 00:03:08.791 towards the launch of our much anticipated art-driven special issue "Real Materials" this coming September. 35 00:03:09.375 --> 00:03:16.333 Our goal is to raise an additional $40,000 by the end of this year to balance our budget. 36 00:03:16.833 --> 00:03:20.416 So if you appreciate the work we do both on and off the page and want to see it continue a pace, 37 00:03:21.041 --> 00:03:24.583 we invite you to consider extending your support to the Capilano Review before you leave this evening 38 00:03:24.583 --> 00:03:29.416 either by purchasing a $35 print subscription to the magazine or by making a direct donation 39 00:03:29.416 --> 00:03:34.041 to become a friend of TCR. Our managing editor Katherine will be happy to chat with you or 40 00:03:34.041 --> 00:03:36.875 assist you at our book table beside the bar and of course if you're not able to contribute in these 41 00:03:36.916 --> 00:03:41.416 ways we would still appreciate it if you would share the magazine with your family and friends 42 00:03:41.625 --> 00:03:47.541 or bring them along with you to one of these readings. Tonight we're delighted to introduce 43 00:03:47.541 --> 00:03:52.833 the work by resident artist Jonathan Alfaro who's here with us tonight. Jonathan has produced a new 44 00:03:52.833 --> 00:03:57.333 series of monotype prints entitled "Daylight Lover" especially for this program inspired by the 45 00:03:57.333 --> 00:04:01.916 imagined flourishes that might be found in the margins of love letters. Highlighting these 46 00:04:01.916 --> 00:04:06.791 marginal spaces as unexpected sites of intimacy and vulnerability, friendship and love, the work 47 00:04:06.833 --> 00:04:11.041 from this series on view tonight is titled "Jungle Cactus." Thank you Jonathan for bringing 48 00:04:11.041 --> 00:04:14.666 your work into the reading space and we look forward to the series continued unfolding over 49 00:04:14.666 --> 00:04:19.958 the next three events. I'd like to extend a huge thank you to the Western Front for being such 50 00:04:19.958 --> 00:04:24.916 generous and supportive partner on this series now for two seasons in particular to Susan Gibb and 51 00:04:25.000 --> 00:04:28.916 Kiel Torres who co-organized the series with myself and art editor Jacqueline Zong-li Ross, 52 00:04:29.833 --> 00:04:35.666 technical manager Ben Wilson, videographer Qiuli Wu, photographer Rachel Topham. I'd also like to 53 00:04:35.708 --> 00:04:40.333 thank our managing editor Katherine Gear Chambers and finally the BC Arts Council for its generous 54 00:04:40.333 --> 00:04:42.625 support of our out of town readers. 55 00:04:44.916 --> 00:04:47.291 So some quick housekeeping before we get started for the evening. 56 00:04:47.958 --> 00:04:52.041 Each of our three readers tonight will be presenting for about 20 minutes with no intermission. 57 00:04:52.833 --> 00:04:56.958 Two all-gender washrooms are located downstairs in the foyer. The washroom on this floor is 58 00:04:56.958 --> 00:05:01.291 unfortunately currently closed for renovations. We acknowledge that this physical space is not 59 00:05:01.291 --> 00:05:05.708 currently wheelchair accessible so to everyone attending by live stream thank you for being 60 00:05:05.708 --> 00:05:09.833 patient with us while we continue to work through all the necessary steps to make a large scale 61 00:05:09.833 --> 00:05:12.291 upgrade to this historic building a reality. 62 00:05:13.708 --> 00:05:15.958 And with that I will introduce the first reader 63 00:05:16.333 --> 00:05:22.541 tonight, Elisa Ferrari. Elisa and I have been in arm's length orbit for some time now, 64 00:05:22.541 --> 00:05:27.916 interested as we both are in sound performance and collaboration. I was floored when she asked me to 65 00:05:27.958 --> 00:05:32.666 speak on "aux-sends" about my work with audio archives and I'm always magnetically drawn to 66 00:05:32.666 --> 00:05:37.666 her creative work in which the sonic and the dialogic are essential meaning making elements. 67 00:05:38.916 --> 00:05:42.541 With that observation in mind I wanted to introduce her with a quotation from Gemma 68 00:05:42.541 --> 00:05:48.416 Corradi-Fiumara who I think we might share an affection for which says, "Through listening, 69 00:05:48.625 --> 00:05:54.250 a development unfolds that seems both open and enigmatic, clearly perceptible but equally clearly 70 00:05:54.333 --> 00:05:59.708 unfathomable, a development of relationships that become knitted together into an ever increasing 71 00:05:59.791 --> 00:06:05.083 involvement." Elisa Ferrari is an artist who works with sound performance and writing. 72 00:06:05.708 --> 00:06:10.500 Her practice and collaborations are concerned with memory formations, idleness, sonic sediments, 73 00:06:10.750 --> 00:06:15.750 trans-lingual ecologies, somatic inquiries, and the infrasonic. She hosts "aux-sends," 74 00:06:16.625 --> 00:06:22.000 a quarterly radio series about experimental music, sound, and poetics on Vancouver Co-op Radio. She 75 00:06:22.041 --> 00:06:27.458 occasionally curates exhibitions and sound events. She lives as an uninvited guest on the unceded 76 00:06:27.541 --> 00:06:32.833 Musqueam Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territories and in Brasia, Italy where she grew up. Here's Elisa. 77 00:07:04.000 --> 00:07:09.666 (Elisa Ferrari) Thank you, Deanna, for this wonderful introduction and thank you, Jacquie, for 78 00:07:10.041 --> 00:07:17.750 inviting me and for curating this series. I also want to thank the Western Front and all the staff, 79 00:07:18.583 --> 00:07:27.875 Ben and Kiel, for organizing this series. It's a pleasure to be here and to be reading with River and Kaie. 80 00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:36.666 I'll read tonight from two different projects. The first one is a collaboration with 81 00:07:36.666 --> 00:07:43.750 poet Peter Culley. We were working on this project in 2015 when he suddenly passed and 82 00:07:44.583 --> 00:07:54.125 it's taken me many years to be able to share this work. It's a trans-lingual experiment and an artist 83 00:07:54.166 --> 00:07:59.916 book titled "Ana Anani Amiata" that will be published next year by Tender Button Press. 84 00:08:01.125 --> 00:08:07.375 Then I will present an audio collage that is part of a larger research and ongoing performance 85 00:08:07.708 --> 00:08:15.250 project titled "In Increments of 13th" that I've been using as a space to think about popular 86 00:08:15.250 --> 00:08:22.791 medicine in relationship to sound and translation, specifically focusing on the area where I grew up 87 00:08:22.875 --> 00:08:36.708 in Italy. The poems of "Ana Anani Amiata" were written between June 30th, 88 00:08:36.750 --> 00:08:45.166 2013 and April 10, 2015 from a trailer indefinitely parked just a few steps from 89 00:08:45.166 --> 00:08:50.750 the collapsed entrance of a coal mine in the South Wellington area of Nanaimo on the east 90 00:08:50.750 --> 00:08:57.916 coast of Vancouver Island and an overpriced newly carpeted basement rental on William Street in East 91 00:08:57.916 --> 00:09:05.666 Vancouver. On the island, the essentials were a pack of B&H menthols and a precious faded blue copy 92 00:09:05.875 --> 00:09:12.458 of Barbara Reynolds' English Italian dictionary. We were never in the same room when the poems 93 00:09:12.458 --> 00:09:19.791 wrote themselves. Pete asked me to offer a title in English and then a word for each of its letters 94 00:09:20.083 --> 00:09:28.583 in Italian, my mother tongue. In exchange for the lumpy spine of an acrostic, I received fully formed 95 00:09:28.583 --> 00:09:34.416 verses that wove in and out of a refracted dailyness I had only experienced with him on 96 00:09:34.416 --> 00:09:41.458 long walks in rural Nanaimo or in the kitchens of my hometown of Villa Carcina. With the new poem 97 00:09:41.458 --> 00:09:46.750 would come opportunities to make changes, add words, and play with the fluidity of grammar. 98 00:09:48.583 --> 00:09:53.333 At times the west coast rains and the Salish Sea created an undesirable distance. 99 00:09:53.833 --> 00:09:59.208 At other times, this liquid space amplified the subtle urgency of our exchanges. 100 00:10:00.041 --> 00:10:07.916 These supple intervals between transmissions were of suspense and permeability. I never knew how the 101 00:10:07.916 --> 00:10:14.875 words would return to me, what gregarious meanings would emerge. All of a sudden, an object became an 102 00:10:14.916 --> 00:10:22.125 action, a singular multiplied. In this fluctuation, I could experience vicariously the chemical 103 00:10:22.375 --> 00:10:29.708 feeling of being a poet. With the first acrostics, Ana Anani Amiata introduced herself as the 104 00:10:29.708 --> 00:10:36.291 author of the poems. A bilingual woman, the age of your mother, living in a fictional and nation 105 00:10:36.291 --> 00:10:41.833 state, Ana Anani Amiata brought a sense of proximity and ease to our experiments. 106 00:10:43.083 --> 00:10:49.041 Her unapologetic syncretism punctuated the body of the poems. She nodded at elastic 107 00:10:49.208 --> 00:10:55.458 geographies and torqued grammars. However, as the poems' macaronic language developed, 108 00:10:56.166 --> 00:10:59.250 Ana Anani Amiata's presence seemed to subside. 109 00:11:09.000 --> 00:11:17.125 Disavowals. "If you hear something strange in the woods, it's a raven," Vanessa Renwick. 