By: Drew Simpson
Over a month of Hamilton Youth Poet’s Black Poet Residency has passed. So far, the residency has taken place at the Art Gallery of Hamilton every Saturday and the weekly residency will continue until May.
HYP is an arts organization that launched in October 2012. The organization’s four main goals are to manifest a community of cultural understanding, offer youth tools to deliver their writing and literary skill, engage youth towards their academic ambitions and to support aspiring artists’ professional development.
Ultimately, HYP empowers young people by offering training as arts organizers and allowing youth to take part in the planning, promotion and facilitation of events. One of these events is the Black Poet Residency featuring Ian Keteku, a two-time national slam champion and multimedia artist, as a key facilitator.
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Although both the organization and event have poets within its name, participants may be beyond the scope of experienced poets. Those who wish to develop their writing skills, editing, computer literacy and even multi-digital processes will benefit from the residency.
“Those interested need not regard themselves as poets or require any prior knowledge of poetry. The residency aims to transcend simply writing poems,” explains one of HYP’s teaching artists, Akintoye Asalu.
This residency is in line with HYP’s focus on youth-focused events coordinated by youths, as it is aimed towards youth writers, performers and creative-minded individuals. As mentioned by Asalu, anyone who is interested in bettering their skills is welcome to attend.
“When our young people can tell and re-tell their histories in the context of public platforms, they are able to imagine and re-imagine their individual and collective identities and become culturally grounded in their own experiences,” explains HYP’s website.
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The residency aims to provide an inclusive and supportive space which allows black youth to express their experiences and explore their voices. Such a weekly residency is necessary in Hamilton, to amplify often-silenced voices while also developing skills and building community. Asalu can attribute the prosperity of this residency as a participant himself.
“Being able to sit down and converse with people who understand the struggles that come with being a [person of colour] motivates me to keep using my art to help our community in as many ways as I can… My only hope is that the healthy dialogue that exists within the residency will spread to the rest of the community,” explains Asalu.
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Poetry and art directly combat the sense of isolation people of colour experience on a daily basis. Especially as they face daily experiences with institutions that were built without them in mind.
Asalu describes how poetry allows him to be the voice for those cast in silence; bringing light to silenced struggles. He also finds poetry as a healthy coping mechanism. Every HYP event puts youth at the center. Therefore, a Black-focused residency, puts Black youth at the center; a position that may be unfamiliar to them.
“I want Black people all around the city to feel comfortable talking about the things they go through on a day-to-day basis without fear of judgment from those around them. It is my belief that in order to enact change, we must first begin with constructive dialogue. Through this dialogue, constructive actions can be taken to improve the quality of life for [people of colour] as a whole,” explains Asalu.
This residency can be the defining moment for many Black youths in Hamilton. Raising their voices, attending to their mental health and finding support in community are never-ending obstacles for black youth. The ability to express struggles and unbox silenced concerns while doing so is a grand goal that when realized makes a positive difference in a young person’s life.
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By Drew Simpson
For the past 18 months, the Moon Milk series has set the scene for poetry readings in Hamilton. Featured poets, open mic readers and attentive audiences have filled intimate spaces with rhythm and clever alliterations.
With a quick Google search, you’ll discover that the Moon Milk name is also claimed by a drink influenced by Ayuverdic traditions and consists of warm milk and spices meant to help relieve stress before sleep.
There’s an interesting connection between a soothing nightly drink and a monthly poetry event. Upon meeting Moon Milk’s co-organizer, S. K. Hughes, the significance of the name was made more prevalent.
“We came up with Moon Milk as an extension of [our] Sister Moon Collective. We thought about poetry as the milk that comes from the moon. What the moon produces can be thought of as poetry, or art or other forms of beauty,” explained Hughes.
Through the Moon Milk series, poets and audiences alike can find relief in poetry. It’s both an outlet and a sense of community.
The Sister Moon Collective, which consists of Hughes and Lauren Goodman, focuses on building community through the arts, while aiming to carve out safer spaces and accessible events. Moon Milk has become the Collective’s main monthly event since its inception two years ago to fulfill the need for consistent poetry events in Hamilton.
