Keynote: Canisia Lubrin
Title: After-End: Black Freedoms and the Live Moment
Our dynamic refusals exist in the honest wastelands of European coloniality and simultaneously beyond them. Drawing from recent happenings, this keynote wonders toward some of our present entanglements: what they reveal about the ruins of colonialism’s rational forms, and what we can learn from the live moments that hold the potential to transform these wastelands. Can we avoid the seductive-performative contexts of thought, solidarity, and freedom, if our cumulative knowledges also instruct our distinct desires? What practices cause us to arrive at the greater, shared possibilities of a freedom that envisions us whole, if our ability to anticipate future and present parallel what is yet to be imagined? With invitation and uncertainty, this keynote will attempt to learn from some evolving practices of Black freedom.
Who is Canisia Lubrin?
Canisia Lubrin is an acclaimed poet, editor and writer with work published in eight languages. Her writings include Code Noir (Knopf, 2023) a book of short stories based on King Louis XIV’s historic Codes Noirs, and the poetry collection Voodoo Hypothesis (Wolsak & Wynn, 2017), named a CBC Best Book and listed for the Gerald Lampert award, Pat Lowther, and Raymond Souster awards. The Dyzgraphxst (M&S, 2020) is Lubrin’s book-length poem whose honours include the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Derek Walcott Prize and finalist for the Governor General’s Award and Trillium Book Award for Poetry. In 2021, Lubrin was awarded the prestigious Windham-Campbell prize for a body of work and Canada Council’s Joseph S. Stauffer prize for mid-career literary achievement. Twice longlisted for the Journey Prize, anthologies that include her fiction were finalists for the Toronto Book Award and the Shirley Jackson Award. She is a 2022 Civitella Ranieri Fellow and a 2022 Literature Haus LCB resident. Lubrin has held residencies at the Banff Centre, Queen’s University, and an inaugural appointment as 2021 Shaftesbury Writer in Residence at Victoria College, University of Toronto. In 2021, the Globe & Mail named Lubrin Poetry Ambassador of the Year. She was a member of the Canadian Guest of Honour delegate to the Frankfurt Bookfair. She completed her MFA at the University of Guelph, where she also teaches in the School of English and Theatre Studies and is the incoming coordinator of the MFA in Creative Writing.
Title: After-End: Black Freedoms and the Live Moment
Our dynamic refusals exist in the honest wastelands of European coloniality and simultaneously beyond them. Drawing from recent happenings, this keynote wonders toward some of our present entanglements: what they reveal about the ruins of colonialism’s rational forms, and what we can learn from the live moments that hold the potential to transform these wastelands. Can we avoid the seductive-performative contexts of thought, solidarity, and freedom, if our cumulative knowledges also instruct our distinct desires? What practices cause us to arrive at the greater, shared possibilities of a freedom that envisions us whole, if our ability to anticipate future and present parallel what is yet to be imagined? With invitation and uncertainty, this keynote will attempt to learn from some evolving practices of Black freedom.
Who is Canisia Lubrin?
Canisia Lubrin is an acclaimed poet, editor and writer with work published in eight languages. Her writings include Code Noir (Knopf, 2023) a book of short stories based on King Louis XIV’s historic Codes Noirs, and the poetry collection Voodoo Hypothesis (Wolsak & Wynn, 2017), named a CBC Best Book and listed for the Gerald Lampert award, Pat Lowther, and Raymond Souster awards. The Dyzgraphxst (M&S, 2020) is Lubrin’s book-length poem whose honours include the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Derek Walcott Prize and finalist for the Governor General’s Award and Trillium Book Award for Poetry. In 2021, Lubrin was awarded the prestigious Windham-Campbell prize for a body of work and Canada Council’s Joseph S. Stauffer prize for mid-career literary achievement. Twice longlisted for the Journey Prize, anthologies that include her fiction were finalists for the Toronto Book Award and the Shirley Jackson Award. She is a 2022 Civitella Ranieri Fellow and a 2022 Literature Haus LCB resident. Lubrin has held residencies at the Banff Centre, Queen’s University, and an inaugural appointment as 2021 Shaftesbury Writer in Residence at Victoria College, University of Toronto. In 2021, the Globe & Mail named Lubrin Poetry Ambassador of the Year. She was a member of the Canadian Guest of Honour delegate to the Frankfurt Bookfair. She completed her MFA at the University of Guelph, where she also teaches in the School of English and Theatre Studies and is the incoming coordinator of the MFA in Creative Writing.