110 00:11:17.125 --> 00:11:26.708 Diretti no where, pigeons briefly banded in Birdcage Park. Immagine of my long green coat, 111 00:11:26.958 --> 00:11:33.916 pivoting like a lamp. Si Parte dunque? to the little mirror and broken door but a che fare. 112 00:11:34.791 --> 00:11:42.166 Hell is full of soft constraints. Vuote di cure critters like us, can fold with padded paws. 113 00:11:42.166 --> 00:11:51.125 O and crush in heavy syrup. Where granite glistens pink, listen to animatic columns of 114 00:11:51.125 --> 00:11:58.125 righteous clouds dissolved in funk. Dal lato mio I leave clouds and cages as I find them. 115 00:11:59.083 --> 00:12:02.250 Silent spettatrice to the imminent crystals becoming. 116 00:12:02.291 --> 00:12:15.666 Code of Conduct. Calma description unruffles the waves, narrows the eyes ovale. 117 00:12:16.291 --> 00:12:24.375 breathes cement archival dust so you don't have to. Gloves pick up lint and sometimes the book of 118 00:12:24.375 --> 00:12:30.250 strangers have an interesting odore, which is why I like to brush them with my Freddo nose and tongue. 119 00:12:30.833 --> 00:12:36.375 Dig in yourself and you will see. Comoe far concordare le idee, 120 00:12:36.708 --> 00:12:41.250 oggi de polar magnet feels like a loose feeling, nessuno could leave alone. 121 00:12:42.541 --> 00:12:49.583 Dovrebbe aver retto ma l’ ululante estate wiped everything in its path. Crudo, swollen and 122 00:12:49.625 --> 00:12:54.958 floating, so free anche il trattore let slip its wet grip. 123 00:13:00.916 --> 00:13:09.250 Unfulfillable for Pasolini. Uovo thin networks blossom like veins under flash light. 124 00:13:10.166 --> 00:13:17.541 Nullafacenti crowd the corners loud but far away. Feroci shouts but no steel or brass or powder 125 00:13:17.708 --> 00:13:26.333 fight. Under times like this better to keep moving anyway. Lucida carta across the dawned sky, 126 00:13:26.958 --> 00:13:33.541 forgetta of pencil scratch, clouds divide like lightning. Ispida seeks its level, 127 00:13:33.916 --> 00:13:40.250 it just pours into any liquido lugogo it can, just as I fold my hands against the sun. 128 00:13:42.458 --> 00:13:51.208 Ancora cigarettes, ancora weed, ancora mosquitoes, bolla dome of the valley with smoke trapped DDT. 129 00:13:52.083 --> 00:13:57.208 L’ultima volta millenovecento-novantasei we followed the back spray truck around. 130 00:13:58.416 --> 00:14:01.916 Eliminate the shade and dust sheet, remove the blanket. 131 00:14:01.958 --> 00:14:10.166 Analog Infection for Culley. 132 00:14:12.666 --> 00:14:20.791 Abbastanza already no need to make history your nemico. Dust balls of fine thread filter things. 133 00:14:21.750 --> 00:14:27.458 Perhaps, se tu avessi respirato more deeply of them, la lingua would have carried the clover forward. 134 00:14:28.083 --> 00:14:35.250 Oimé the carpet patterns held you in their sway, gioco duro under the maples on another day. 135 00:14:36.833 --> 00:14:42.875 Innocuo until the hot tears of the higher better nonsenso bathed your neck and sweater. 136 00:14:44.083 --> 00:14:50.458 Fallaci carpet faces dared you to look up and from your desk and observe the swaying branches. 137 00:14:51.208 --> 00:14:54.166 Confesso to the breeze as this is a confession. 138 00:14:56.416 --> 00:15:02.416 Tre people on a bench not in hell with nothing in mante but stitching the park to the edge of the lake. 139 00:15:03.416 --> 00:15:10.000 O and the long ovals radiating from lake and track che non descriverò until you get back. 140 00:15:10.041 --> 00:15:18.250 Ridiculous Object. 141 00:15:20.041 --> 00:15:27.166 Rischio of sleep, of waking up and sitting up, of dreaming inoppugnabile whole room into existence 142 00:15:27.166 --> 00:15:35.041 without a floor. Dondoli gently on your heels as incisive irresponsibilities hover like little 143 00:15:35.125 --> 00:15:43.458 ships. Centrali to the argument un'estate you remember as it happens. Lupino shapes hexagons 144 00:15:43.458 --> 00:15:50.791 sweet pea lozenges, ora in the rising heat the ravens find un blue envelope of drop and drag. 145 00:15:51.708 --> 00:15:55.375 Una sfera in the brush opens defined by your wings. 146 00:15:55.375 --> 00:16:05.958 Osservai until the last star ate the last planet. Barba crackling in permafrost, jet lag of an 147 00:16:05.958 --> 00:16:13.916 astronaut e a solid mental block of an oak table. Canine lobes gently in and out of scale, 148 00:16:14.500 --> 00:16:17.041 a light trema as high branches creak. 149 00:16:17.083 --> 00:16:31.291 Humean Supervenience for Kevin Davis. Hoplà, I walked out a sunflower hot gun to my forehead. 150 00:16:32.083 --> 00:16:38.750 Umidicci hair through a crushed hat's ironic motto that sweat and sun have bleached and deepened. 151 00:16:39.500 --> 00:16:46.708 Ebbene my pineal gland must be somewhere, comic slab. Ancora marble walls with railings cool 152 00:16:47.000 --> 00:16:53.541 on every street. No e poi no is something you could say a thousand times quickly. Sibilo 153 00:16:53.541 --> 00:17:02.041 at the end though if you were me. Ufficiale where did you get such flat sad feet? Your prestazione 154 00:17:02.041 --> 00:17:09.791 of offended innocence is a plinth and a platform for the entitled arabesques out of your barbecue 155 00:17:09.958 --> 00:17:18.541 mouth. Rotante brought you a set of steak knives, a set of teeth, valvole, a leaf out of a sliding door cracks, 156 00:17:18.750 --> 00:17:26.416 espelle in my lap every time we hit a bump. Novità of a hot splash dabbed from the eye, 157 00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:33.666 intendo from the third eye on its stock. Errore-filled structures blister in its sight 158 00:17:33.708 --> 00:17:41.666 Non for this the angel cake of conversation, costante scan of six years old, 159 00:17:42.125 --> 00:17:48.875 lucidly in a new room, does not errare merciless without compression or restriction. 160 00:17:55.041 --> 00:17:57.458 Toxins and Hormones for Lisa Robertson. 161 00:17:57.708 --> 00:18:03.750 Terza generazione trades birthright for books’ heads 162 00:18:04.750 --> 00:18:11.458 Ovest for burning sage, red drapery skies, bomber command jets, x 163 00:18:11.708 --> 00:18:18.541 come in Expo, Vistabex & Botox volumizzano the clouds falls. Infinita guarigione 164 00:18:19.000 --> 00:18:27.291 occasionale tenerezza, some loss of sensation. Novecento points of entrance, mille mille notes you took. 165 00:18:27.500 --> 00:18:35.666 Sull’incontro in an insect’s script. A Kreuzlingen an ant marches past con un cristallo di zucchero, 166 00:18:36.333 --> 00:18:43.750 nervosa but not as a hummingbird is nervous. Del buonumore of a dog, the biting sarcasm of a raven. 167 00:18:45.583 --> 00:18:53.583 Hai balbettato the car to a rolling stop. OTD and into the spiralling North Shore Santa Anas. 168 00:18:54.583 --> 00:19:00.791 RTF like lichen smears spill from a banlieue laundromat TV onto the snow. 169 00:19:02.041 --> 00:19:06.333 Il movimento from half-mast fluttering to golfball whites, 170 00:19:06.750 --> 00:19:14.416 assumee officiale postura of a supplicante, a good kneeling torso. Normolineo, gineceo lighting 171 00:19:14.791 --> 00:19:22.333 ma non specchi appannati, epistolario shredded and lit up for carnevale as slow snowmelt, 172 00:19:23.125 --> 00:19:31.291 as slow snowmelt, drips from the spartiacque of the Cowichan, a la confluenza of the Big and Little 173 00:19:31.291 --> 00:19:44.625 Nitinat. Still No Word. Se fosse possibile to gather only what is relevant, no tergiversare 174 00:19:44.625 --> 00:19:51.958 but words as gnocchi, plain and light. Homely crafts from illustri distant friends arriving in jewelled 175 00:19:52.125 --> 00:19:59.916 tissue. L'ultimo of the perfect cheese a saffron sky. Le altre forze smear their snouts against 176 00:19:59.916 --> 00:20:09.833 the window. Notevoli hours spent excavating my resistance. Ora X marks the spot where I stopped. 177 00:20:09.875 --> 00:20:22.166 www.kingsgatemalllostandfound.ca. Orca over roofs, silhouetted through sliding doors. 178 00:20:22.958 --> 00:20:30.708 Rossetto hints a dab on lips against eye and posture to never deludere not ever the line of speech 179 00:20:31.000 --> 00:20:33.541 or the air it moves through. 180 00:20:39.583 --> 00:20:43.750 Gravely at Victoria, for the woman standing across the street. 181 00:20:46.375 --> 00:20:52.958 Geroglifici cracked by a hydro backhoe. Raduno the fragments into a wet sack, 182 00:20:53.666 --> 00:21:00.166 you looked sad. Avanti! It is not as if one sort of ancient privilege is not much. 183 00:21:01.250 --> 00:21:07.000 Verosimilmente another five millennia of big talk that you and I express and breathe 184 00:21:07.291 --> 00:21:15.083 in our every mood and gesture so what. Lacunae are gifts. Spaces where atoms speculate. 185 00:21:15.666 --> 00:21:20.250 Where the Elica of the clock stirs the dusty evening air and platinum grass. 186 00:21:20.291 --> 00:21:30.500 Y is your corner, Z the door, A the archway. Alt. Procedural slips are gaps too. 187 00:21:31.666 --> 00:21:37.541 When ti ho detto I told you I told you Vittoria is never a good outcome for anyone. 