[spacer height="20px"]“I think that community is often built on shared interests…Having a poetry-focused event has brought in some new faces and some new people who have started to attend every month. I think that’s been a community building event. We can share our enjoyment of poetry and our appreciation or the space and for connecting over the love of this art form,” explained Hughes.
Moon Milk first started at Casino Art Space. Similar to the Hamilton Audio Visual Node , the current space for the series, Casino was a shared studio and event space ran by 16 Hamilton-based artists. The series shifted to HAVN after Casino closed due to shifting priorities.
While poetry may seem to reside outside of HAVN’s mandate, the Moon Milk series was welcomed with open arms. The poetry nights fit in well within the artist-run gallery space’s other events, such as HAVN Select, which are weekly open gallery hours dedicated to showcasing their exhibits as well as tapes, zines and tees made by HAVN members and local artists.
Nights at Moon Milk start off with a featured reader, typically from Hamilton or Toronto, followed by an open mic. The routine was adopted from the Sophisticated Boom Boom events in Toronto that Hughes frequented while living there.
[spacer height="20px"]“There are lots of folks that come out regularly to the open mic…That’s [one] way we find out about people that we can have as featured readers. I’m also still quite involved in the poetry scene in Toronto…and sometimes I’ll reach out to poets I know in Hamilton [asking for’ recommendations that would be a good fit for our event,” explained Hughes.
Following the Sister Moon Collective’s focus on accessibility, Moon Milk is a pay what you can event and all monetary contributions go to the featured reader.
Moon Milk also strives to create a safe and inclusive space that fosters creativity. There are no themes to their events and everyone is welcome. People are invited to read completed works or poems in progress. They can even read other poets’ work as long as the appropriate credit is given.
Every Moon Milk is made special by the people who passionately read and intently listen. The series is fostering a community in Hamilton built around poetry, the milk from the moon.
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Hamilton singer-songwriter Shanika Maria knows how to make a presence. In a t-shirt from Hamilton-based brand Girls with Guns and shoes that she bought ten years ago and thought she outgrew she describes herself as all over the place but it’s these items, memories and influences that she funnels gracefully into her music.
In the summer of 2017, Maria released her debut EP, Childish Games. The five-song record is soft and acoustic, with Maria’s haunting voice singing lyrics that could be interpreted in a million ways. It’s a snapshot of where her abilities and creativity were at the time.
“Mouth Eaters” is the last track off the EP, it started off as a poem and then became part of her debut project. It was reworked and re-released on Sept. 28, 2018. Maria celebrated the release with a performance at the Mule Spinner the following day.
[spacer height="20px"]The reworked track is more upbeat than the original and includes collaborations from several people in Maria’s musical circle. It introduced new instruments and production that lend the familiar lyrics a brand new meaning. Maria has always supported the idea of her art being read in many different ways.
“I don't think it's…fair for me to tell anybody how to interpret what I've created. I feel like once I created it, I put it out there. It's now for the audience to interpret in whatever way they feel fit. I feel that's art in general…We all have our own lives and that's how we're going to come to art,” Maria said.
The single is the first off her upcoming album, Subtle Uncertainties. Like her EP, it is a picture of where she is in her life right now and describes her outlook on life. Currently in her mid-twenties, she is facing a version of adulthood where not everything is figured out.
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[spacer height="20px"]Maria isn’t pursuing music full-time and while she is balancing other work and jobs, she believes that where she stands right now is what’s best for her at this time. She is not yet sure if she’d like to do music full-time but that is something she’ll have to navigate when the opportunity arises.
“As I've become older and as I've navigated everything, things are really uncertain, things are really ambiguous. The things I thought I wanted, I don't know if I want them… Life is very uncertain, and everything is uncertain and I don't think that that's a bad thing,” explained Maria.
Maria meets that uncertainty with the support of good people, from her family and friends to her mentor Kojo Easy Damptey and her label Celestial Voodoo. Damptey took her under his wing and helped to bring about the recording and release of her EP. Maria loves that she is part of an artist-run and collaborative label.
[spacer height="20px"]The good people that she has found in the music industry let her know that her contribution has value. Breaking into music, she faced the challenge of having to interact with people who based her worth as a performer on her ability to bring in audiences.
Genuine connections with artists and listeners helped her to overcome doubts that her work lacked value. These connections are also what she loves about performing in Hamilton.
