Speakeasy Reading Series – October 18th, 2023

Speakeasy Reading Series – October 18th, 2023

I am honoured to be a part of the Speakeasy Reading Series reading on Wednesday, October 18th.

The reading will be online and in-person at Glad Day Bookshop starting at 7 pm EST.

Registration is only required if you will be joining on Zoom.

The event is free, with a suggested donation of $5-15 at the door (all proceeds go directly to student readers). No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Masks are mandatory when not eating or drinking. There will be beverages (including alcohol) available for purchase.

Glad Day Bookshop is located at 499 Church St, Toronto, ON M4Y 2C6, and is just a short walk from Wellesley Station. Street parking is also available.

With readings from:
Kristyn Dunnion
Britta Badour
Jennifer Hosein
Alya Somar
Noa Raanan

Hosted by Alex Cafarelli and Chi-Leung Lee

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts through The Writers’ Union of Canada. This event is produced with the support of the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council and the League of Canadian Poets.

 

 

FOUR WOMEN, FOUR VOICES poetry reading and art show, July 30, 2023

FOUR WOMEN, FOUR VOICES poetry reading and art show, July 30, 2023

 

FOUR WOMEN, FOUR VOICES

Hello poets, poetry lovers, artists, art lovers! Join us on Sunday, July 30th from 12:30 to 4:30 pm in the Living Room at the Tranzac Club for four unique women’s voices – Clara Blackwood, Brenda Clews, Jennifer Hosein and Archna Sahni. There will be a small art show with paintings by Clara, Brenda and Jennifer. The art show begins at 12:30 pm and readings begin at 2:00 pm. Archna will show her poetry film “Love Poem for Toronto,” her spiritual autobiography, as part of her reading. It promises to be an exciting afternoon! And yes, we will have free refreshments.

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.

Review of A Map of Rain Days by Ivy Reiss of The Artis Magazine

Review of A Map of Rain Days by Ivy Reiss of The Artis Magazine

Jennifer Hosein’s poetry is relevant, emotional, evocative, and beautiful. Jennifer’s poetry shows us what it’s like to be a person of colour in Canada without allowing identity to overshadow poetic craft. Her work combines the power of short story with the music of poetry, invoking the ubiquitous human experiences of losing people we love and finding our place in the world. Jennifer Hosein’s debut collection A Map of Rain Days at once illustrates the commonality and alienation that is characteristic of contemporary existence. We know Jennifer as a visual artist, now it is time to meet her as a poet.

—Ivy Reiss, The Artis magazine, Sept 02nd 2020.