May 16, 17, 18
7:00 pm at all locations

explorWORD – RED SILK POETRY Reading Series

Program sponsored by CANADA POST CORPORATION

Featuring the launch of Red Silk: An Anthology of South Asian Women
Poets, with Rishma Dunlop and Priscila Uppal, (eds.) Hiro Boga, Kuldip
Gill, Sonnet LAbbé, Danielle Lagah, Sharanpal Ruprai,Sandeep Sanghera,
Shauna Singh Baldwin, Proma Tagore; and special guest Mani Rao. And
readings by South Asian Fiction Writers: Anar Ali, Jaspreet Singh,
Sikeena Karmali.

As rich and exuberant as its title, Red Silk, an anthology of poems
by women who identify as South Asian, is an important contribution to
the growing body of South Asian Canadian literature. Ably edited by
Rishma Dunlop and Priscila Uppal, with a superb “Introduction,” Red
Silk launches some powerful South Asian female, and feminist, voices on
the Canadian literary scene.

These poets explore the complexity, diversity and heterogeneity of
South Asian Canadian identity by examining their relationships, as
women, to the South Asian cultures that they live in their bones,
memory and daily lives. These poems enact how an ordinary household
object, a word, a smell, a gesture, can all trigger a cascade of
memories and responses soaked in cultural significance, and mark one as
South Asian. Drawing on the deep well of South Asian cultural memory
and its semiotic treasure house, these poets redefine and expand both
Canadian culture and Canadian literature.

Experience Red Silk Readings in Vancouver, Burnaby, and Richmond:

May 16 – Vancouver Public Library – Main Branch

May 17 – Simon Fraser University, Burnaby – WAC Bennett Library

May 18 – City of Richmond – City Hall Council Chambers