“I have community here and I feel like people are being pretty receptive to what I've been doing so that's always a nice feeling…And I also just really like performing with other people…Live performance really gives an emotional and intimate look into their creativity,” explained Maria.
Maria’s creativity takes multiple forms. She writes fiction and poetry in addition to creating music. In the same vein, she takes inspiration from several forms of art other than music, from film to poetry to books.
She is looking forward to the newness that comes with putting out a fresh batch of music. She’s tried new things on the guitar and is excited about the new sound and vibe on her new album. Her excitement is accompanied by some fear, however, because life after all is uncertain.
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By: Grace Zhou
It was never Janet Rogers’ plan to become a poet; in fact, she always envisioned herself as a visual artist.
Rogers, a Canadian Mohawk/Tuscarora writer, works in spoken word performance poetry, video poetry, and recorded poetry. Once a student in Stoney Creek, Rogers was the featured guest poet during the recent Hamilton Youth Poet’s Welcome Back poetry slam that following the team’s Winnipeg trip to the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. There, she debuted her latest collection of poems, Totem Poles and Railroads.
She has published four collections, performed on three CD recordings and currently hosts a radio show on CFUV Victoria. Rogers was named Victoria’s Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014 and Writer in Residence for the University of Northern British Columbia in 2015.
Hamilton Youth Poetry team member and fifth-year political science student Chukky Ibe reflected on the team’s decision to have Rogers be the guest speaker during their homecoming slam.
“In Winnipeg, we learned much about the history of Indigenous people in Canada. We learned about the importance of honouring first nation traditions, and claims to the lands we live in,” explained Ibe.
“Janet’s presence and brilliant poetry, helped us share this new found knowledge with our Hamilton poetry community. Her poetry was electric, clever, educational and inspiring. We would not have asked for any other way to return to the Hammer.”
To Rogers, the inspiration for her writing process is instinctive. “I feel a physical inspiration in my body,” said Rogers.
“When I talk about it, I want to point to my gut. Everything starts there. The inspiration usually works its way out when I’m travelling.”
Many of Roger’s poetic pieces demonstrate her enthusiastic passion for native heritage, feminism, and love, among many others. She believes that as a writer, it is her responsibility to discuss meaningful topics.
“Artists record historical archives so people can look back to understand and gain a different perspective than what people would see in the news, on the Internet, or on social media,” explained Rogers.
Like many poets, songwriters and dancers, Rogers recognizes the extent that art can impose on defining history. To maintain the vitality of her work, Rogers has begun to incorporate multimedia into her art form. By introducing musical and visual aspects into her poems, Rogers hopes to generate a different experience not only for herself but also for the audience.
While Rogers attended residencies and fellowships to gain her knowledge of poetry, she stated that universities are an excellent resource in creating a community of support for writers. Rogers believes that the influx of validation from universities on a broad range of poetic practices can interest a variety of students to become involved.
When asked about advice for students with a desire to pursue poetry, Rogers strongly emphasised the importance of building successful publication credits and a “calling card”.
Publishing credits may include any past writing experience, and its establishment will assist in the generation of a strong curriculum vitae. It is relevant to note that self-publishing is commonly validated and therefore can be included within the publishing credits. A “calling card”, as Rogers named it, is a booklet that showcases an individual’s artistic pieces and should be readily available.
One of the most important pieces of advice that Rogers mentioned was the importance of initiative and comprehension of self-worth.
“When I started [writing], I did not wait for anyone to give me permission to call myself a writer.”
Rogers’ newest poem collection Totem Poles and Rail Roads captures the relationship between Indigenous nations and the corporation of Canada with a powerful but intimate voice. Rogers is looking forward to completing more residencies and taking on a new radio project in the near future.
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By: Yara Farran
I’m currently sitting in a near-empty classroom. Some students are participating in an impromptu calculus study session. I can hear the anxiety in their voices as they discuss inverse functions. But I can tell that they’re curious, too — maybe even a little excited.
Calculus is a world of its own. Learning about functions and derivatives unlocks some of life’s mysteries. Calculus is a special language, and these students are speaking their truths through numbers and algebraic formulas. But, this is not a piece about calculus. Not really, anyway.