188 00:21:38.750 --> 00:21:46.166 La in Città crawls with the winners of arguments. Colonists. Tremo in the park with a leaking bag 189 00:21:46.291 --> 00:21:55.041 of drywall. Oscurità spreading under the trees in patches. Richiamo left in a cave scratched 190 00:21:55.291 --> 00:22:02.750 under a high bluff. Ibrido of letter and gesture. A speaking rock. Early 191 00:22:02.916 --> 00:22:07.625 autunno through the nose and paws and pads then gone. 192 00:22:32.916 --> 00:22:40.750 [music] 193 00:22:52.041 --> 00:22:55.583 A letter of the alphabet and syntax of a place. 194 00:22:57.500 --> 00:23:04.000 V as in valley. A valley through which a river moves. 195 00:23:08.958 --> 00:23:16.625 Once a rural site then a site of extraction. An industrial paradigm. 196 00:23:16.666 --> 00:23:20.208 [music] 197 00:23:20.666 --> 00:23:25.416 Steadily, geometries of capital reorganize the landscape. 198 00:23:28.708 --> 00:23:37.291 Roundabouts on roundabouts, goods are channeled upwards. A long line of foundries along the waterways 199 00:23:37.340 --> 00:23:42.125 [music] 200 00:23:50.583 --> 00:24:01.041 Flushed minerals. Siderite. Fluorite. Sfalerite. Galena. Calcopirite. Barite. 201 00:24:07.333 --> 00:24:16.625 [music] 202 00:24:22.083 --> 00:24:31.041 The valley is narrow. A tight V. The mountain sides press in as one moves northwards. 203 00:24:31.041 --> 00:24:42.833 The letter V contains and separates. Matter slides towards the valley floor. 204 00:24:52.166 --> 00:24:56.583 Gravity gathers aural debris under the rocks of the riverbed. 205 00:25:01.083 --> 00:25:04.416 [music] 206 00:25:06.875 --> 00:25:11.041 Gravity gathers aural debris under the rocks of the riverbed. 207 00:25:22.125 --> 00:25:27.375 Birds' and tracks' songs deposit on the skin of those who live in the valley. 208 00:25:27.791 --> 00:25:37.916 Their skin flakes off across property lines, between railings and fences, infiltrating. 209 00:25:40.375 --> 00:25:43.416 Ephemeral instruments and new cacophonies form. 210 00:25:46.666 --> 00:25:50.958 In the local dialect the word caà means excavating. 211 00:25:51.000 --> 00:25:54.000 [music] 212 00:25:55.166 --> 00:25:59.166 In the local dialect the word caà means excavating. 213 00:25:59.583 --> 00:26:03.541 [music] 214 00:26:04.000 --> 00:26:12.083 Saying caà requires an abrupt exhalation. A decisive emptying out of the oral cavity. 215 00:26:13.208 --> 00:26:15.916 [music] 216 00:26:16.250 --> 00:26:17.666 A displacement of breath. 217 00:26:47.708 --> 00:26:56.375 [music] 218 00:26:56.375 --> 00:27:01.541 A spy, a sentry, a symptom, a bush. 219 00:27:03.708 --> 00:27:08.333 A spy, a sentry, a symptom, a bush. 220 00:27:10.166 --> 00:27:14.708 A spy, a sentry, a symptom, a bush. 221 00:27:14.750 --> 00:27:21.250 A spy, a sentry, a symptom, a bush. 222 00:27:27.083 --> 00:27:27.583 Thank you. 223 00:27:28.958 --> 00:27:31.500 [applause] 224 00:27:43.541 --> 00:27:45.333 (Deanna) Thank you Nancy for these flowers. 225 00:27:47.958 --> 00:27:52.500 Thank you so much for that invitation to listen so deeply and to breathe deeply. 226 00:27:55.541 --> 00:27:59.333 So I think this event is the right opportunity to acknowledge the profound ways 227 00:28:00.041 --> 00:28:04.333 that our next reader River Halen's work shaped our most recent issue, "It is what it is." 228 00:28:04.875 --> 00:28:09.666 When they judged our fall 2023 writing contest on the theme, "I have to say what I want to hear." 229 00:28:10.666 --> 00:28:15.541 In their call for submissions they wrote, "We are especially interested in reading works that 230 00:28:15.541 --> 00:28:21.041 implicitly or explicitly create a context for their own reception. The contest received a huge 231 00:28:21.041 --> 00:28:26.791 volume of submissions. Around the same time River published the moving, timely and necessary article, 232 00:28:27.333 --> 00:28:31.083 "How to Push Back Against Anti-trans Hate and Let Kids Actually Be Kids" on Medium. 233 00:28:32.541 --> 00:28:36.875 And among their recommendations was to affirm out loud that trans people exist. 234 00:28:36.916 --> 00:28:42.583 This relationship between articulation and concreteness, between saying and being, 235 00:28:43.208 --> 00:28:46.791 is the thread that runs through the pieces in the issue and is the source of its diverse 236 00:28:46.833 --> 00:28:52.541 formal approaches and political rigour. River's connection to us at that pivotal time I think 237 00:28:52.666 --> 00:28:57.916 made for something really special. We were so pleased to have published work from River's 238 00:28:57.916 --> 00:29:02.000 novel in progress in that issue and we're even more pleased to welcome them to read tonight. 239 00:29:03.000 --> 00:29:07.000 River Halen is a writer, editor and educator based in Tiohtià:ke, Montreal, Canada. 240 00:29:07.791 --> 00:29:12.000 Their poems and essays have dealt with relation, ecology, transformation, and sexuality. 241 00:29:13.166 --> 00:29:17.333 Their most recent book, "Dream Rooms," a collection of essays and poems was shortlisted for the A.M. 242 00:29:17.333 --> 00:29:22.000 Klein Prize and selected by Renee Gladman for Art Forum Magazine as a top 10 pick of the year. 243 00:29:23.291 --> 00:29:26.250 Halen is an acquiring editor for Brick Books and has taught sessionally 244 00:29:26.583 --> 00:29:30.250 in the Toronto Metropolitan University Publishing Program. 245 00:29:32.041 --> 00:29:36.541 [Applause] 246 00:29:42.250 --> 00:29:48.833 (River Halen) Thank you so much for that beautiful introduction, Deanna. Thank you so, so much to everyone at both 247 00:29:48.833 --> 00:29:55.791 the Western Front and The Capilano Review for having me here. I'm from Montreal so I'm being 248 00:29:55.791 --> 00:30:01.291 put up in like the little room down the hall which is just actually an amazing experience. I don't 249 00:30:01.291 --> 00:30:05.375 know how many of you when you were small like had a moment of believing that your teachers 250 00:30:05.458 --> 00:30:11.041 lived at school and didn't have houses but like right now I'm having the experience of being a 251 00:30:11.041 --> 00:30:17.041 performer in an art gallery who lives in the art gallery and it's completely magical and surreal 252 00:30:18.333 --> 00:30:22.250 and yeah no just a totally wonderful experience to be part of this. 253 00:30:22.250 --> 00:30:23.958 [laughter] 254 00:30:24.916 --> 00:30:31.833 I'm gonna start by reading a couple of pieces from from my book "Dream Rooms." Dream Rooms is a book 255 00:30:32.333 --> 00:30:39.500 that I wrote in the years leading up to when I came out as trans and is like in a broad sense 256 00:30:39.708 --> 00:30:50.000 a book about not knowing large things and what the political application of that state of like 257 00:30:50.041 --> 00:30:56.541 not knowing something huge can be if you bring that mystery around with you to all things. 258 00:30:58.333 --> 00:31:02.708 The first piece I'm going to read is called "Mirror." It was written originally as a description 259 00:31:02.708 --> 00:31:10.375 of a dance choreographed and performed by Hanako Hoshimi-Caines in Montreal and the dance was 260 00:31:10.375 --> 00:31:15.333 intended to be recorded only by...I was among several other writers and artists there who were 261 00:31:15.541 --> 00:31:19.791 writing descriptions or making drawings of the dance which was the only documentation of it. 262 00:31:21.666 --> 00:31:29.041 Mirror. I believe the performer when she says her dance will involve doing only those acts that bring her pleasure. 263 00:31:29.875 --> 00:31:34.125 I guess I'm more interested in how pleasure might look than in all the ways there are to trick me. 264 00:31:35.250 --> 00:31:40.666 She's wearing yellow shorts the loose athletic ones that are I think associated with masculinity 265 00:31:41.000 --> 00:31:45.291 but look almost exactly like a skirt. She's wearing them over black tights. 266 00:31:46.250 --> 00:31:51.666 There's a bit of yoga then she takes her shoes off. That's interesting about the shoes. 267 00:31:52.375 --> 00:31:57.125 I mean to think about pleasure as the removal of constraint. You could spend your whole life in 268 00:31:57.125 --> 00:32:03.791 that step phase one just thinking in the negative by pinching. Now it's kind of crawling listening. 269 00:32:04.708 --> 00:32:10.333 Spider hands and an ear against the floor clicking of nails on lino or whatever the tiles are made of. 270 00:32:10.916 --> 00:32:16.000 People don't think about tiles enough. These repeating patterns were always contacting so 271 00:32:16.000 --> 00:32:21.000 similar from building to building modulating over time. What if we all looked at the floor all the 272 00:32:21.000 --> 00:32:26.541 time? Admittedly the way she's hunching doesn't look like fun but pleasure is a job sometimes. 273 00:32:26.666 --> 00:32:31.083 You have to process all of the shit that's been happening in your joints. You have to learn the 274 00:32:31.083 --> 00:32:35.833 range of possible sounds your fingernails can produce. If you don't know the range what's the 275 00:32:35.875 --> 00:32:41.333 point in having preferences? Now I'm thinking about my own body in the uncomfortable folding 276 00:32:41.375 --> 00:32:49.125 chair. I can't help it. I uncross my legs. I'm part of the dance too. All of us in folding chairs 277 00:32:49.208 --> 00:32:54.583 are exerting an unhelpful collective gravity. The dancer could do anything, begin anywhere, 278 00:32:54.791 --> 00:32:58.833 except for the gaze of a bunch of people looking at her from the perspective of being uncomfortable. 