On Tuesday, December 5th at 6pm PST / 9pm EST, join Massy Arts Society and a collective of brilliant poet organizers for Under The Table Open Mic Series, featuring Smokii Sumac.

Register for this event here: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/under-the-table-open-mic-series-ft-smokii-sumac-tickets-706381324557?aff=oddtdtcreator

Zoom room and sign-up opens at 5:45 PST / 8:45 EST, show starts at 6pm PST / 9pm EST

(we run on crip time with the understanding that bodies and brains aren’t always on schedule)

We invite you to sign up for the open mic as Under The Table welcomes us to laugh, cry, celebrate and sit in the richness of queer and disabled life, writing and poetics. 

This event will unfortunately not have ASL interpretation. We are working to secure funding to continue having ASL at future events.

Please join the zoom room with the same email you used on eventbrite. If you have any issues joining please email us at underthetablepoetry@gmail.com

About Under The Table:

Under the Table is an open mic series centering disabled and/or queer poets. This series was dreamed up out of a desire to share work, experience art, and connect with community in a covid safer, more accessible, and anti-oppressive space. Partnering with Massy Voices and Kickstart Disability Arts & Culture, Under the Table Open Mic Series will be on the first Tuesday of each month with some events in person at Massy Arts Society and others virtually on zoom.

Under the Table is a space where the richness that is queer and disabled life and art, flourishes and finds a home. It’s a space to share work that’s asking to be told, but might not be welcomed in other spaces, if you are able to access those spaces at all. It’s a space where being queer and/or disabled (whether or not those specific words resonate for you) makes your work a brilliant fit, regardless of how queer or disabled you think the poetry you wish to share is, how connected you are to disabled and/or queer community, and whether you feel disabled and/or queer “enough” to participate. It’s a space to witness and engage with the work of incredible artists, anywhere on their path of sharing their work–from the person who has never shared in front of an audience, to artists who have read or performed work many times. It’s a space where there’s room to be scared, and choose to be in community, share, and engage with others’ work. It’s a space where we don’t claim to know all the answers, but are willing to be in the messy, nuanced space of learning together. Come to “Under the Table” to laugh, cry, celebrate, sit in discomfort, feel understood, and be together.

This project has been made possible by The League of Canadian Poets, the Canada Council for the Arts, and Kickstart Disability Arts & Culture. 

Venue & Accessibility

The event will be hosted virtually via zoom. Automatic captioning will be turned on, we recognize automatic captioning is imperfect. We are working towards securing funding for CART to improve the quality of captioning. We ask anyone speaking or performing to provide a visual description for blind and low vision audience members. We also ask that people don’t message in the chat during poems, to increase accessibility for people using screen readers.

With Author & Featured Poet:

Smokii Sumac is a Ktunaxa Two-Spirit and Transgender Poet, PhD Candidate, and Consultant. His poetry book you are enough: love poems for the end of the world won an Indigenous Voices Award and he is currently working on multiple projects including the forthcoming ʔasqanaki podcast on Indigenous music and literature, and the xaȼqanaǂ ʔitkiniǂ (many ways of working on the same thing) project  where he supports conversations around gender and sexual diversity throughout the research process, as the team asks the question qapsin kiʔin ʔakaǂxuniyam? What would a healthy community look like?