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This session is held in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Gallery School (Room 020)

Led by Phillip Dwight Morgan

Phillip Dwight Morgan is a first-generation Canadian writer of Jamaican heritage. His poetry and short essays have appeared in Briarpatch and Spacing magazines as well as macleans.ca, cbc.ca, and rabble.ca. His poem “Free Trade Agreement” was runner-up for best poem in Briarpatch Magazine‘s 2016 Writing from the Margins contest and his poem “Shades of America” received honorable mention for the 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize. Phillip’s current project, “Portraits in Black Face,” is being written under the guidance of Moez Surani through the Diaspora Dialogues Mentoring Program, with the support of the Toronto Arts Council.

In this session, participants will read, analyze and discuss poems written by Black Canadians over the last fifty years. The poems are taken from a wide range of positionalities and experiences, and have been selected to help cultivate a fuller understanding of Black identity in Canada. The facilitator will provide participants with important contextual information, and support regarding the poem and/or poet. The primary focus of the session is to critically reflect upon the ways the poems push us toward a richer view of Blackness.