279 00:32:59.750 --> 00:33:05.375 It's limiting. At some point the dancer if she's serious will say goodbye to me. I'm ready for it. 280 00:33:06.166 --> 00:33:11.541 Okay, okay. We're approaching a climactic moment. She's taken out a jar of strong smelling lotion 281 00:33:11.541 --> 00:33:16.750 and is rubbing it into her hands, the only skin besides her face currently exposed. I feel like 282 00:33:16.750 --> 00:33:21.416 this would be a more satisfying climax for her if she were wearing less. The lotion could hydrate 283 00:33:21.416 --> 00:33:26.166 more skin bringing more pleasure but of course it might not be a pleasure to her to be wearing less 284 00:33:26.166 --> 00:33:32.125 in front of an audience. This is a dance about existing in a situation, the kind of situation 285 00:33:32.458 --> 00:33:38.208 that encourages your pleasures to be more austere. The lotion has given its smell to the room, 286 00:33:38.208 --> 00:33:43.041 it's some kind of fresh spring floral muscle relaxant. Now pleasure is looking like a tough 287 00:33:43.041 --> 00:33:48.083 warrior stands taking up firm space with arms and legs, bending the knees and elbows defensively. 288 00:33:49.083 --> 00:33:55.041 I uncross my legs. You know what's kind of funny about the way she's holding her hands right now? 289 00:33:55.041 --> 00:33:59.583 It's a lot like the way I hold a pencil. My fingers are hyper-mobile so to hand write I have 290 00:33:59.625 --> 00:34:06.250 to overlap them, make my hand like a bird claw. Okay, okay, we seem to be moving into bedroom 291 00:34:06.250 --> 00:34:12.666 mirror mode. She turns some music on, dance like nobody's watching. At my high school we had an 292 00:34:12.666 --> 00:34:19.500 unlikely tradition. It was an annual drag competition for graduating boys. The winner got a crown and 293 00:34:19.500 --> 00:34:24.875 had to come back the next year to lip sync a song, the Duke of Earl. My high school at that time was 294 00:34:24.916 --> 00:34:29.625 not a place where it was safe for anyone to be out as queer or for anyone to admit that an event 295 00:34:29.625 --> 00:34:36.166 like this one was extremely queer. Still the competition existed, a lot of athletes joined. 296 00:34:37.166 --> 00:34:42.291 They would practice alone in their bedrooms or in groups in someone's living room, how to dance in 297 00:34:42.291 --> 00:34:49.166 a skirt the way the performer is dancing in yellow athletic shorts. I uncross my legs. When everyone 298 00:34:49.166 --> 00:34:54.166 is watching you have to be creative, ingenious about creating a sense of safety around your 299 00:34:54.250 --> 00:34:59.541 pleasure. She's lying on the floor now on her side and I pose I recognize from a different part of 300 00:34:59.541 --> 00:35:04.833 high school. A girl I had a crush on had read in a magazine about how to get the best curve. 301 00:35:05.916 --> 00:35:11.125 You lie on your side with your legs kind of wrapped to accentuate the hip. Voila, the best curve. 302 00:35:11.625 --> 00:35:17.916 She would practice this. What can you do with the best curve? We didn't really know. We thought it 303 00:35:17.916 --> 00:35:23.041 might come in handy one day for something to do with sex. Some clothes are coming off now, no 304 00:35:23.083 --> 00:35:28.250 more tights, thank God, no more curve either. The music has been turned off, child's pose, 305 00:35:28.750 --> 00:35:35.541 total hiding of the face. It's a series of advances and retreats, taking up space, expanding in your 306 00:35:35.541 --> 00:35:40.250 body, then retreating from that expansion which was never really encouraged and so caused a new 307 00:35:40.250 --> 00:35:53.625 set of problems. Hiding is okay. It's okay. I uncross my legs. The next thing I'm going to 308 00:35:53.625 --> 00:35:59.916 read is called "Honeymoon." So there was never any pure time. If pure time exists for anyone I do not 309 00:35:59.958 --> 00:36:05.083 know. I think of when you gave me my pet name after you came so hard that afternoon on the rented bed, 310 00:36:05.083 --> 00:36:09.458 the month or so when you would say things like, "Ooh, you like taking your credit card out in front 311 00:36:09.500 --> 00:36:14.250 of your friend's power if I tried to pay or some sugar in your coffee power if I tried to sip?" 312 00:36:15.083 --> 00:36:20.333 Or, "Oh, power, your head hurting again if I touched my temple even or especially in public." 313 00:36:20.791 --> 00:36:25.291 And I would blush as if I really were a public utility, lighting up information for others to 314 00:36:25.291 --> 00:36:30.000 read. We were on a trip, the purpose of which was getting a copper birth control device extracted 315 00:36:30.083 --> 00:36:34.625 from my cervix without paying a lot of money and interprovincial medical fees. I was moved that you 316 00:36:34.666 --> 00:36:39.750 came too. I remember when I got the IUD, I thought it was a freedom and it was like if you're already 317 00:36:39.750 --> 00:36:45.041 living in a mousetrap and someone offers a tiny mousetrap to go inside you, thank you. But why 318 00:36:45.041 --> 00:36:49.666 my body, which I understood increasingly was perfect, had to change so the cis-head sex script, 319 00:36:49.666 --> 00:36:54.750 which I'd mostly always known was trash, could continue unmodified, was answerable only in terms 320 00:36:54.750 --> 00:36:59.291 of a history. I was leaving on a trip with you, half insane I was to be so into you. I mean, you 321 00:36:59.291 --> 00:37:04.000 were unaccountably hot to me in the way that people sometimes are. Our voluptuous affection 322 00:37:04.041 --> 00:37:09.041 was a risk, our relationship volatile because the threat of it went everywhere deep into some muscle 323 00:37:09.041 --> 00:37:14.458 out again. Nine months after we broke up, I read a zine by Mira Bellwether called "Fucking Trans 324 00:37:14.500 --> 00:37:20.041 Women." It had a diagram of muffing, which is an act that opens space where none appears to exist 325 00:37:20.083 --> 00:37:25.208 through the power of strategic touch. And it was not my body in the diagram, but I understood I 326 00:37:25.208 --> 00:37:30.041 needed to perform such acts and have such acts performed on me that perfection was not a narrow, 327 00:37:30.041 --> 00:37:36.166 but an incredibly expansive concept involving change slash refusal to change slash radical change 328 00:37:36.166 --> 00:37:43.583 slash refusal slash alteration and growth in a loop. Between getting off the bus and arriving 329 00:37:43.583 --> 00:37:48.666 in the leaf light on a bed at sunset in our Airbnb, a doctor opened me with a clear plastic speculum 330 00:37:48.666 --> 00:37:53.291 and pulled hard on a thread while I gasped. It did not hurt very much, though I'd been braced 331 00:37:53.333 --> 00:37:58.375 for something. The initial insertion had involved about nine seconds of the most blinding pain I'd 332 00:37:58.375 --> 00:38:02.958 ever known beyond what I'd imagined pain could be, the kind of vehicle the rich ride into space just 333 00:38:02.958 --> 00:38:08.041 to see what it's like. I remember I was suddenly so sailing I understood leisure and that one could 334 00:38:08.041 --> 00:38:13.708 become addicted to the end of pain, the wash of chemicals, pain excites, ending, which from the 335 00:38:13.708 --> 00:38:18.333 outside looks a lot like being addicted to pain, though the states are distinct. And as I write 336 00:38:18.333 --> 00:38:23.041 this, I feel ashamed the outer marker of my pain threshold is represented by a tiny tea of twisted 337 00:38:23.041 --> 00:38:28.000 copper wire fanning out in me like a margarita umbrella wishbone. I mean, people give birth for 338 00:38:28.000 --> 00:38:32.625 Christ's sakes. People dilate after vaginoplasty. And even me, if I wanted to tell stories about 339 00:38:32.625 --> 00:38:36.958 my body, I'm sure I could find a better one. I'm 30 some years old and have lived through some 340 00:38:36.958 --> 00:38:41.416 situations. But pain is a very clarifying state in that it removes the outside world entirely. 341 00:38:41.750 --> 00:38:45.916 You get to focus on your feeling. I was so completely in my feeling. Other people was gone 342 00:38:45.916 --> 00:38:50.750 and so was narrative. Shame was a tiny speck down on the ground. It was the perfect lyric moment. 