- Cet évènement est passé.
Montreal launch of The Sacred Heart Motel
“I’m sick / of outsourcing care to desire” writes Grace Kwan in this sure-footed, arrestingly wise début, and this axis, between fantasies of belonging and the experience of being held, is perhaps at the core of the book, threaded through each poem. If “again and again I’ve abandoned my urgency / for the romance of cruelty,” how does that self in each of us return?
— River Halen, author of Dream Rooms
Join Grace Kwan for the Montreal launch of THE SACRED HEART MOTEL, taking place at Co-op Agenda in Petite-Patrie.
Featuring special guests Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch and Carlos A. Pittella
Food! Drinks! Readings! Heart-shaped key chains!
In poet Grace Kwan’s debut, they are ruthless and nimble, guiding us through the recesses of body and roadside space. The reader tours the motel through this multiverse narrative, from amenities to rooms to back alleys, through the generations of ghosts and queer love stories, until they are left alone with the heart at the centre. The Sacred Heart Motel is a disorienting, startling collection about placelessness and longing.
Grace Kwan , sociologue et autaire originaire de Malaisie, vit à « Vancouver », sur les territoires non cédés des peuples Musqueam, Squamish et Tsleil-Waututh. Ses poèmes récents ont été publiés Canthius, Room Magazine, et d’autres revues. Son site Web est disponible ici: https://grckwn.wordpress.com/.
Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch est un écrivain qui vit à Tio’tià:ke. Ses écrits ont été publiés dans dans l'anthologie The Best Canadian Poetry 2018, GUTS, carte blanche, the Shade Journal, The New Quarterly, Arc Poetry Magazine, et ailleurs. Son poème Nancy Ajram Made Me Gay a été nominé pour le prix de poésie de la CBC en 2019. Son livre knot body (2020), publié par Metatron Press, a été en lice pour le prix du premier livre de l’Université Concordia de la Fédération des écrivains du Québec. The Good Arabs (2021), publié par les Éditions Métonymie, a remporté le Grand Prix du livre de Montréal 2022 et a reçu une mention honorable lors de l’édition 2022 des Prix du livre arabo-américain pour le prix de poésie George-Ellenbogen.
Carlos A. Pittella (he/him) is a Latinx poet & the recipient of a Frontier 2022 Global Poetry Prize. Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he lives in Montréal/Tiohtià:ke & currently teaches Poetry at John Abbott College. He completed his MA in English/Creative Writing at Concordia University, where he co-edited Headlight Anthology with the team who won the 2023 Forces AVENIR award. He also holds a doctorate in Literary Studies, having defended his thesis on the trilingual sonnets of Fernando Pessoa. His writing is haunted by borders, having recently appeared in Jacket2, The Capilano Review, & in the chapbook footnotes after Lorca (above/ground press, 2024).
Co-op Agenda is wheelchair accessible and has all-gender washrooms. We ask that attendees mask when they’re not eating or drinking. We will have air purifiers on site. There will be a lot of seating and an intermission. More detailed accessibility info coming soon.