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On Edge Reading Series | Lillian Allen

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Ron Burnett Library + Learning Commons

Lillian Allen’s first album of poetry with music, Revolutionary Tea Party, was proclaimed a Landmark Album by Ms. Magazine in 1991. She won a Juno award for that album and for Conditions Critical. Freedom & Dance, her third album; her 2012 release ANXIETY; and her recording for children and young people Nothing But a Hero received critical acclaim.

Allen has published several ground-breaking books of poetry – her first trailblazing book of poetry Rhythm An’ Hardtimes (a Canadian best seller), Psychic Unrest, and Women Do This Everyday. Her work for young people includes three books: Why Me, If You See Truth, and Nothing But a Hero.

Allen is internationally recognized as a godmother of dub lyricism, rap, and spoken word poetry. A pioneering exponent of the highly politicized form of dub poetry created in Jamaica by Oku, popularized in Britain by Linton Kewsi Johnson and Benjamin Zephaniah. Allen embedded feminist voice in the literary dub art form. Founder of the visionary Toronto International Dub Poetry Festival and a variety of cultural organizations such as youth empowering Fresh Arts, Allen has spent over three decades writing, publishing, and performing her work to appreciative audiences around the globe.

A Q+A will follow the reading

The On Edge Series as been running at Emily Carr since 2002. In conjunction with our creative writing class, it introduces audiences to writers who delve into literature—performance and praxis—to address critical social and cultural concerns. Many of the featured artists use their writing to explore the intersections of language and form with issues of social inequality (gender, race, sexuality, class), ecology, cultural history, and more. Our vision is built on an understanding that cultural diversity, social justice, and literary excellence work closely together to nourish a community.