Celebrating the depth and diversity of BC publishing
On Tuesday, November 7th at 6pm PDT / 9pm EDT, join Massy Arts Society and a collective of brilliant poet organizers for Under The Table Open Mic Series, featuring Sheniz Janmohamed.
Zoom room and sign-up opens at 5:45 PDT / 8:45 EDT, show starts at 6pm PDT / 9pm EDT
(we run on crip time with the understanding that bodies and brains aren’t always on schedule)
We invite you to sign up for the open mic as Under The Table welcomes us to laugh, cry, celebrate and sit in the richness of queer and disabled life, writing and poetics.
This event will unfortunately not have ASL interpretation. We are working to secure funding to continue having ASL at future events.
Please join the zoom room with the same email you used on eventbrite. If you have any issues joining please email us at underthetablepoetry@gmail.com
About Under The Table:
Under the Table is an open mic series centering disabled and/or queer poets. This series was dreamed up out of a desire to share work, experience art, and connect with community in a covid safer, more accessible, and anti-oppressive space. Partnering with Massy Voices and Kickstart Disability Arts & Culture, Under the Table Open Mic Series will be on the first Tuesday of each month with some events in person at Massy Arts Society and others virtually on zoom.
Under the Table is a space where the richness that is queer and disabled life and art, flourishes and finds a home. It’s a space to share work that’s asking to be told, but might not be welcomed in other spaces, if you are able to access those spaces at all. It’s a space where being queer and/or disabled (whether or not those specific words resonate for you) makes your work a brilliant fit, regardless of how queer or disabled you think the poetry you wish to share is, how connected you are to disabled and/or queer community, and whether you feel disabled and/or queer “enough” to participate. It’s a space to witness and engage with the work of incredible artists, anywhere on their path of sharing their work–from the person who has never shared in front of an audience, to artists who have read or performed work many times. It’s a space where there’s room to be scared, and choose to be in community, share, and engage with others’ work. It’s a space where we don’t claim to know all the answers, but are willing to be in the messy, nuanced space of learning together. Come to “Under the Table” to laugh, cry, celebrate, sit in discomfort, feel understood, and be together.
This event has been made possible by Massy Voices, The Government of Canada, The League of Canadian Poets, and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted virtually via zoom. Automatic captioning will be turned on, we recognize automatic captioning is imperfect. We are working towards securing funding for CART to improve the quality of captioning. We ask anyone speaking or performing to provide a visual description for blind and low vision audience members. We also ask that people don’t message in the chat during poems, to increase accessibility for people using screen readers.
With Author & Featured Poet:
Sheniz Janmohamed was born and raised in Tkaronto with ancestral ties to Kenya and India. A poet, artist educator and nature artist, Sheniz is a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing program at the University of Guelph.
Sheniz has been performing her poetry for 15 years, including features at the Jaipur Literature Festival, Aga Khan Museum, and Vancouver Writers Fest to name a few. Her writing has been published in Arc Poetry Magazine, Descant and Canthius and she is a regular reviewer for Quill & Quire. She has three collections of poetry, published by Mawenzi House: Bleeding Light (2010), Firesmoke (2014) and Reminders on the Path (2021).
Her nature art has been featured across Turtle Island, including the National Arts Centre, MOCA and the Art Gallery of Mississauga.
A recipient of the Lois Birkenshaw-Fleming Creative Teaching Scholarship, Sheniz holds an Artist Educator Mentor certification from the Royal Conservatory. She visits dozens organizations and schools to offer performances, talks and workshops in poetry and nature art.
Sheniz served as the Writer-in-Residence at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus (Winter/Spring 2022), and is currently working on her fourth book, a collection of hybrid essays about her grandmother’s garden in the highlands of Kenya.