IN-PERSON READING | Ripping down half the trees - Evan J

Thunder Bay Art Gallery, 1080 Keewatin Street, Thunder Bay, ON
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Join Evan J for an in-person reading from his new poetry collection, Ripping down half the trees.

Evan J (he/him) is from Manitoba and now lives and writes in the town of Sioux Lookout, Ontario.

ABOUT THE book

One out of every twenty students in the adult education classes Evan J teaches in Sioux Lookout, Ontario, dies every year; the surviving students are often afflicted by severe racism, poverty, addictions, and violence. Ripping down half the trees engages with these struggles, offering a catalogue of experiences specific to the remote regions of Canada.

Tearing down the façade of Canadian justice and equality to expose the racism, colonialism, sexism, prejudicial capitalism, and ableism at the nation's core, these are poems about cruelty, both the obvious and the ambient. They are unflinching in their sociopolitical criticism, upset by unchanging systemic oppressions, unable to overlook the threat of the author's white skin, unwilling to forget Justin Trudeau in blackface. And while they acknowledge the limits of the author's privileged perspective, they are never willing to let the perpetrating structures of this cruelty go unchecked.