barrage

There’s been a lot going on lately, precisely the stuff I like to blog. The paradox of time… when there’s something to say, there’s no time to say it.

Refracting Pacific Canada dense and interesting. Highlights– Shu-Mei Shih’s preconference colloquium on the end of diaspora, an interesting talk by Moon-Ho Jung on the relationship between the end of slavery and the beginning of anti-Asiatic exclusion acts in the Americas. And of course the reading I organized with David Chariandy, Garry Morse, Rita Wong and Phinder Dulai. Caught a little bit of Solitudes and Globalization, organized by Fine Arts at UBC that same weekend. Great talk by Monika Kin Gagnon on a film of her late father, Charles Gagnon. Some odd responses to a remarkable performance/talk on aboriginality, representation, trauma, violence and specific/local experience by Marcia Crosby. She repeated the performace this weekend in Regina at an amazing and provocative symposium called TransPOSE organized by the Sakewewak collective this past weekend. I played conference respondent. Holy active listening. More on that one shortly, I hope. One of the most inspiring events I’ve attended in awhile.

In between, a reading with me and Maged Zaher at KSW. Read my Ham suite for the first time. It’s about the chimpanzee, also known as Chop Chop Chang, whom NASA sent into space in the Mercury Redstone missions of the 60s. They were testing what human bodies might be able to withstand.

If you’re in Toronto tomorrow, I’m reading at 7pm at York University, and would love to see you.