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T. Liem launches SLOWS:TWICE
11 May at 19:00
Thursday, May 11 at 7:00 pm
La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly
Join T. Liem at La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly at 176 rue Bernard O at 7 pm on Thursday, May 11th for the launch of their new poetry collection SLOWS:TWICE! The evening will feature readings by Trynne Delaney, Alexe Perry-Cox and Lauren Turner, a conversation, Q&A and signing.
The event is free and open to all. Books will be available for purchase at the event and the author will sign copies of their book.
Please note that we are asking all guests to wear masks at this event. Masks will be available free of charge upon entry.
About the Book
Backward and forward: a double book of mirrored poems about identity in all its forms.
This is a book of slow hours, days, and years—how they can collapse into one another, how it can feel like we are living one day repeating itself. From within this collapse, the speaker seeks connection everywhere. They visit their father’s birthplace, Jogjakarta; they listen to a stranger’s phone call at the Motel 6 in Alberta; they linger in the so-called ethnic aisle of the grocery store. From all of these places the speaker is discouraged but tries to imagine a future joyously incomprehensible to the present.
Slows: Twice is a collection of revisions and repetitions. Every poem in one half of the book has an alternate version, or a mirror poem, in the other half. Lines, words, images, and forms are reused and reflected in a kind of palindrome, so the book can be read from front cover to back cover, or vice versa. In this way, Liem considers how language shapes identity over time and how the speaker’s position in relation to language might be revised. The poems are tied to themes of work and labor, consumption and waste, family and home, as other shapers of identity and relationships. The act of revising and repeating – slowly – is meant to be a resistance to efficiency, a resistance to being an always-productive body under capitalism.
About the Author
T. Liem was born and raised in Vegreville, Alberta, and now lives in Montreal, Quebec. They are the author of OBITS. (2018), which was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award, and won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award as well as the A. M. Klein Prize. Their writing has been published in Catapult, Apogee, Plenitude, the Boston Review, Grain, Maison- neuve, Best Canadian Poetry 2018 and 2019, and elsewhere.
Accessibility
- Organizers encourage the wearing of masks at events.
- Event space uses StopGap.ca ramps in an effort to encourage accessibility. Both the step at the entrance, followed by a half step and a door have StopGap ramps. The door opens inward and is not automated. Once inside, there are no additional steps.
- It is not a sober space, our events sometimes offer alcohol.
Please email events@drawnandquarterly.com if you have any questions!