Examining displacement and the diasporic struggles in identifying home and belonging, these three poets untangle language to find the fine threads that run through time and space and weave into life experiences.

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Type: Non-fiction, In Conversation

Moderator: Tāriq Malik

Readers:  Ayomide Bayowa, Gills (Wolsak and Wynn) | Winston Le, translanguaging | Laila Malik, archipelago (Book*hug Press)

About The Moderator

For the past four decades, Vancouver-based author Tāriq Malik has worked across poetry, fiction, and visual arts to distill immersive and compelling narratives that are always original and intriguing. He writes intensely in response to the world in flux around him and of his place in its shadows. Born in Pakistani Punjab, he came reluctantly late to these shores. He first had to survive three wars, two migrations, and two decades of slaving in the Kuwaiti desert to get here. In Canada, his careers have included chemical engineering and a lifetime as a marginalized poet and writer of fictions. He doggedly believes in his passion for distilling the alchemy of light/chroma/pixel, but mostly text, and that his bouts of furious thinking about life and words can all be happily and gainfully combined. He loves landscapes, bodies of living water large and small, and readers and listeners equally, and claims he writes so that he has something to read to his tribe on Open Mike Nights, at the local Poet's Corner, or on the hallowed grounds of local libraries. He sums up his life as poetry by other means, and considers himself a serial mudskipper cast in this incarnation as a mohajir/refu-jee. Focusing on Vancouver and the Pacific Northwest, he reframes the familiar by teasing fresh and unexpected perspectives on the local intersectionality with historical and post-colonial India in general and Punjab's province in particular. He claims his working English is a borrowed tongue inflected with his inherited Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi, and Arabic languages. Even though his published fictions, Rainsongs of Kotli (short stories) and Chanting Denied Shores (novel), challenged entanglements in the barbed wires of boundaries, he seems to have finally found 'home' in downtown Vancouver and has no plans to move elsewhere. Tāriq's most recent publication is his poetry collection: Exit Wounds (Caitlin Press, 2022).

About The Readers

Laila Malik is a desisporic writer in Adobigok, traditional land of Indigenous communities that include the Anishinaabe, Seneca, Mohawk Haudenosaunee, and Wendat. Her debut poetry collection, archipelago (book*hug press, 2023), was listed as one of CBC’s 2023 poetry collections to watch for. Malik’s writing has been published in Canadian and international magazines, longlisted for five different literary prizes and nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. She was a fellow at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity for her novel in progress.

Winston Lê is a Vietnamese-Chinese poet and interdisciplinary artist who resides in Langley, BC. His writing has been featured in Sparkling Tongue Press, Ekphrasis Magazine, pagefiftyone, and filing Station. His poetic practice encompasses different modalities concerned with language, including receptive bilingualism, poetic dictation, speculative poetics, and asemic writing. His debut chapbook, translanguaging was shortlisted for the 2018 Broken Pencil Zine Awards. translanguaging is now curated as part of the special collections at Colby College Libraries in Maine.

BAYOWA, Ayomide is an award-winning poet and absurd playwright with a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre and Creative Writing from the University of Toronto. Currently, He serves as the poet laureate of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada and is the author of 'Gills,' a collection of poetry published by Wolsak and Wynn, Spring 2023. His creative talents are recognized with numerous accolades, including being named a top-ten gold entrant of the 9th Open Eurasian Literary Festival and Book Forum in the United Kingdom. From being a finalist of the 2018 and 2019 Christopher Okigbo Inter-university Poetry Prize and the maiden Frontier Poetry Global Poetry Prize (2023) to being a longlist for both the 2018 Nigerian Students Poetry Prize, UnSerious Collective Fellowship and the 2021 Adroit Journal Poetry Prize. Additionally, I he won first place in the 2020 July Open Drawer Poetry Contest, the June/July 2021 edition of the bimonthly Brigitte Poirson Poetry Contest, and second place in the 2021 K. Valerie Connor Poetry Contest's Student Category. His works has appeared in a wide array of highly regarded literary magazines: AFAS Review (University of Ibadan), Windsor Review, Kalahari Review, IceFloe Press, Africanwriter, Barren Magazine, Agbowó, Guesthouse Lit, Stone of Madness Press, Shallow Tales Review, Ampersand Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Offing and Beyond Words Literary Magazine among others. He is the editor-in-chief of Echelon Poetry and currently read poetry for the Adroit Journal, U.S. In his writing, he steers away from self to prioritize the representational relevance of people like himself; especially migrants, and their integral role in the Canadian context.