On Sunday the 17th, I have my first reading in St. John’s coming up. Here are the details, as drawn from the Facebook event:
The Anti-Racism Coalition and The Quilted Collective Present
Migrant Spring: A Day of Migrant Writing and Spoken Word
When: Sunday, March 17 at 2:00
Where: MUN University Centre, The Landing (UC3015)
My thanks to The Anti-Racism Coalition of Newfoundland and Labrador, The Quilted Collective, and Sobia Shaikh for this reading opportunity.
I’ve never appeared on a bill of migrant writing before. Back in Australia, I had to clarify on so many occasions that I wasn’t a migrant that for a second when I saw this reading flyer, I instinctively thought, “But I’m not a migrant.” And then I realized, “Oops—obviously I am a migrant to this country!”
It was a strange lapse because I feel my migrant status a lot here. And moving to Ktaqmkuk (“Newfoundland”) especially, I feel in some ways like a newcomer all over again—things are so different here and the cultural translation can be tiring.
One of the hardest things I find about being a migrant is my weirdly abbreviated life history. Who I was and what I did prior to August 2015 is submerged knowledge here. But at this reading I will give a glimpse of what I do as an artist, and this part of me is definitely a way to better know me.
