JOIN US for HA&L magazine’s 11th Anniversary
at the Art Gallery of Hamilton !
CELEBRATING:
HA&L issue 12.1 Re:Creation Stories • An Indigenous led issue with Guest Editor Johannah Bird
AND:
HA&L issue 12.2 Imaginary Safe House • Dis/Ability Poetics Issue with Guest Editors Shane Neilson, Roxanna Bennett, & Ally Fleming
Friday November 1, 2019 – FREE – LIMITED SEATING
R.S.V.P. – Click here to Register on our Eventbrite page!
Please refer to the Art Gallery of Hamilton’s website for information on Accessibility
An ASL Interpreter will be present.
Hosted by the Art Gallery of Hamilton’s Ryan Ferguson.
Composer Dusty Micale and the Mohawk College music ensemble ArtPop. Original musical composition commissioned by HA&L and the AbleHamilton Poetry Collective.
PARTICIPANTS:
Johannah Bird is Anishinaabe Euro-Canadian hailing from Treaty 1 territory in Manitoba. She is a PhD student who studies Indigenous literatures at McMaster University, hoping to write something interesting about archives and life writing, and she also scribbles down bits of poetry that come to her mid-afternoon. While she currently resides in Hamilton, her heart lingers in the prairies she calls “home.”
Odadrihonyanisoh (Sara General) belongs to the Turtle Clan and the Mohawk Nation. She lives in the community of Six Nations by the Grand River on Turtle Island with her husband and daughters. She is a writer, an artist, a language learner and a researcher. Sara holds a Doctor of Education from Western University and works at the Deyohahá:ge: Indigenous Knowledge Centre at Six Nations. For more of her work, visit www.sarageneral.com.
Kaitlin is Kanien’keha:ka (Gone-yin-gay-ha-ga), Wolf Clan, from Six Nations of the Grand River. She is a mother, a language learner, and a tree and forest devotee. Those who know Kaitlin describe her as very wise, and incredibly silly. This has served her well in her (re)search which is about Indigenous, land-based ways of coming to know and enacting those teachings to make a difference in the lives of Indigenous peoples and the lands that love and support all peoples. She currently holds a postdoctoral fellowship in Indigenous Studies and ECS at McMaster and enjoys using her position to stir things up for change-making.
John Isaiah Edward Hill is a recent first generation graduate of McMaster University. He is Oneida nation, Turtle clan from Six Nations of the Grand River. John seeks to, through the medium of poetry and other art forms, de-stigmatize enchantment and whimsy. John seeks to show the beauty and potency of Indigenous worldview, for the benefit and enrichment of Indigenous youth who, like him, must navigate and traverse globalization while carving an identity which encapsulates the whole of their experience.
Alyssa M. General is Mohawk Nation Turtle Clan from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. She is an artist, educator, and language resource developer. Alyssa has helped create a number of films in Kanyen’kéha with Onkwawén:na Kentyóhkwa, developed illustrations for children’s television show Tóta tánon Ohkwá:ri, and has received national recognition for her poem Enkonte’nikonhrakwaríhsya’te. Alyssa has worked as an artist-educator with the Royal Conservatory of Music, a graphic designer with language revitalization efforts in her home community of Six Nations and currently assists with artistic direction with company Spirit and Intent.
READINGS FROM THE AbleHamilton Poetry Festival:
Shane Neilson is a poet, physician, and critic. He completed his PhD in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in 2018. Shane’s latest book, New Brunswick, was published by Biblioasis in the Spring of 2019. His previous book, Dysphoria (PQL, 2017) was awarded the Hamilton Literary Award for Poetry. He is currently completing a postdoctoral position at McMaster as part of the $50,000 ‘Talent’ grant awarded by SSHRC in 2018. Shane published Constructive Negativity, the first book of literary criticism devoted to disability in Canada, also this year. He is the director of the AbleHamilton Poetry Festival which had its first successful run in the Fall of 2018 and is about to rock again in 2019. Twitter: @AbleHamiltonPo.
Roxanna Bennett is a disabled poet whose works include Unseen Garden, (chapbook, knife | fork | book, 2018) and The Uncertainty Principle (Tightrope Books, 2014). Her work has appeared in PRISM International, Arc Poetry Magazine, Riddle Fence, Poetry is Dead, Vallum, CV2 and elsewhere. Her new book, Unmeaningable, was recently published by Gordon Hill Press, 2019. She lives in Whitby, Ontario.
Leo Dragtoe is a man of many words. Words seem to like him and the feeling is mutual: they have developed a very close relationship. As Leo drags his feet through the street corners, alleyways and moonlit pavements of everyday life, words ring in his ears, tear at his heartstrings and permeate his mind. Sometimes they find their way onto scraps of paper or the throbbing insomniac canvas of a computer screen. Sometimes they fuse with melody to become songs. Sometimes words keep Leo up at night. Sometimes they echo through the dim, deserted hallways of his dreams. Leo Dragtoe is a man of few ambitions. He has no desire to Climb the Corporate Ladder, Slay the Dragon, Scale the Barbwire Fence to Sainthood, or Save the Universe. He would, however, love to spend some time, have a drink and maybe pass a few words your way. If those words come together and the poetry they create is potent, anything can happen. Leo hopes that the words he shares make an impression. The nature of that impression is completely up to you. Sometimes life is difficult. Smiles are few and far between. But if this life is just a dream, Leo believes with all his heart that poetry makes living the dream worth living.
DISCOVERY PROGRAM
Acknowledgment of the McMaster University Discovery Program with Professor Daniel Coleman, Program Coordinator Melissa Ricci, and program graduate Bill Rankin. The Discovery Program, run by the Arts and Science program and supported through the Office of the President, offers adults in the community who face barriers to education the chance to take a university-level course at no cost.
JOIN US Friday November 1, 2019 – R.S.V.P. REGISTER NOW!
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