Episode 12: Trynne Delaney Interviews Canisia Lubrin

Show notes

This interview with Canisia Lubrin by TIA House graduate assistant and writer Trynne Delaney was recorded in August 2020 for the TIA House Talks podcast series. Canisia first reads from her most recent book, The Dyzgraphxst, which flows into a conversation about language, oceans, and unsettling colonial grammar.

Bios:
(From Poetry in Voice):
Canisia Lubrin is a writer, editor, teacher, and critic, with work published widely in North America as well as in the UK. Translations of her work include into Spanish and Italian. She is the author of the awards-nominated poetry collection Voodoo Hypothesis (Wolsak & Wynn) and augur (Gap Riot Press), finalist for the 2018 bpNichol Chapbook Award. Lubrin’s fiction is anthologized in The Unpublished City: Volume I, finalist for the 2018 Toronto Book Award. She teaches English at Humber College and Creative Writing at Sheridan College and in the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. Her most recent book is The Dyzgraphxst, published by Penguin Random House.

Trynne Delaney is a writer currently based in Tio’tia:ke. Her writing consists mostly of musings about how we got here, where we are, who “we” encompasses, how to care in a violent world, and how to exist in spaces that are hostile to multiplicity. They are of Black Loyalist, African American, and european settler heritage and are lesbian, queer, and genderqueer. Trynne holds a Master of Arts in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Calgary where they completed a cli-fi hybrid form novel as their creative thesis. Her work was most recently published in GUTS Canadian Feminist Magazine, WATCH YOUR HEAD, The League of Canadian Poets’ chapbook These Lands: a collection of voices by Black Poets in Canada (edited by Chelene Knight), Metatron’s micrometa series, and her self-published chapbook death of the author. Trynne was a graduate assistant for TIA House in 2019-20 and currently works as an administrative assistant for Drawn & Quarterly.

References:

28:47—Canisia refers to reading Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake
29:50—Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation
31:02—For Kamau Brathwaite’s theory of “tidalectics,” see his “History of the Voice,” Barabajan Poems, and ConVERSations with Nathaniel Mackey.
31:24—Canisia refers to Rinaldo Walcott’s talk “The Black Aquatic: On Water, Art and Black Movement”
33:52—Trynne refers to Shazia Hafiz Ramji’s book Port of Being
41:12—See Dionne Brand’s A Map to the Door of No Return
53:23—See Natalie Diaz’s Postcolonial Love Poem
54:37—Canisia refers to musician Nicholas Payton
54:40—Canisia talks about visual artist Torkwase Dyson
55:04—See Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments
55:30—Canisia talks about the work of Terese Mason Pierre
55:38—Canisia names writer Faith Arkorful
55:42—See writer Zoe Imani Sharpe
55:46—See writer Tolu Oloruntoba
55:52—See visual artist Sandra Brewster
56:08—Canisia names writers Nicole Sealy, Safiya Sinclair, and Victoria Adukwei Bulley
56:19—Canisia refers to Brandon Shimoda’s The Grave on the Wall
56:45—See writer and artist Chantal Gibson

TIA House recognizes the generous support of the Canada Research Chairs program and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. We also appreciate the support of the Faculty of Arts and the Department of English at the University of Calgary, where our offices are housed, as well as the guidance of Marc Stoeckle at the Taylor Family Digital Library. TIA House is run by Larissa Lai, Mahmoud Ababneh, Rebecca Geleyn, Paul Meunier, and Joshua Whitehead.

Our Intro/Outro music is “Monarch of the Streets” by Loyalty Freak Music, accessed from the Free Music Archive.