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Shab-e She’r Poetry Month Celebration
April 26, 2022, 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM EDT
$5 – $10
Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night) is Toronto’s most diverse and brave monthly poetry reading and open mic series. It was founded by Bänoo Zan in November 2012, two years after she immigrated to Canada. Since then, we have been bridging the gap among diverse Toronto poetry communities and have so far featured more than a hundred poets, musicians, and dancers. And close to 2000 people have shared their poetry, music, songs and stories on our open mic. We have featured poets from different ethnicities, nationalities, ages, genders, sexual orientations, religions (or lack thereof), and poetic voices, styles and visions. Shab-e She’r core values are diversity and freedom of expression.
Featured poets: Armand Garnet Ruffo & Robyn Kaur Sidhu
Host: Bänoo Zan
Open Mic Sign-up: 6:45 EST
Armand Garnet Ruffo was raised in remote northern Ontario and is a band member of the Chapleau Cree First Nation. He is recognized as a major contributor to both contemporary Indigenous literature and Indigenous literary scholarship in Canada. In 2016, he was awarded a Honourary Life Membership Award from the National Council of the League of Canadian Poets. In 2020, he was awarded the Latner Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize. His publications include Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing Into Thunderbird (2014) and Treaty# (2019), both finalists for Governor General’s Literary Awards. He is currently the Queen’s National Scholar in Indigenous Literatures at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
Robyn Kaur Sidhu (she/he/they) is a Queer, mad, chronically ill, Punjabi-Canadian spoken word poet who is constantly pretending to know what they want to do with their life. They have performed on stages in Canada, America and the United Kingdom. They are a director for the Voices of Today youth poetry festival, and the creative director of Hot Damn it’s a Queer Slam. They are also a youth educator of consent, race, 2SLGBTQ+ identity, and poetry. You can find Robyn in vintage cardigans and trying to be gentle with themself.