Eighth & Eight Creative Spaces presents No One of Us Alone
No One of Us Alone is an evening of poetry, centering on the ways that art supports our navigation of mental health on an individual and community level.
Featuring Brendan McLeod and Jillian Christmas reading from their new books, with New Westminster Poet Laureate Elliott Slinn.
Followed by a moderated talkback and book signing.
The event will be held at Studio 1B. Tickets are $10
Jillian Christmas is an artist, creative facilitator, curator, consultant, and advocate in the arts community. She is the long-time spoken word curator of the Vancouver Writers Fest, and former artistic director of Verses Festival of Words. Utilizing an anti-oppressive lens, Jillian has performed and facilitated workshops across North America. She is the author of The Gospel of Breaking (Arsenal Pulp Press 2020), and the children’s book, The Magic Shell (Flamingo Rampant Press 2022). She lives on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam people (Vancouver, BC).
In his debut poetry collection, award-winning writer and musician Brendan McLeod tracks the COVID-19 pandemic. What began as a personal project quickly blossomed into an ambitious record of society’s new rules, moral predicaments, and emotional upheavals. First published by Write Bloody North online, where it immediately sparked conversations around the social inequalities the pandemic exploited, select poems appear here in refined form that add another level of meaning to the visceral reactions of the originals. Funny, harrowing, and compassionate, Friends Without Bodies mines the irony at the heart of the pandemic – that the greatest tool we have to protect ourselves, and others, is our own loneliness.
Poet Elliott Slinn was named New Westminster’s fifth (and youngest) Poet Laureate in June 2021, actively beginning his tenure in August. Slinn was born and raised in the Queen’s Park neighbourhood of New Westminster and still resides in New West today.
