Peace Akintade will launch her newest volume of poetry, Earth Skin, at Remai Modern on Thursday, November 30 at 7 PM. Head to the museum’s SaskTel Theatre to hear readings from Akintade and a conversation with Troy Gronsdahl, Curator (Performance and Public Practice).
This reading is the final event from the artists of Here and Now, with previous performances by Darren Miller and Mitchell Larsen & Megan Zong. Over the past year, Akintade has explored the intersections of storytelling, poetry and contemporary art. Her Here and Now residency included Interdisciplinary Storytelling, a series of four public workshops focusing on filmmaking and poetry, soundscape and storytelling, and writing poetry. Participants from these workshops have also been invited to share their poetry, soundscapes and visuals on November 30.
We spoke with Akintade about her poetry practice and how it was incorporated at Remai Modern. Read it in her own words below, and see the culmination of her work at the Earth Skin reading and conversation.
Introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your practice.
Peace Akintade-Oluwagbeye. Interdisciplinary poet, public speaker, chorus-poem playwrighter, and workshop facilitator residing in Treaty Six Territory, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. My practice is a cycle of observing, relating and teaching; a testament to my Yoruba-land heritage. Poetry and storytelling ground me to my roots, identify my core, bring me back home.
I am the words I write, or poetry in motion.
Interdisciplinary poetry is the accompaniment of mixed media and poetry. My work integrates poetry into music, contemporary dance, theatre, African fabrics, soundscapes, filmmaking, e.t.c. I use poetry to respond to a piece of media. I write poetry that encompasses the feel of a media.
Lyrical personalization meets an over-romanticized plea for humanity. Spiritual decolonizing meets mocking the importance of “good english”. My goal is to create a playful exploration of love, family, truth and calmness. To coddle the cries of trauma and sing it a lullaby. To remove the pretense and egotistical nature of poetry. I want to be an oasis filled to the brim with internalized existential questioning. That is my practice — to make poetry accessible to the general public in a way that feels understood and hopeful. To slow you down enough to ask about your reflection and your wonderful perspective.
What drew you to live arts or performing?
I’ve always been a chaotic person, and easily drawn to the avant-garde or unusual. Nigeria is a land of storytelling, and the storytelling itself is an accumulation of life lessons: tortoises being eaten by elephants, dogs turning to people and humans turning into goats. The storyteller is usually accompanied by drummers and dynamic dancers in feathers and large masks. It was a joy, an overstimulated pleasure of sensations. Every time I heard the bells ring on the streets of the town, I was the first one to enter the inner circle. The practice of storytelling drew me to live arts and performing. I kept asking myself while in Canada, “What can I do to elevate the storytelling experience?” This also ties into my need to know more about my culture. I want to grow in my practice through the eye of a storyteller, and elevate poetry in the live arts space.
Tell us about your experience with Here and Now.
For my Here and Now residency, I facilitated four workshops available to the public. The goal was to prove that public access to artistic cultural workshops benefits the art community and the artists involved. Especially for the marginalized community in Saskatoon, having access to workshops is the stepping stone towards a richer art community. I’ve always been interested in the stagnant position of poetry in the institutionalized space. How can poetry both live forever on paper, stay solid in air, and not be controlled by the expectations of the audience’s ear, or the reader’s voice?
What a success! We had fourteen participants ranging from retired principals, theatre artists, nurses, teachers, children’s book authors, and chemical engineers all joining palm to hand. Each workshop started with a circle time, where we explored each other’s relationship with poetry; next, I conducted a private performance art piece, in which the participants responded either with photos, videographs, or poetry; finally, we worked collectively on group poems, and shared. The community built in four months was full and promising.
Humans respond well to spaces of unbridled creativity and acceptance. We are wired to look at the world from our own unique perspective. When you break it down to its simplest term, we are always responding to the world through the lenses of poetry.
What do you hope audiences take away from your Earth Skin reading?
I’ll share an excerpt from the Earth Skin Epilogue:
And so again, why did I write Earth Skin?
To explore the simpleness of relating to people. To discover who I am to myself, my family, my muses, my friends, in society, or in the hemisphere. I am because you are and you are because I am. Therefore, I am what I am because of who we all are. This book is not explainable by only me. We are collective humans, community humans, group-mental humans. I am who I am, we are who we are. We are Earth Skin in motion. Ubuntu circle, together we tell stories of trauma and love, we are Earth Skin together. I am who I love, we are who we love. Therefore Earth Skin is romantically romantic to us. Ori. Ara. Emi. My head. My body. My soul. Your head. Your body. Your soul. Our head. Our body. Our soul. Earth Skin starts with you, ends with us. We are related. A oneself. Therefore, I write this book as evidence. Maybe we are objectively good, alone and together.
I hope the readers feel a sense of relatability. The book is dear to my heart. A culmination of my thoughts, my being, and innermost thoughts. The feelings that we all have collected into one. It starts with poetry about my childhood, then poetry about my family, religion, community, poetry about love, romance, and feeling unwanted, and finally hopeful poems about loving my body, mind and soul. The emotional journey is brief, only in 84 pages, but the teachings are universal and unique to everyone. We are joined together when reading Earth Skin.
About Here and Now
Building off the success of its pilot project in 2021, Remai Modern launched a program that supports local artistic practice in the realm of live arts. Here and Now: A Live Arts Initiative engages up to three artists for a one-year period.
Successful applicants receive financial supports, access to museum resources and opportunities for informal mentorships with guest artists, cultural workers and community leaders. The museum works in collaboration with each artist to develop a program of activities including research, artist talks, workshops, and the development and presentation of new work or work in progress.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