343 00:38:50.916 --> 00:38:55.458 The poem my endorphins wrote for the thread. I keep the syllables close. Would I repeat them? 344 00:38:55.458 --> 00:39:00.583 Maybe. Anyway, the removal took about four seconds and did not feel like much. And then I got to look 345 00:39:00.583 --> 00:39:05.708 at it. My first crash. It was a plastic tea with copper wire coiled around as I'd been told, but 346 00:39:05.708 --> 00:39:10.708 hadn't yet witnessed. And then suddenly we were exiting the subway station late in comparison to 347 00:39:10.708 --> 00:39:15.125 an invisible expectation our Airbnb host had been holding in his head, though we had not promised 348 00:39:15.125 --> 00:39:20.625 him anything except that we would be unpredictable for reasons he could not know. Time is funny, 349 00:39:20.666 --> 00:39:26.541 those moments you reenter its tents. He was chilly with an underlying violence. He was 350 00:39:26.541 --> 00:39:32.000 alone in aggression. I wish to run from but we'd paid. I thought about the question of what the 351 00:39:32.000 --> 00:39:38.791 fuck his problem was. It was either too much power or not enough. And the interesting thing was I had 352 00:39:38.791 --> 00:39:43.791 no way of knowing unless I asked and he replied with the truth, which was not a thing I could 353 00:39:43.791 --> 00:39:48.958 imagine happening. How could I access a mind like Mira Bellweather's? Where was the diagram of how 354 00:39:49.000 --> 00:39:54.041 to place my index? What if he was not the real owner at all, just some underpaid guy pretending 355 00:39:54.041 --> 00:39:57.916 to own a house in order to comply with a set of rules someone else was profiting from on the 356 00:39:57.916 --> 00:40:03.916 internet? And this charade created complications I could not know. Ownership was a lie we complicated 357 00:40:03.958 --> 00:40:09.000 by paying rent. We were the problem he could see. We could see him too. It was important to look. 358 00:40:09.833 --> 00:40:13.958 The lighting in the rented room was the kind you should never touch. A sunset was threaded crisscross 359 00:40:14.041 --> 00:40:18.166 like lasers protecting a work of art. We lay down in it without closing the curtains. 360 00:40:19.291 --> 00:40:22.541 You were afraid to touch me because of what I'd just been through. I was afraid to be touched 361 00:40:22.541 --> 00:40:31.875 though. It was in no pain at all. I got the wrong. I'm sorry. Oh. Maybe I was scared not of pain, 362 00:40:31.875 --> 00:40:36.833 but endorphins, some wires crossed. Anyway, I touched you and stayed partly hidden in my 363 00:40:36.833 --> 00:40:42.041 clothes while you opened up slowly to that amazing, stupefied state where the minute and the hour and 364 00:40:42.041 --> 00:40:46.916 the day are all the same. You have so much power over me right now. I'm going to call you Power Power. 365 00:40:47.500 --> 00:40:52.250 If you call me that, you realize I'll have to call you glory was a dialogue that happened 366 00:40:52.250 --> 00:40:57.000 through our bodies when the veil was thin. We laughed for longer than we probably had earned. 367 00:40:57.625 --> 00:41:02.500 Our ignorance of the Lord's Prayer and the novel by Graham Greene had not spared us. There are some 368 00:41:02.500 --> 00:41:07.583 things you can't escape, so just incorporate. Wait for the next lover to take you to a doctor who 369 00:41:07.583 --> 00:41:13.541 will pull the thread. After you, I slept with a very feminine man I hadn't previously realized 370 00:41:13.791 --> 00:41:19.500 I was attracted to, but it turned out I deeply was. I admit I hoped he was open to trading forms, 371 00:41:19.791 --> 00:41:23.791 that if we fucked in just the right way, I could be a very feminine man and he could be 372 00:41:24.041 --> 00:41:28.666 whatever kind of ambiguous woman people were constantly mistaking me for. Of course, 373 00:41:29.041 --> 00:41:34.541 we never fucked in just the right way. I mean, we did. It was pure and endless. 374 00:41:34.583 --> 00:41:36.666 Thank you. 375 00:41:42.250 --> 00:41:49.916 I'm going to read now... I'm trying to write a novel, but I'm a poet, so it's taking me a really long 376 00:41:49.916 --> 00:41:59.916 time. I'm like, oh, events, events have to happen. I published a kind of draft-y version of the beginning 377 00:42:00.041 --> 00:42:05.166 of it that I'm going to read from now in The Capilano Review's issue. It's a really beautiful 378 00:42:05.208 --> 00:42:11.541 issue. I hope everyone buys it. Not, I mean, my thing, but the issue as a whole. 379 00:42:14.333 --> 00:42:20.833 So the title in progress for my novel in progress is "Thunderhead," and it's told from the perspective 380 00:42:22.041 --> 00:42:26.875 of an evaporated liquid entity that believes themselves to be a ghost, but is in fact a 381 00:42:26.916 --> 00:42:32.375 parallel version of a person who's continuing to live their embodied life who happens to be trans. 382 00:42:34.041 --> 00:42:38.541 I get this idea partly from each of the Andersen's fairy tale, "The Little Mermaid," 383 00:42:39.125 --> 00:42:47.083 which I think of as an extremely, extremely trans story, where the mermaid, after failing to seduce 384 00:42:47.083 --> 00:42:52.625 the prince despite her beautifully reconstructed lower half dissolves into foam on the surface of 385 00:42:52.666 --> 00:42:59.083 the ocean, and then instantly evaporates, becoming a spirit of the air. I feel like that part of the 386 00:42:59.083 --> 00:43:06.291 story is maybe less well known. So that's one antecedent for my narrator, and then another is 387 00:43:06.291 --> 00:43:14.041 a personal experience of violence that I lived through. But anyway, yeah, evaporated consciousness 388 00:43:14.041 --> 00:43:21.708 moving through the world. I didn't have to pay, I didn't have to worry about who would sit down next 389 00:43:21.791 --> 00:43:26.333 to me. I could go anywhere I wanted through the entire length of the locomotive, and I could get 390 00:43:26.333 --> 00:43:31.125 off whenever I felt like it, so long as I could find a crack somewhere, and there always was one. 391 00:43:31.833 --> 00:43:36.916 No need to wait for the train to stop. Most importantly, I wouldn't have to pee, hovering 392 00:43:36.916 --> 00:43:41.208 over that sloshing metal bowl, and no agent would consider me after each boarding point, 393 00:43:41.791 --> 00:43:46.625 choose a gender title to address me by, and ask to see my ticket or scan the confirmation on my phone. 394 00:43:47.291 --> 00:43:51.375 I was like those people I had heard about. A friend of mine used to date one who wrote around 395 00:43:51.375 --> 00:43:56.166 illegally on freight trains, except I didn't have to be physically brave either, prepared to get 396 00:43:56.166 --> 00:44:01.833 cold or arrested or injured, leaping from a still moving car. I felt a surge of sadness about the 397 00:44:01.833 --> 00:44:05.791 not needing to pee part, which was either ridiculous or totally understandable. I couldn't 398 00:44:05.791 --> 00:44:12.541 decide. Either way, I pushed it down. I went into the bathroom. I was thinking if I could remind 399 00:44:12.541 --> 00:44:16.500 myself how disgusting those places are, that it would instantly cure my sadness about not being 400 00:44:16.500 --> 00:44:21.541 able to pee anymore. The sliding door was ajar slightly and bounced a little with the motion of 401 00:44:21.541 --> 00:44:27.541 the train. There was a person at the sink with their pants unzipped. Oops. I had the impulse to 402 00:44:27.541 --> 00:44:31.833 retreat in the same sudden way I used to when I walked in on someone by mistake, but I paused and 403 00:44:31.833 --> 00:44:37.000 let it pass. In this phase of my life, I'm going to learn what people who unzip their pants in the 404 00:44:37.000 --> 00:44:41.375 train bathroom with a door open are about, I thought, and the thought brought a surge of delight. 405 00:44:42.166 --> 00:44:46.333 The person pulled their dick out. It was semi-hard already, and they proceeded to make it harder in 406 00:44:46.375 --> 00:44:51.625 their palm. Within about 30 seconds, another person joined them. I guess the open door was 407 00:44:51.625 --> 00:44:56.750 strategic to permit this person to enter and not some exhibitionist thing or an accident. It was 408 00:44:56.833 --> 00:45:01.333 obviously not an accident because the person entering quickly slid the door shut and locked 409 00:45:01.333 --> 00:45:07.250 it, securing them both inside where they smiled broadly at each other. The first one cautioned the 410 00:45:07.250 --> 00:45:11.583 second who was on the verge of giggling, a state that did not end for the whole time they were in 411 00:45:11.625 --> 00:45:16.958 there. They seemed to be a straight couple. I mean, obviously they were a straight couple, 412 00:45:16.958 --> 00:45:21.458 but I was wrestling with a moral code I'd made up about looking at people, not assigning them a 413 00:45:21.458 --> 00:45:26.666 gender from the outside. I felt more guilty about my impulse to label them than I did about watching 414 00:45:26.666 --> 00:45:32.833 them fuck. Their sex was boring to me, although apparently exciting to them. Probably the main 415 00:45:32.833 --> 00:45:37.958 thrill was the fact of being on a train in such a public place. The second person, the one at greater 416 00:45:38.041 --> 00:45:42.500 risk for this didn't come, although they made a little crescendo of soft moaning as the other 417 00:45:42.500 --> 00:45:47.375 went down on them in an awkward crouching position. They exited the bathroom together. I followed 418 00:45:47.375 --> 00:45:52.541 them out into a five person queue that had formed, including a parent with a child. There was another 419 00:45:52.541 --> 00:45:56.166 bathroom just opposite that the people in the queue were using, which was probably why no one 420 00:45:56.166 --> 00:46:01.000 had gotten quite frustrated enough to start banging on the door. But I could tell that one of the one 421 00:46:01.000 --> 00:46:05.916 or two of the people in the back half of the line had wanted to. As the couple brushed past, people 422 00:46:05.958 --> 00:46:10.583 made raised eyebrows at one another and the person with the child hugged them close. Beyond 423 00:46:10.583 --> 00:46:14.958 this, there was no consequence. The pair just went back to their seats and continued to kiss 424 00:46:14.958 --> 00:46:19.625 and nuzzle obnoxiously. It had everything to do, I figured, with the couple's straightness and 425 00:46:19.625 --> 00:46:25.083 whiteness. They were both white and probably also their youth, late 20s, and relative conventional 426 00:46:25.083 --> 00:46:30.666 attractiveness that nobody complained or tried to get them kicked off the train. This was the thing. 