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The poems of spoken word activist Jillian Christmas's are expressive of her family history, queer lineage, and "the political landscape of a racialized life." In response to Jillian Christmas's first book, The Gospel of Breaking (Arsenal $14.95), novelist David Chariandy described her spoken word texts as "incantatory and disarming, sensitive and cerebral, fiercely defiant and courageously tender." In an interview with Rob Taylor for Read Local, she said, "On the page, that immediate feedback is absent, but there is still opportunity to create an arc, a flow that moves the reader from one emotional landscape to another. As for the applause, I have an excellent imagination."
Jillian Christmas, who teaches poetry through word play exercises and whose work often focusses on anti-oppression initiatives, has developed programs and workshops in partnership with the Toronto Poetry Project, UBC, Vancouver Opera, Wordplay, Brendan McLeod's Travelling Slam, CULTCH Mentorship and the Museum of Anthropology.
Born and raised in Markham, Ontario, with lineage from Trinidad and Tobago, Christmas served for six years as Artistic Director of Verses Festival of Words. Her writing has appeared in Huffington Post, Matrix New Queer Writing (issue 98), The Post Feminist Post, Plenitude Magazine, Room and The Great Black North anthology edited by Valerie Mason-John and Kevan Anthony Cameron. "I love hard as I know how," she writes.
BOOKS
The Gospel of Breaking (Arsenal 2020) $14.95 9781551527970
[BCBW 2020]
Jillian Christmas, who teaches poetry through word play exercises and whose work often focusses on anti-oppression initiatives, has developed programs and workshops in partnership with the Toronto Poetry Project, UBC, Vancouver Opera, Wordplay, Brendan McLeod's Travelling Slam, CULTCH Mentorship and the Museum of Anthropology.
Born and raised in Markham, Ontario, with lineage from Trinidad and Tobago, Christmas served for six years as Artistic Director of Verses Festival of Words. Her writing has appeared in Huffington Post, Matrix New Queer Writing (issue 98), The Post Feminist Post, Plenitude Magazine, Room and The Great Black North anthology edited by Valerie Mason-John and Kevan Anthony Cameron. "I love hard as I know how," she writes.
BOOKS
The Gospel of Breaking (Arsenal 2020) $14.95 9781551527970
[BCBW 2020]
