Poetry for the Summer Soul

POETRY FOR THE SUMMER SOUL is a poetry evening co-organized by Metonymy Press and l’Euguélionne featuring Montreal-based poets Shanice Nicole, Powetik and Kama La Mackerel. Together these three poets will share some pieces and talk about how poetry nurtures their souls.
 
Each of these remarkable and thoughtful poets will do a reading of their work, prompting discussions about the power of art and creativity and poetry to influence the world we live in for the better.
 
Thursday, June 18
5:30 to 7:30 pm
on Facebook Live (Metonymy’s page) and Zoom
Readings, discussion, book giveaway +++
 
Please to RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/poetry-for-the-summer-soul-tickets-108754102448 for the Zoom link, or email metonymypress@gmail.com.
 
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Shanice Nicole is a Black feminist educator, facilitator, writer, and (out)spoken word artist. Her writing and work intimately explores race, health, sexuality, oppression, and freedom, all of which form the many layers of her Black womanhood. She is the curator of free community resources such as Jobs & Things, the BFCN Scholarship Directory, and All Black Everything in Montreal and her debut children’s book Dear Black Girls published by Metonymy Press will be released in February 2021. Shanice Nicole believes that everyone has the power to make change and the words of her favourite poet Maya Angelou always resonate deeply, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
Instagram: instagram.com/ShaniceNicoleSpeaks
Facebook: facebook.com/ShaniceNicoleSpeaks
 
Powetik is the artist persona of Kathleen Charles, a queer Haitian writer, poet, spoken word performer and singer in Montreal. She’s currently pursuing a career as a therapist to work on healing immigrants and QTBIPOC fems from intergenerational trauma using community-based group therapy, drama therapy with story telling and cognitive behavioural therapy to restore the mental health of these populations. Her poetry explores the trials of immigration as a woman of color, queerness within communities of color, anti-racism rhetoric, black girl magic, mental health and self-actualization. Her poetic performance is made to heal, to validate, to inspire and to tell the stories of the voiceless…or at least the voiceless for now.
www.powetik.com
Instagram: instagram.com/powetikartistry
 
Kama La Mackerel is multi-disciplinary artist, educator, writer, cultural mediator and literary translator who hails from Mauritius and now lives in Montréal. Their work is grounded in the exploration of justice, love, healing, decoloniality, and self- and collective-empowerment. Kama’s artistic practice spans across textile, visual, digital, poetic and performative work, and is at once narrative and theoretical, at once personal and political. A firm believer that aesthetic practices have the power to build resilience, to heal, and to act as forms of resistance to the status quo, Kama articulates an anticolonial praxis through cultural production.
lamackerel.net
@KamaLaMackerel
 
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This event is part of National Poetry Month (which is in April but we re-scheduled the event because of COVID-19, but really, every month should be poetry month!).
 
The event is sponsored in part by the League of Canadian Poets, and hosted by Tio’tia:ke-based feminist bookstore L’Euguelionne and queer and feminist publisher Metonymy Press.
 
The reading is free, and we encourage participants to donate to mtl-based organizations Hoodstock or Black Theatre Workshop in the spirit of opposing anti-Black violence, promoting the health of Black communities, and supporting Black artists.