On Friday, May 5th at 6:00pm, join Massy Arts Society, Massy Books, and Nightwood Editions for KFC & Poetry, the launch of Old Gods by Conor Kerr, alongside fellow celebrated poets Brandi Bird & Molly Cross-Blanchard. You are invited into the constant motion of Conor Kerr’s poetic work, as his poignant verses leap across landscapes and notions of time.
About The Book: Old Gods (Nightwood Editions): Conor Kerr’s poetry is in constant motion. 4Runners streak through the night, racing with coyotes and roving across the land. Buses travel from town to town, from one memory to another, from past to present. Friends and lovers search for each other on Instagram and find nothing. And always the natural world travels alongside: the watching magpies, woodpeckers and cedar waxwings, the coyotes and porcupines. Family is the crisp wings of mallard ducks flying at dawn, just as it is a game of crib, a Mario Kart race, a dance party. Old Gods defies colonialism on the Prairies. Kerr situates his reader in the Métis mindset: the old gods of the land are alive within the rivers, the birds, the hills and the prairies that surround us, and they’ll always be here.
Featuring
Conor Kerr is a Métis Ukrainian writer. A member of the Métis Nation of Alberta, he is a descendant of the Lac Ste. Anne Métis and the Papaschase Cree Nation. His Ukrainian family are settlers in Treaty Four and Six territories in Saskatchewan. In 2020 he received The Fiddlehead’s Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize and in 2021 was awarded The Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize. His work has been anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry 2020 and Best Canadian Stories 2020 and published in literary magazines across Canada. He is the author of the poetry collection, Old Gods and An Explosion of Feathers and the novel Avenue of Champions, which was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award, won a 2022 ReLit Award and was longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
With Guest Reader
Brandi Bird is an Indigiqueer Saulteaux, Cree and Métis writer and editor from Treaty 1 territory. They currently live and learn on Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh & Musqueam land. Their work has been published in Catapult, Poetry is Dead, Room Magazine and others. Their first book of poetry “The All + Flesh” is coming out with House of Anansi in Fall of 2023. They like to listen to the same song over and over again and love their three cats Babydoll, Burt and Etta.
Host
Molly Cross-Blanchard is a white and Métis writer living on unceded Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Wautith territory. Her poetry collection is “Exhibitionist,” and she teaches creative writing at KPU.