This is a piece about poetry. Slam poetry, more specifically. And in this moment — me in this near-empty classroom with a group of first-year students fumbling their way through unfamiliar math — I am reminded of the sheer strength and beauty of slam.
I now want to write a poem about my broken ties with calculus, and tell an audience just how good it feels to be understood amongst the clutter of numbers, letters and decimals. Slam is a language too.
If you have yet to be introduced to slam poetry, let me be the first to introduce you. I used to be in your position, but then I was warmly welcomed by Hamilton Youth Poets (HYP). HYP is a community-focused organization that supports emerging young writers, poets and emcees by providing them with leadership opportunities to develop their literary and public speaking skills.
Like calculus, slam poetry makes magic from moments; it’s a delicate balance between literary and performance art. Slam is rhythmic, having an intimate relationship with hip-hop and rap. It’s narrative-based, using the art of storytelling to intervene in the world. Most importantly, it gives a voice to its speaker and creates a space in which the poet and their audience can contribute to critical conversations that lead to tangible change in their communities. In short, slam poetry is a tool — it’s a methodology.
There’s also a competitive undertone to slam poetry. A poetry slam gathers performers under one roof where they present their best pieces of work during multiple rounds. Judges will typically give each performance a score from one to ten, and the audience will make it known whether or not they agree with the scores dished out. They’ll protest to give the poet the love they deserve with extra snaps, claps or comments. Slams are fully immersive and communal experiences. Everyone gets a say.
Ultimately, though, the competition is a means and not an end. We applaud the poet, not the points. We use this forum to celebrate and debate one another, in a respectful and safe environment.
Anyone and everyone can slam. Poetry is a universal language through which people can speak about their unique experiences and contexts. There’s no right way to write, and every poet has their own performance style. Find your voice. Hell, develop your voice and then own your voice. It’s okay if you don’t know where to start. There’s a community of people excited to support you in HYP. If you’re not from Hamilton or the surrounding area, be sure to research local groups dedicated to the literary and performance arts. Slam culture is thriving, so there’s likely a group near you. If not, who’s to say you can’t be the person to start one?
Now, as I finish writing this, the calculus study session is wrapping up. While scribbling on the chalk board, the instructor looks at his students and makes an unexpected comment: “Always allow for serendipity in your life.”
I heard about HYP for the first time during a chance encounter. Four years later I took the plunge and got involved. But, this is not a piece about serendipity. Not really anyway.
HYP is active all-year round. Every third week of the month, we host a poetry slam at the Spice Factory — and the energy is contagious. Around 100 people attend with a mix of familiar and fresh faces. During the upcoming slam, on March 20, HYP will be featuring Winona Linn, a tour-de-force of a spoken word artist that you don’t want to miss. Alongside the competition, there’s also an open mic providing slam-goers with another avenue for poetic expression.
As the spring roars to a start, HYP will host the largest youth poetry festival in Canada, the annual Louder Than A Bomb Canada Poetry Festival (LTABC) from May 5-14. During the 10-day festival, LTABC offers different workshops and competitive events with the goal of fostering creativity and community, by bringing young people together across racial and socio-economic lines. The festival promises to be a massive occasion for all parties involved.
Two special events that take place during LTABC are the University Slam, which is specifically geared towards engaging post-secondary-aged artists, and the Emcee Olympics, where 16 rappers battle in four rounds of competition.
With both events, there are great prizes to be won (like money and an opportunity to record on HYP’s mixtape) and great friends to be made.
Cover Photo Credit: Yara Farran
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If the pen is mightier than the sword, then the reception of some of Canada’s most esteemed Black writers is surely influential. On Feb. 26, the National Reading Campaign hosted an evening of performances, readings and panel discussions in celebration of Black literary achievement.
The event, held at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, was arranged in partnership with TD Bank to help proliferate Black Canadian literature in the lives of every citizen. ‘Black Works Matter: Celebrating Black Literary Achievement’ was also done in parallel in Ottawa at the National Gallery of Canada earlier in the week.
Considering the Art Gallery as its venue, the event’s artistic vision did not fall short, with a special spoken word performance by Faduma Mohamed of RISE Poetry and a live painting by Camille Lauren.
