100,000 Poets for Change – Sunday, September 24th, 4 p.m., Free Times Cafe

100,000 Poets for Change – Sunday, September 24th, 4 p.m., Free Times Cafe

100,000 Poets for Change, Toronto Edition – Sunday, September 24th, 2023 at 4 pm, Free Times Cafe

Our collective runs this event as a fundraiser for Shannen’s Dream. Named in loving memory of Shannen Koostachin, Shannen’s Dream is about making sure that First Nations children and youth have the same education opportunities as others but in ways that respect their language and culture.
The event is hosted by Pat Connors who will share poetry for change along with Brenda Clews, Jeannine M. Pitas, Charles C. Smith, Dane Swan, Georgia Wilder and myself.
Hope you can join us at Free Times Cafe, 320 College St., Toronto.

You can find out more about Shannen’s Dream and donate via the link/button to the right.

 

 

REBELLION BOX by Hollay Ghadery

REBELLION BOX by Hollay Ghadery

Rebellion Box by Hollay Ghadery

After reading Jennifer Hosein’s gorgeous poetry collection, A Map of Rain Days, I knew I wanted to see if she’d blurb my collection, Rebellion Box. Her thoughtfulness—and the concomitant resplendence and caliginosity of her work—made me think that if anyone could understand living in contrasts, it would be her.
Lucky for me, this generous and astoundingly talented artist said yes.
What Jennifer had to say about Rebellion Box:
In Rebellion Box, Hollay Ghadery takes us on a captivating journey through womanhood, motherhood, a history that is “not in the past … taking up/space, everywhere.” Hold tight to this book, turn its pages, and see the days anew.
—Jennifer Hosein, A Map of Rain Days

Brockton Writers Series 14.09.22: Jennifer Hosein blog post

Brockton Writers Series 14.09.22: Jennifer Hosein blog post

Brockton Writers Series 14.09.22: Jennifer Hosein’s blog post

HEART

     As a writer and visual artist, my work tends to overlap. In difficult times, I lean into one or the other, or both, for sustenance. Therefore, when my mother’s aortic valve needed replacing, I began to write frantically about our time together.

     After her passing, I did not know how to survive, so I painted. Madly. I painted my mother from old black-and-white photos and found her in the hours that I spent looking into her face. I am still painting her, nine years later, still privileged to be in her company. She never leaves me!

     I’d like to share a video of the poem “Heart” from my book A Map of Rain Days, as well as an excerpt from a work-in-progress:

Excerpt:

January 5th:

  Tomorrow is my daughter’s birthday. I promised her a cake before midnight, and I do everything I can to stop the car from turning me back home, my heart pounding against the steering wheel. But my mother is waiting by the window. She doesn’t know, and then she does, tossing fragments of her old life into plastic bags: a handful of photographs, a miscellany of yellowed papers, a tattered jewelry box, too-tight clothes, slippers.

     I am paralyzed. I cannot pull myself up off the floor where I spent much of the summer in a pile of sleeping bags and pillows, paper and pencils. There will never be another summer like that: doctor’s waiting rooms, Chinese supermarkets, creamy popsicles from the Pakistani grocer’s, trips to the lake. Sometimes, then, I felt caged. Now, it’s all I want.

     My aunt’s house is warm, but my mother’s new bedroom is wintry and smells of mothballs and cat. I spray perfume into corners, place a few of my mother’s photographs on the dresser top, tune the clock radio to the jazz station we listened to on dusk drives from my aunt’s house back to my mother’s apartment. How I will miss those drives! Helping my mother dress for bed, I take her socks off, pull a flannel nightgown over her head, kiss her and tuck her into the cold, stinking night before I go.

     I race down the Don Valley Parkway toward January 6th, but there is a car rolled over on the highway. I run in the door at 11:54 p.m., just in time to put candles on the cake and sing “Happy Birthday” to my daughter. Love fills me up like a balloon, so full and stretched and thin am I.

Brockton Writers Series, September 14, 2022

Brockton Writers Series, September 14, 2022

Brockton Writers Series – Wednesday, September 14, 2022 at 6:30 p.m.

As we adapt with current pandemic regulations, we’re happy to announce our event will be hosted in-person at the Glad Day Bookshop, located at 499 Church St., Toronto, starting in September! We will also live stream the event on the Brockton Writers Series YouTube channel!
Guest Speaker: Kathy Friedman on “Writing & Survival: Some Tips for Mad, Sad, and Neurodiverse Folks”
Readers:
Oubah Osman
Jennifer Hosein
Kimia Eslah
Farzana Doctor
The reading is PWYC (suggested $3-$5) and features a Q&A with the writers afterward. Books are available for sale.
Many thanks to the Ontario Arts Council for their support.