Lyrics for Liberation
Join us for an evening of radical poetry and performance featuring the Queer and Trans Research Lab – Artists-In-Residence Brian Rigg and Jody Chan with invited guests.
This showcase honors the achievements of these brilliant writers. It is also an occasion celebrate the work of future poets and creative thinkers that participated in intensive workshops to nurture their craft and its importance in these uncertain times.
This event is a FREE and public event. *No rsvp required
Presenters at this event are participants of the “Black Fruit Poetry Workshop”, curated by Brian Rigg as founder of Black Fruit Press https://blackfruitpress.org/ And “A Poem Is Not a Revolution” Collaborative Reading & Writing Workshops”, curated by Jody Chan.
Date: Friday May 31, 2024
Time: 5-7pm, Doors open at 4:45pm
Location: Tranzac Club (292 Brunswick Ave, Toronto, ON M5S 2M7)
This event is funded by the Queer and Trans Research Lab at the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto
Artist Bios
Brian Rigg is a Jamaican/Canadian writer and poet based in Toronto. His poems have been published in magazines from the U.K., Canada, and the U.S. They have also been
anthologized in Ma’ka, Diasporic Juks: Contemporary Writing by Queers of African Descent (Sister Vision Press) and Seminal: The Anthology of Canada’s Gay Male Poets (Arsenal Pulp Press). A False Paradise, his first collection of poetry, was published by ECW Press in 2001. His collection of poems titled Soft Animals won the 2021 Steel Toe Books chapbook competition. He is a proud LAMBDA Fellow from the 2016 cohort. During his residency, Rigg is completing a collection of poems currently titled Warrior in the Garden. Drawing inspiration from Afro-Surrealism and the Black Fantastic, the new poems will explore how absurdism and speculative fictions inform Black queer life and create spaces for disruption, resistance, and transgressive play.
Jody Chan is a poet, interdisciplinary artist, community organizer, and care worker. They are the author of Haunt (Damaged Goods Press), All Our Futures (PANK), and Sick (Black Lawrence Press). They are the winner of the 2018 St. Lawrence Book Award and the 2021 Trillium Award for Poetry. They are also a performing member with RAW Taiko Drummers. During their residency, Chan will work on a hybrid manuscript of poetry and essays exploring crip queer narratives and rituals around birth, death, and suicidality in relation to climate crisis, the ongoing pandemic, and the many past and future apocalypses in our and our ancestors’ lifetimes. In collaboration with other artists and movement workers, and via the multi-sensory, multi-access practice and ethics of disability poetics. Their second book impact statement, is recently published in Spring 2024 with Brick Books.