427 00:46:31.500 --> 00:46:34.958 I wanted to change the way people looked at each other to make more space for everyone's 428 00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:39.708 potential difference. And I wanted this because of the way not having that space extended to me 429 00:46:39.708 --> 00:46:44.916 had turned out badly. And then at the same time, what people looked like changed how other people 430 00:46:44.916 --> 00:46:51.083 treated them and what they could get away with. You had to be able to name that. I remember watching 431 00:46:51.083 --> 00:46:55.625 a movie once, or was it a book, about a gay couple who have sex in a train bathroom regularly 432 00:46:55.625 --> 00:47:00.000 because they have nowhere else to meet. They both live with their own accepting families in different 433 00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:04.875 cities and have complicated travel routines, the logistics of which I don't remember. They do not 434 00:47:04.916 --> 00:47:09.125 find the train bathroom to be a thrilling place to have sex, I don't think. I think they find it 435 00:47:09.125 --> 00:47:14.125 stressful. If someone figures out what they're up to, they could be arrested. The thrilling part is 436 00:47:14.125 --> 00:47:18.750 not the train, but gay sex, or maybe their particular attraction, but either way, it would 437 00:47:18.750 --> 00:47:23.458 probably be better in a different place. Do straight people who have sex in train bathrooms 438 00:47:23.458 --> 00:47:28.916 know that they're copying queers? How many of them at some point question whether they've chosen the 439 00:47:28.916 --> 00:47:34.500 wrong half of queer sex in a train bathroom to imitate? Maybe it's more about feeling powerful, 440 00:47:34.541 --> 00:47:38.458 flexing, to do something not permitted for most people, but permitted for people like you. 441 00:47:39.500 --> 00:47:43.583 Back in the days that I worked at Celestial Cafe and Grocery, there was a flasher named Gary who 442 00:47:43.583 --> 00:47:48.375 would come in sometimes and whip his dick out at anyone breastfeeding. The management called the 443 00:47:48.375 --> 00:47:53.125 cops on him pretty often, but nothing ever came of it. We knew his name and what he looked like, 444 00:47:53.125 --> 00:47:57.916 but somehow couldn't keep him from coming into the cafe. He ordered coffees, and very often, 445 00:47:57.916 --> 00:48:02.250 someone on staff ended up serving him, unwittingly, I guess, or because they couldn't figure out how 446 00:48:02.291 --> 00:48:07.708 not to. I'd almost completely forgotten about Gary. It's weird how stuff gets archived and 447 00:48:07.708 --> 00:48:11.625 comes back to you when it's relevant. The possibility struck me as darkly funny that I 448 00:48:11.625 --> 00:48:15.833 would get to the store and find him still there, still flashing people that in all these years, 449 00:48:15.833 --> 00:48:19.791 no one would have figured out how to stop him. If Gary had been another kind of person, 450 00:48:20.875 --> 00:48:26.208 they would have figured it out. One time before I knew I was trans, I had sex with a man in a 451 00:48:26.208 --> 00:48:30.708 public bathroom. At the time, I was out as bi, but most people who met me assumed I was a straight 452 00:48:30.750 --> 00:48:35.583 woman. And yes, I did think it was thrilling and no, nothing bad happened to me, even though a 453 00:48:35.583 --> 00:48:39.666 security guard noticed what we were up to and encouraged us to wrap things up by walking into 454 00:48:39.666 --> 00:48:44.291 the adjacent stall. Had he meant to encourage us to wrap things up or was he just interested? 455 00:48:45.250 --> 00:48:49.708 I feel mortified about it now, looking at this couple with their rumpled hair. The mortification 456 00:48:49.708 --> 00:48:53.833 is not about having had sex in public, but about having looked like this while doing it, 457 00:48:54.166 --> 00:48:59.541 having had this kind of effect on a room. It was me who started the bathroom sex. I wanted 458 00:48:59.541 --> 00:49:03.708 to specifically because it was something gay men did because of a friend of mine who had shown me 459 00:49:03.708 --> 00:49:08.041 the glory hole in the upstairs bathroom of the university English department and how jealous I'd 460 00:49:08.041 --> 00:49:12.375 been that he got to be part of this secret world running parallel to the rest of life, which was 461 00:49:12.375 --> 00:49:17.666 so boring. And in the end, I did turn out to be pretty much a gay man. It's just that no one back 462 00:49:17.666 --> 00:49:23.291 then, including me, could see it. I don't know how to solve the problem of seeing and being seen. 463 00:49:24.041 --> 00:49:31.250 When I first became a ghost, I named myself Dead Mermaid in reference to the H.C. Andersen fairy 464 00:49:31.250 --> 00:49:35.250 tale in which the mermaid dissolves into foam on the surface of the ocean after failing to seduce 465 00:49:35.250 --> 00:49:40.791 the prince. I hadn't lost a prince or anything. It was more about how the texture of my body felt. 466 00:49:41.708 --> 00:49:46.125 After she dissolves into sea foam, the mermaid instantly evaporates into the air, becoming a 467 00:49:46.125 --> 00:49:48.625 spirit with an entirely transparent body, just floating around on wind currents. And I could do 468 00:49:48.916 --> 00:49:57.000 that, too. I could be liquid or I could be air. I had these two modes. I'm pink when evaporated and 469 00:49:57.000 --> 00:50:01.750 ruby-coloured lying down, and this is because I'm made of blood. I prefer not to think about this. 470 00:50:02.000 --> 00:50:06.208 That's okay. People are also largely made of blood and mostly don't think about it either. 471 00:50:07.083 --> 00:50:11.500 I spend most of my time evaporated because it's easier to move that way and because it helps with 472 00:50:11.500 --> 00:50:14.625 not thinking about myself materially. I come from an event that I don't have good language to 473 00:50:15.000 --> 00:50:22.750 describe. I rotate a series of words in my mind. It was an accident, illness, operation, attack, 474 00:50:22.750 --> 00:50:28.208 mistake, conspiracy, murder, epic coordination of carelessness, or maybe several things at once. 475 00:50:29.083 --> 00:50:33.875 This event happened to the person that I was. However you frame it, it shouldn't have. 476 00:50:34.833 --> 00:50:38.958 Now the person is gone and here I am. I'm so much freer now than they were. Early on I had to make 477 00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:46.125 a rule, focus on the freedom, not the reasons why you have it. The rule was to prevent me from 478 00:50:46.125 --> 00:50:51.625 getting dangerously depressed or horrified by imagery. A person who's dangerously depressed has 479 00:50:51.625 --> 00:50:57.416 some options for escape. A ghost, too. More options in a certain sense. But I never heard of a way 480 00:50:57.625 --> 00:51:02.833 that a ghost can just leave if things get really unlivable. That's why I began my daily joy practice 481 00:51:03.125 --> 00:51:09.125 and positive thinking routine. In my old life there were a lot of reasons not to call myself 482 00:51:09.125 --> 00:51:14.375 something like dead mermaid. I remember it was hard when I was trying to pick a name to balance 483 00:51:14.375 --> 00:51:19.416 my fear of being dismissed as ridiculous with my desire to be accurately addressed. There isn't a 484 00:51:19.416 --> 00:51:24.041 huge selection of non-gendered names in the English language. A lot of the ones that do exist 485 00:51:24.500 --> 00:51:31.291 refer to landscape features or weather patterns, sky, river, ocean, tree, rain, etc., colours, red, 486 00:51:31.291 --> 00:51:36.791 indigo, blue, or our funny little terms of endearment, bean, bear, or a syllable or two 487 00:51:36.791 --> 00:51:43.000 isolated from a word like a child would say, "alay," "car," "Sam." And it's easy to seem unserious. 488 00:51:44.166 --> 00:51:49.708 Not that there's anything unserious about an ocean, a runner bean, or a child learning to talk. 489 00:51:50.958 --> 00:51:55.625 Now that nobody needs to address me, I'm free to be truly accurate in my naming convention. 490 00:51:56.458 --> 00:51:59.958 I figure if I ever do find myself in the situation of having friends again 491 00:52:00.500 --> 00:52:04.708 or needing to talk to people for some other reason, I can just ask them to call me DM. 492 00:52:06.041 --> 00:52:07.666 Thank you so much. (applause) 493 00:52:22.375 --> 00:52:29.000 (Deanna) Thanks, River. I spent a lot of time on the page with that text, and it was so wonderful to just 494 00:52:29.333 --> 00:52:32.875 hover alongside tonight. That was really a treat. Thank you. 495 00:52:34.625 --> 00:52:38.625 Our final reader tonight, Kaie Kellough, is also a friend from Montreal, and I have enjoyed the 496 00:52:38.625 --> 00:52:44.333 fluctuations of our conversations over many a croissant. What I love about our talk is how it 497 00:52:44.333 --> 00:52:49.833 seamlessly shifts scales from the everyday to the philosophical to the nostalgic to the speculative. 