The Resilience: Resistance Blog series, curated by poet Avleen K. Mokha features 5 posts authored by BIPOC artists on the theme of resilience and resistance from their perspectives and lived experiences.
Curated by Avleen K. Mokha
Avleen K Mokha, also known as Mirabel, is a Montreal-based poet who grew up in Mumbai, India. Mirabel holds a B.A. in English Literature and Linguistics from McGill University and was the 2019 winner of McGill’s Peterson Memorial Prize for Creative Writing. Mirabel’s poems have appeared in carte blanche, Yolk Literary, and Dream Pop, with work forthcoming in Glass: A Journal of Poetry. Her writing has been supported by the Quebec Writers’ Federation Fresh Pages Initiative for underrepresented writers. Presently, Mirabel is the spring editorial intern at Pittsburgh-based Creative Nonfiction. Mirabel also serves as an editor and literary liaison for Persephone’s Daughters, a magazine devoted to survivors of abuse. Mirabel’s debut poetry chapbook, DREAM FRAGMENTS, was published by Montreal’s Cactus Press in fall 2020.
The Series
In our notion of diversity, does truth have a place, or do we make our decisions to spare from discomfort those who do not want to come to terms with the legacy of injustice in their own communities?
What 18-year-old me did not know is that ultimately, there is nothing you can quite fully escape, nothing you can quite fully repress or run away from; one day or another, the ghosts living inside of you start rattling the bones of your present self, demanding that you listen to them and to their grief.
For the third piece in the carte blanche blog series featuring BIPOC artists, we interviewed Tawhida Tanya Evanson, an Antiguan-Québecoise artist based in Montreal. Tawhida has published two poetry collections. Her first work of fiction, Book of Wings, is out this year from Véhicule Press. The following questions center around the topics of resilience and resistance.
The fourth piece in our resilience: resistance Blog series is by poet and musician Brandon Wint in a stunning soundscape connected to memory, healing, empowerment, and Wint’s relationship to his Mother and her joy.
The final piece in our Resilience: Resistance Blog Series is written by the series curator Mirabel aka Avleen Mokha. It is an exploration of how BIPOC artists are “living on borrowed time…because time is money.” Avleen explores how this limits artists’ opportunities and development in literary spheres where it is still taboo to discuss money its impact on BIPOC artists.
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Disclaimer: The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of the carte blanche editorial team, the QWF, or its Board of Directors.