The Words & Music Show: Spring 2023

Dan Beasy (Beaulieu) is a singer-songwriter, and central member of Bluebird, a band and musical collective based in Montreal. Dan is originally from Prince George, British Columbia, and grew up surrounded by significantly more diesel pickups than artists and musicians. After years of trying to fit into a conservative city geared towards capitalism Dan hit the road and began a journey of inspiration and creativity. Travelling through Canada Dan landed in Dawson City, Yukon and began writing poetry and stories to pass the time. Finding other poets and songwriters along the way encouraged Dan to keep writing and eventually to sing as well. After several years in Yukon Dan set off for Montreal and began pursuing a career as a songwriter. 2 EPs and a full album later Dan is just getting started. The music continues to be guided first and foremost by poetry and the human experience.

Hannah Karpinski is a queer writer and editor living in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Lemon Hound, Commo Magazine, My Loves: Digital Anthology of Queer Love Poems (Ghost City Press), and Lesbians are Miracles, among others. She is currently finishing her MA at Concordia University and working as the Publishing Assistant for Montreal-based independent press, Metatron.

Erín Moure is a Montreal poet and translator from Galician, Portuguese, French and Spanish to English and from Galician and English to French. Her next book, a hybrid book of texts and poems, Theophylline: an a-poretic migration via the modernisms of Rukeyser, Bishop, Grimké (de Castro, Vallejo)will appear in August 2023 from House of Anansi Press. You can find her reading new stories once in awhile on YouTube too.

Jason “Blackbird” Selman is a Montreal born poet, trumpet player and community worker. He is the author The Freedom I Stole (2007, Cumulus Press), Africa As A Dream That Travels Through My Heart (2016, Howl) and co-editor of the poetry anthology Talking Book (2006, Cumulus Press) which chronicles the writings of Kalm Unity Vibe Collective (of which he is a founding member). He works as a teaching artist, conducting poetry workshops in schools across the Montréal area and beyond. His work is grounded in the themes of ethno-musicology, surrealist expression, love and the intersection of masculinity and emotional vulnerability.