Update: Shazia Hafiz Ramji is unfortunately no longer able to join to moderate this event.

If one of the great joys of poetry is reading articulations of previously mercurial sensations, then hearing poets talk about their refinement of such ideas is surely another. All the more so when the poets in question are the three on this stage: Otoniya Okot Bitek (A is for Acholi), Alexandra Oliver (Hail, the Invisible Watchman) and Madhur Anand (Parasitic Oscillations). Exploring diaspora and marginalization, domestic and social alienation, and the unraveling of the Anthropocene respectively, each collection offers remarkable portraits of our internal and external worlds, and the often surprising membrane between the two. Come revel in the medium of words with us. Moderated by Shazia Hafiz Ramji.

Presented in collaboration with Poetry In Voice.

Event Participants:

Madhur Anand

MADHUR ANAND is the Governor General’s Awardwinning author of the memoir This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart, and the poetry collections A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes and Parasitic Oscillations. She is a professor of ecology and sustainability at the University of Guelph. (ONTARIO)

Otoniya Okot Bitek

OTONIYA OKOT BITEK is a poet and scholar. Her collection, 100 Days, won the 2017 IndieFab Book of the Year Award. In 2020 and 2021, Bitekwas the Ellen and Warren Tallman Writer-in-Residence and a SFU Jack and Doris Shadbolt Fellow. She is an assistant professor of Black Creativity at Queen’s University. (ONTARIO)

Alexandra Oliver

ALEXANDRA OLIVER is the author of three poetry collections: Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway, recipient of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, Let the Empire Down, and Hail, the Invisible Watchman. She has performed her work for CBC Radio, NPR, and numerous festivals and conferences. (ONTARIO)