Black Words Matter also featured a number of distinguished African Canadian writers who shared excerpts from their works and engaged in a dynamic discussion with the audience. The panelists included a diverse range of writers such as Canada’s Poet Laureate George Elliot Clarke, internationally renowned poet Lillian Allen, novelist and children’s author Pamela Mordecai and award-winning playwright Djanet Sears.
George Elliot Clarke spoke up regarding the frustrations of Black Canadians being underrepresented in literature. “Growing up, I didn't really see myself reflected in literature until I read African-American poetry. African-American poetry was about police harassment, poverty, racism, all things I recognized in Halifax. It was bizarre connecting to African-American literature in Halifax and not connecting as much to Canadian Literature, so that told me that I needed to have Black Canadian Literature.”
To help fulfill this niche, Clarke went on to writing numerous works in poetry and plays to narrate his experiences as a Black Canadian, such as his Execution Poems (2001), Beatrice Chancy (2009) and Black (2006).
“What really made me recognize myself as a writer,” noted Clark, “was reading about other Black people, reading books by Black authors, books with Black characters and relating this to myself.”
Despite the heightened emphasis on literary achievement for the evening, Clarke makes the careful distinction between awards and literary merit. “There doesn't have to be an easy one-to-one correlation between talent, creativity and the winning of awards. We are in a market that is fueled in part by popularity and prizes which may be richly deserved. At the same time, writers cannot write merely for prizes, writers write for readers and for the joy of expressing ourselves,” he said.
Bridging the topic of reading to the McMaster student body, Clark is supportive of the role that post-secondary education plays in fostering a critical perspective on society. “Because it is only with [education], that the citizens at large can be empowered to make positive decisions about the direction they want to take their society in.”
“I would like to reinforce the idea that reading is a democratic duty of citizens, and on top of all that, it is a very radical act. It is a link to the material, a link to the author. It connects the authors to our own souls, our own body — very richly, deeply and organically.”
Photo Credit: Karim Bassiri/ Photo Contributor
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Despite the growing art scene in Hamilton, poetry has remained the one artistic medium that does not have as much exposure or contributors as the rest.
With music at the helm and painting hanging on its flank, there doesn’t seem to be any established room for poetry in the Hamilton art scene. As someone who appreciates reading and writing poetry, I have found it incredibly difficult to find a space to share and collaborate with other writers here in Hamilton.
It’s disappointing to not have a dedicated space to poetry. Toronto used to have one called Quattro Books that would host readings throughout the summer. It was a great space, but even while it was running it was difficult for me to make the time to go all the way to Toronto from Hamilton. It wasn’t necessarily “inaccessible,” but it was definitely an ordeal to get to. That’s the issue, though: there should be a downtown space like that accessible to Hamiltonians.
There was only one event during Supercrawl this past weekend that had a timeslot for poetry reading, and that was a quiet event that called itself “Liminal Spaces.” There were minimalist signs posted around town, but even those didn’t draw a crowd to the house just off of James Street North. It was, however, exciting for me to see poetry poking its head up somewhere downtown. It made me even hungrier for a dedicated space.
I have done my own looking around downtown, and I have come up virtually empty-handed. Granted, I found a reading group that I attended once. I stumbled upon it at random, and I was rather disappointed. Barring the summer months, Homegrown Hamilton hosts an event known as “Lit Live,” where weathered writers gather to read old material that lacks a liveliness and relevancy needed to draw the younger crowd. I found myself experiencing this lackluster performance amongst a group of people who were all familiar with each other and, of course, the pieces being read from bookmarked books that were read over and over again for years at these nichey types of places.
For a young writer like myself, these tired events are exactly what I want to avoid. I want to remain active in my writing and surround myself with daily inspirations. I do not want to find myself in the same bars reading the same poems to the same people for years on end. I can only hope to keep my eyes peeled for new venues and new groups of my peers to enthusiastically read and write alongside me in Hamilton. I mean, with it being such a fantastic city for artists to flourish, where is the space for the writers? I hope to find an answer to that soon—not just for myself, but for the other writers who are looking for these spaces, too.
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Sarah Kay makes stories into poetry and poetry into therapy, a war cry for the fallen and a fireplace for the restful. No Matter the Wreckage is a collection of her poems which you may have heard spoken out loud at a poetry slam contest or during her iconic TED Talk. For those who yawn at the mere mention of a poem, Kay will change how you see poetry.
