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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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.