498 00:52:50.875 --> 00:52:56.958 This movement of working through how it all hangs together in real time in dialogue, I think, is as 499 00:52:57.000 --> 00:53:03.083 much preoccupation in his work as it is in our interactions. As the personal scaffolds into the 500 00:53:03.083 --> 00:53:07.750 structural, and the structural unfolds itself into our minutest and most intimate relations. 501 00:53:09.083 --> 00:53:13.708 This movement as method, not holding opposites apart but instead allowing them to drift and 502 00:53:13.708 --> 00:53:19.458 blur into one another, creates such productive space for genuine listening, for curiosity, 503 00:53:19.916 --> 00:53:26.625 unsettling tension, contradiction, and indeed rapprochement. Kaie Kellough is a poet, 504 00:53:26.666 --> 00:53:31.416 fiction writer, and sound performer based in Montreal, Canada. His work emerges at a crossroads 505 00:53:31.416 --> 00:53:37.541 of social engagement and formal experiment. His long poem, "Magnetic Equator," won the 2020 506 00:53:37.541 --> 00:53:42.875 Griffin Poetry Prize. His solo and group sound performances have toured internationally, and he 507 00:53:42.875 --> 00:53:48.791 is a vocalist for FYEAR, a non-net whose debut was released in 2024 with Constellation Records. 508 00:53:49.291 --> 00:53:49.875 Welcome Kaie. 509 00:53:56.666 --> 00:54:02.208 [applause] 510 00:54:03.125 --> 00:54:08.666 (Kaie Kellough) Thanks for that introduction. That was really a generous introduction. And for the invitation, 511 00:54:10.208 --> 00:54:16.875 it's nice to be here, and it's nice to see everybody today. And thank you to the wonderful 512 00:54:17.000 --> 00:54:28.708 readings we've heard, thanks to the Western Front. And I'm going to read a section from 513 00:54:29.791 --> 00:54:38.916 a work in progress, a new manuscript. And the manuscript is called "Position," and it originated 514 00:54:39.958 --> 00:54:44.916 during the pandemic, so kind of peak pandemic moment around 2020, mid-2020. 515 00:54:48.208 --> 00:54:56.333 And I think there are moments, maybe social moments, moments of social crisis, but also moments of, 516 00:54:56.500 --> 00:55:06.708 personal moments, where we might feel the need to take stock of our lives or take inventory of our 517 00:55:06.708 --> 00:55:13.041 lives, determine where we're at and where we've been, if we're doing the things we ought to be 518 00:55:13.041 --> 00:55:18.416 doing, if we're successful people, and so on. There are moments that kind of amplify that impulse, 519 00:55:18.416 --> 00:55:24.791 I think. And I feel that that was one. I turned 45 in 2020, so that was definitely a moment of 520 00:55:24.916 --> 00:55:29.833 amplified taking stock. But I don't like that impulse in a way. I understand the practical 521 00:55:29.833 --> 00:55:34.750 implications of it and the needs for it, but I find that the impulse is small and greedy sometimes. 522 00:55:35.541 --> 00:55:43.750 And this entire manuscript is sort of an attempt to recognize that impulse and bend it 523 00:55:43.958 --> 00:55:52.958 towards something else instead of bending it toward a persona taking stock of life. 524 00:55:53.583 --> 00:55:58.666 But maybe looking at the world and taking stock of where one stands in relation to what's going 525 00:55:58.750 --> 00:56:05.791 on in the world given where one has been. This is a section from that manuscript called "Fluctuation." 526 00:56:08.333 --> 00:56:10.916 The aim is to introduce a fluctuation, 527 00:56:13.333 --> 00:56:21.041 a digression that veers out of the text. These are not straight lines, fluctuations in the cadence, 528 00:56:21.625 --> 00:56:30.458 deviations and returns. These paragraphs do not read left to right or stand justified on any side. 529 00:56:31.375 --> 00:56:38.375 They do not obey a firm form. And yet these uneven reflections should accompany the work 530 00:56:38.833 --> 00:56:44.541 and not perform in isolation. Their pulse should slide under and shift. 531 00:56:45.041 --> 00:56:53.750 The aim is not to preface or tame, not to nail the final word into the spine. What is written 532 00:56:53.750 --> 00:57:01.375 must remain in contiguous dialogue with how it was thought, why it was thought, and with the process 533 00:57:01.375 --> 00:57:08.416 by which it was forced. Because force is a way of making things cohere and for splitting apart. 534 00:57:08.916 --> 00:57:19.000 Since this writing drives toward a singular aim, not to belong. Since this writing arises from 535 00:57:19.000 --> 00:57:27.583 since, from else, from somewhere, from some specific one, from an eroded voice, from circumstance. 536 00:57:28.625 --> 00:57:31.916 Since it comes from the past spoiling into the present and it is shaped by the variations in, 537 00:57:32.083 --> 00:57:42.500 the refuge from, the flight, the scholarships won, the children vanished, the space stolen, 538 00:57:43.083 --> 00:57:50.500 the applications accepted or declined, the names changed, the territory divided and stolen, 539 00:57:51.458 --> 00:57:56.000 sold, stolen, variations, the applications, the names, the territory escalating, the responses 540 00:57:56.916 --> 00:58:09.208 price, terse and negating, the incomprehension from an eroded mounting as we step out of complacency 541 00:58:09.208 --> 00:58:17.583 and into a rogue simulation. The theory convulsed, the aspirations in suspension from one generation 542 00:58:17.583 --> 00:58:20.416 to the next. The concrete destruction, the worry powering the electric grid, the failures of 543 00:58:20.458 --> 00:58:32.416 infrastructure, the unbridled speculation, the crumbled diction, the compassionless void in the 544 00:58:32.416 --> 00:58:39.041 blue chest, the assumptions unleashed, the addiction to inequity, the imploded Bitcoin, 545 00:58:39.583 --> 00:58:42.250 the fermenting century, etc. At century, since this writing arises from century, from since, 546 00:58:45.666 --> 00:58:56.541 from elsewhere, from somewhere, from someone, those locations must be made explicit, must be undressed 547 00:58:56.541 --> 00:59:04.333 here, but also throughout this negation of belonging. Subtler than pain is a nausea that 548 00:59:04.333 --> 00:59:22.500 borrows from the language of the user, the pundit, the weaponized bot, the coercive advert and produces sentences gestated in rubble and lamentation, undernourished dreams, 549 00:59:23.208 --> 00:59:30.291 debt rejected into a readable ill, a fluctuation between betweens, the sentences are work, always 550 00:59:30.291 --> 00:59:45.500 becoming a never arriving into the dominant we of anthems and others. Others produce discomfort in the we, 551 00:59:46.125 --> 00:59:52.458 produce anthems to rebuke anthems, produce sentences in the we, produce sentences gestated in always 552 00:59:52.500 --> 01:00:04.708 becoming and never, certain conventions produce becoming and never discomfort. For instance, the 553 01:00:04.708 --> 01:00:14.083 bias that favours arrival over distance, the product over the process, the written celebrated as pure 554 01:00:14.083 --> 01:00:19.333 individual product, while the collective rot recedes into a past tense of invisible labour, 555 01:00:19.458 --> 01:00:32.333 the product dislocated, clean. In this way, publication differs from a performance. In 556 01:00:32.333 --> 01:00:38.708 performance, the process may be refined, but at least we see it happening. In some measure, 557 01:00:39.166 --> 01:00:43.333 the performance is a reconstruction of the process. Reconstructed each time the performance is staged, 558 01:00:43.666 --> 01:00:56.375 process produces error, imminence stresses process and produces error, repeats and codes impurities 559 01:00:56.791 --> 01:01:05.000 into the form. Since publication launches a work beyond its process and is considered the point 560 01:01:05.291 --> 01:01:12.375 at which a process is no longer ongoing, then whatever is published can never be ongoing. 561 01:01:12.958 --> 01:01:22.000 If continuation means it is now outside of, if completion means it exists with its labour erased 562 01:01:22.541 --> 01:01:30.500 because to personalize the matter, I am labour, I have been sold for energy, I continue. 563 01:01:31.916 --> 01:01:39.750 In this writing, at least I can choose how to steal back so I can't be ripped off by progress. 