Kay shines a light into all the corners of life that are rough and cracked, the ones most of the rest of us try so hard to hide from. In one of her poems, Kay describes people as boats. Some of us are battle ships, others rowboats. Some of us are hole-ridden, but we still say we’re only a little banged up. But all of that doesn’t matter, because “no matter [our] wreckage, there will be someone to find [us] beautiful.”
She tells tales of love – motherly love, passionate love that consumes you, lingering love for a ghost of someone that has moved on, and unconventional love. In “Hands”, Sarah talks about hands holding hands, hands holding pencils, hands making fists. She says hands are about love, not politics, yet “each country sees its fists as warriors/ and others as enemies, even if fists alone are only hands.”
In a moment of anxiety, Kay frets about the importance of making our actions meaningful now because we don’t know how much time we have left. Which words will be our last, and will they be worth it? What about all of our constant doubt? We are so obsessed with the past and enamoured with the future, that we are surprised when the present has passed us by. “The Paradox” takes a look at our constant worry that there is something better that we could be doing, when really we should be thankful for all the things we did, or at least all the things we knew for sure we didn’t want to do.
In one of my personal favourites, “Hand-Me-Downs”, she compares hatred that makes its way down generations to hand-me-down clothes. At first the clothes fit a little loosely, but as we grow into them they mould to us, become a part of us. And so we are part genetics and part expectation, when maybe we should be a little bit less predetermined and always a size too small for our hand-me-downs.
The cover on my copy of No Matter the Wreckage is a drawing of a woman playing an accordion in a boat on choppy waters. Kay is the woman and the accordion her poetry, a dry haven for when the winds become wild and the waters are choppy. Kay should never worry if her last words will be worthwhile, because the words seen in this collection provide reassurance to anyone who reads them.
Photo C/O Michelle Darby-Wyatt
Kacper Niburski
Assistant News Editor
Even though a slam poetry competition may suggest to some the makings of a failed WWE pitch, it currently serves as one of the most progressive forms of modern poetry. McMaster poet Oskar Niburski knows this better than most, as he recently slammed on the national stage.
From Oct. 11 to 14, Oskar Niburski, a second year Arts and Science student, 2010 winner of McMaster’s Poetry and Creative Writing Society’s Annual Contest, and Poetry Club Executive member, competed in the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, the premier event for Canadian spoken word poets.
As part of the Burlington Slam Project, Niburski and fellow teammates went as far as the semi-finals and ultimately scored fifth out of twenty teams from across the nation.
Based in Toronto, the spoken word competition saw teams from Halifax to Victoria. In three bouts of four rounds, each team was given three minutes to say their poems, and five randomly selected judges scored the teams from a range of zero to ten. Poems could either be performed individually or with a teammate.
While Niburski’s national success stands as a testament of both the vibrancy and progression of poetry in Canada, he admits that he wasn’t always the mental-muscled poetic pencil pusher he is now.
“Before, I was boring,” Niburski said in an interview. “Now, I’m boring with poetry.”
Joking as he may be, Niburski’s poetic beginnings were quite accidental.
Inspired by Shane Koyczan, specifically his “We Are More” address at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, Niburski’s poetic aspirations began to swell.
Yet he claims that, “while I was most definitely influenced by other poets, I sat on my creativity like a person on a gold mine.”
But his creativity did not sit idle for long because a year later, Niburski’s pen dug until it struck gold.
“Like all university students do, I was procrastinating studying calculus. Then, all of a sudden, I had idea and I couldn’t stop writing. Driven by the perplexing nature of math, I wrote a poem called, ‘Mental Math’.”
Soon after, he presented the poem at an Arts and Science “Kaffehaus” event, where he received appraisal from students and faculty alike.
His poetic passion only grew with each performance, “because on the microphone, it didn’t matter who I was, what I’ve done, or where I’ve been,” Niburski said. “All that mattered was that moment and, more importantly, what I chose to do in that moment. So I spoke, and oddly enough, people listened.”
“Listen” as they may, Niburski plans to continue his poetic aspirations. Next year, he plans to compete in Saskatoon where the 2011 festival will be held.
