No human is illegal.

Cyril Dabydeen brought this sentence to the surface within the first five minutes of his time in front of the quiet audience sitting in the cave that is the Carol Shields auditorium during The Nooner today.

The combination of his light and jovial nature didn't hide the intensity of his poems or his politics.
No human is illegal.

Followed by his poem Lady Icarus-about a woman, considered 'illegal',
her story of deportation
x 5.

I have been told that it is difficult to write well and to write politically and/or socially consciously.
I have been told it is best to avoid it.


The idea that there is a divide between good writing and political writing creates a divide in me. Even when writing doesn't deal directly or obviously with political issues-be it race or gender or class,
the politics are always there.


Cyril Dabydeen quoted someone (whose name I forgot to write down, and who I now cannot recall), but the quote was

The aim of the writer is to mythologize the ground that you walk


And the ground that we walk is our history, never separate from our oppressions and our privilege. So it only makes sense to me that, as writers,we stay aware of our location. And the idea that someone can even consider eliminating the political and social context from their art,
is an act of privilege.

No human is illegal.

No art is without politics.


*please note the word politics in this post is being used in the lower case 'p' for politics kind of way. You know, the kind of stuff one might study if they did a degree in say, Gender studies, just for example....





Courtney Slobogian was born in Winnipeg and likes it that way.

She is a writer/understated activist/ irreverent feminist.

Some of her work can be tracked down in quiet corners of the internet.

She co-hosts a radio show on CKUW called Tiger Lilies are Poisonous, and dislikes cotton socks. She wrote a thesis once.