Antiguan-Quebecoise writer Tawhida Tonya Evanson will be travelling from her hometown of Montreal to perform in Toronto in May 2023 as part of "Ruminations Festival". Evanson is a poet, spoken word arts educator and dancer who has performed widely across Canada and internationally.
Her published biography expands on her expansive expertise, experience, accomplishments and vociferously varied and voluminous interests:
"...a poet, authour, multi-discciplinary artist, producer and arts educator. Her two poetry collections are "Bothism" (2017) and "Nouveau Griot" (2018) and her first novel "Book Of Wings" (2021) was a finalist for the 2022 Nouvel Apport Prize, was on the 2022 CBC Canada Reads longlist and one of Quill and Quire's 2021 Books Of The Year. With a 25-year practice in spoken word poetry, she has performed in over a dozen countries, released four studio albums and six video poems and featured in the award-winning short film "Almost Forgot My Bones". In 2013, she was Poet-Of-Honour at the Canadian Festival Of Spoken Word and received the Golden Beret Award from the League Of Canadian Poets, the national Canadian poets' unions, for her contribution to the genre. She is director of the Calgary, Alberta's Banff Centre for the Arts' Spoken Word Program and Vice-President of the Quebec Writers Federation.
Asked, in an interview, about when she first started seeing herself as a poet, she replied that after writing for many years and realizing how important poetry had become in how she situated herself in the world, that it still took her many years to consider herself as such:
"In 1996 while I was studying English Literature and Creative Writing at Concordia University, I started compilingmy work and self-published my first chapbook called"Blood In, Blood Out". I went on to self-publish five more. And because I have always presented my work orally as a spoken word artist, it is only after my first studio album of poetry and music in 2004 that I really began seeing myself as a poet and not just an occasional writer of poems".
Her first novel "Book of Wings" has been described as "a sweeping allusive novel (in which) the celebrated poet, dervish and oral storyteller comes to term with what it means to stand on one's own two feet in an uncertain world. Tracing a global journey, as a relationship with a loverand travel partner disintegrates, an artist finds herself on a path toward personal discovery and spiritual fulfillment that leads her deep into the North African landscape".
But how did she get interested in poetry as a teenager, in high school, growing up in Montreal, Canada?
"Yes", she says, "I read poetry in high school and it was mainly poetry by musicians because music has always played a central role in my life. When I was fifteen, I listened to "The Doors" day and night and had several books of poetry by Jim Morrison. I still have my copy of "Wilderness" which contains one of my favourite pieces of his called ""Signals".
When I was sixteen, I had to do a schoolproject on a famous Canadian and my father suggested Leonard Cohen. I had no idea who he was and so it was a fantastic discovery. My project had to be prtesented creatively outside of the standard essay format. So, I wrote an essay about Leonard Cohen, recorded the text on cassette interspersed with samples of his songs, and handed in my my first spoken-word/project. It was 1998 and I still have that cassette."
Born and raised in Tiohtia:ke/Montreal of Afro-Antiguan and Quebecoise descent, Enanson is at work on an Afrofuturistic concert documentary set for release in 2023 and moonlights as a whirling dervish".
Evenson performs at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, May 26, 2023