564 01:01:40.500 --> 01:01:48.333 This work is always in progress, but it is not progress. My energy is always being stolen back 565 01:01:48.333 --> 01:01:56.875 by me, or rather shunted away from purposefulness, away from use, shunted off into this work, 566 01:01:57.333 --> 01:02:04.500 so at least that small part can't be used to power digital empires, multiply discord, 567 01:02:05.083 --> 01:02:15.583 enslave who to Mastercard or innovate apartheid. This writing started in pandemic limbo in 2020 568 01:02:16.000 --> 01:02:23.416 when downtown was a vacant through which only those who had no would stray and those who were 569 01:02:23.416 --> 01:02:30.750 paradoxically non-essential, morally froze and worked from our queasy rooms and some of us repeated 570 01:02:31.125 --> 01:02:38.125 you know and we're fortunate and back to normal and children were born, new iPhones launched, 571 01:02:38.833 --> 01:02:44.583 and there is a point on the journey where the present accelerates and veers into another 572 01:02:44.625 --> 01:02:53.000 experience and when around that bend we look back and see the chronology of our bright ideas 573 01:02:53.583 --> 01:03:02.083 spotlighting this falling action. To put it another way, we find ourselves confined by a 574 01:03:02.083 --> 01:03:09.458 reality so rare that it only enters popular culture via the sci-fi flick or the paperback, 575 01:03:10.083 --> 01:03:16.958 the thriller, the limited series suspense drama in which you are not the protagonist 576 01:03:17.833 --> 01:03:26.208 but the disempowered lazy eye. Suddenly we are living a plot and the seniors residences were 577 01:03:26.208 --> 01:03:34.666 locked and the nerves singed and for a moment we stood incredulous as the times curdled, nurses 578 01:03:35.208 --> 01:03:43.250 took sick leave and superheroes from the marvel universe failed to intervene and we vomited the 579 01:03:43.291 --> 01:03:49.666 popcorn and drew back and we were missing our pith helmets, our accounts had been hacked, 580 01:03:50.208 --> 01:03:56.625 passwords and user names appropriated and dispossessed and those who had the means 581 01:03:56.958 --> 01:04:05.000 sold and fled and we dreaded the daily glance at the little red digital graphs, dead and time 582 01:04:05.583 --> 01:04:14.000 balanced on the axes x and y and we secretly cheered the end and when the prices started to 583 01:04:14.000 --> 01:04:21.250 whisper collusion and we secretly cheered the end and when the prices started to whisper x and y 584 01:04:21.458 --> 01:04:28.458 and viral conspiracies spread and those who had the means sold and we dreaded and viral 585 01:04:28.500 --> 01:04:36.125 conspiracies spread through the wireless air and somehow the vaccines were feared like truth serums 586 01:04:36.500 --> 01:04:43.125 in the test tubes of grinning supervillains and the eyes of the pharmacist narrowed with a mad 587 01:04:43.208 --> 01:04:51.625 science fever as QAnon sabotaged the formula. At the time I saw an image a black and white 588 01:04:51.666 --> 01:04:58.375 photograph of a cargo ship veering off course with a white churned trail of ocean foaming behind 589 01:04:58.416 --> 01:05:06.333 it and the boat's iron bulk teetered on its side about to capsize shipping containers froze mid 590 01:05:06.333 --> 01:05:14.000 collapse before they tumbled overboard a stack of industrial air conditioners tilted the ship 591 01:05:14.083 --> 01:05:22.166 and the water frowned into a terminal opacity and the counterfeit Amazon price tripled and armies 592 01:05:22.416 --> 01:05:29.875 teetered on the counterfeit Amazon price on the blink tripled and when the counterfeit supply 593 01:05:29.916 --> 01:05:40.250 chains and myths and and and when capsized on the open and modernity fouled off track and the shooter 594 01:05:40.541 --> 01:05:46.583 pulled on his balaclava and entered the underworld the infrastructure of our conversations 595 01:05:47.291 --> 01:05:54.541 and armies teetered and when supply chains and capsized and the infrastructure was dissected 596 01:05:54.541 --> 01:06:03.000 and delivered to our conversations to advertisers whose digits twitched in the fine print and maybe 597 01:06:03.458 --> 01:06:10.041 with some additional Amazon with some additional price triple with some additional pressure 598 01:06:10.625 --> 01:06:18.583 was dissected and delivered these soulless clicks might have given way maybe to longer fangs and 599 01:06:18.583 --> 01:06:27.541 more rapacious expertise and when back to normal was deployed like coercion like brute reassurance 600 01:06:28.000 --> 01:06:35.333 back to normal in articles and who's normal and when total digital hegemony was temporarily 601 01:06:35.791 --> 01:06:43.750 achieved because browsing united time and money in a material dream and the music ceased and quiet 602 01:06:43.750 --> 01:06:52.541 quitting dawned a new music a new cease a new attitude interrupted this contextual reflection 603 01:06:52.625 --> 01:07:02.833 with the question if this is modernity then who's is it is who is shopping in my head is who is 604 01:07:02.916 --> 01:07:11.750 talking because whose story if this isn't a story then how do we establish our empire who is we 605 01:07:12.333 --> 01:07:20.000 and where i was talking to a novelist in a hotel in the formless grey of late November at a literary 606 01:07:20.083 --> 01:07:26.125 event north of Quebec City in the passage of snow and pines that rises up and spikes at clouds 607 01:07:27.041 --> 01:07:34.500 between truck stops and hot dog restos and for the entire trip i kept considering that I am not 608 01:07:34.500 --> 01:07:44.000 of this place yes born on but this is not mine her concern as she put it was le contemporaine 609 01:07:44.416 --> 01:07:50.375 how to write the current moment and I thought that my concern is similar but approached as an 610 01:07:50.416 --> 01:07:58.958 outsider and not as one who does be knowing my current moment can never be mine it can only be 611 01:07:58.958 --> 01:08:09.041 the current moment only a current moment because I am other I'm I'm I'm one person perhaps less than 612 01:08:09.041 --> 01:08:20.166 by some historic measures person but a person cannot be current cannot be coherent alone I and 613 01:08:20.708 --> 01:08:26.000 by extension this collection of language should represent le contemporaine in an anonymous 614 01:08:26.333 --> 01:08:32.125 general sense that has little to do with me personally because I am not the author but the 615 01:08:32.291 --> 01:08:40.458 participant Jane Cortes notes because I am not a bystander my presence can't be external to the 616 01:08:40.458 --> 01:08:48.375 culture it struggles under the same knee it struggles under a different knee iI end by extension 617 01:08:48.500 --> 01:08:55.000 this collection of language should not represent le contemporaine even if I can identify certain 618 01:08:55.125 --> 01:09:01.541 attitudes and challenges of the present moment that distinguish it from that distinguish it from 619 01:09:01.541 --> 01:09:08.500 another that distinguish it and even if from I can reach into it and extract its language 620 01:09:08.875 --> 01:09:16.791 my experience of it is only one from experience so what I write must call for a multiplication of 621 01:09:16.833 --> 01:09:24.541 expressions as many as there are anonymous currents in and i was awake late one night 622 01:09:24.916 --> 01:09:31.708 microdosing television while watching videos on Youtube on my laptop and Instagram on my tablet 623 01:09:32.083 --> 01:09:38.666 then texting relatives in another time zone multiplying distraction and fragmenting my right 624 01:09:38.666 --> 01:09:46.083 mind i felt like I was brimming with voices and headlines moving mouths and news banners 625 01:09:46.583 --> 01:09:54.416 information moving inside me and I opened a word doc and realized that I collect the language of 626 01:09:54.416 --> 01:10:03.458 the movement I listened to my time no I listened to the time that belongs to no one and so this is 627 01:10:03.458 --> 01:10:11.375 not written it is collected and then arranged to move with a broken repaired gate to shuffle and 628 01:10:11.458 --> 01:10:22.375 break in time and I if writing then my job is to undo if writing to leave unfinished and I to 629 01:10:22.375 --> 01:10:29.583 undo rave at the root of the assumption because beneath the artificial poise of a text the low 630 01:10:29.583 --> 01:10:35.916 end rumbles and disrupts the supply chain because beneath the artificial poise of a text the low 631 01:10:35.958 --> 01:10:44.250 end rumbles and disrupts the unfinished and if not undo I then at least introduce a fluctuation 632 01:10:44.666 --> 01:10:52.541 a fissure through the infrastructure but not for no light to enter for the fissure to rumble 633 01:10:52.708 --> 01:10:56.958 the structure, give. Thank you. 634 01:11:05.958 --> 01:11:08.625 [applause] 635 01:11:10.625 --> 01:11:16.916 (Deanna) Thank you so much Kaie. Man it's it's a trip to go back to that the affect of that time it really 636 01:11:16.916 --> 01:11:24.333 well thank you Elisa, River, and Kai for sharing your work with us tonight 637 01:11:24.791 --> 01:11:30.125 and to everyone here for making space for these words. If you enjoyed tonight's reading please mark 638 01:11:30.125 --> 01:11:34.958 your calendars for the next event in this series on Thursday September 5th taking note that there 639 01:11:34.958 --> 01:11:39.750 will be no reading in the month of August that evening we will be welcoming visiting author Gerry 640 01:11:39.750 --> 01:11:45.000 Shikatani from Toronto alongside some special guests. We look forward to sharing the full 641 01:11:45.000 --> 01:11:49.125 invitation with you in the coming weeks and again if you enjoyed tonight's free reading please 642 01:11:49.125 --> 01:11:53.458 consider showing your support for The Capilano Review by making a donation or purchasing a year 643 01:11:53.458 --> 01:11:58.666 long magazine subscription Jacqueline and Katherine will be at the merch table all evening long we'll 644 01:11:58.666 --> 01:12:04.041 be happy to chat with you. We also have our latest spring 2024 issue for sale at the table, "it is what 645 01:12:04.083 --> 01:12:09.250 it is," as well as artist prints tote bags and other merch so thanks again for being here. 646 01:12:09.250 --> 01:12:09.875 Have a wonderful evening. (applause)