SUBTEXT

SUBTEXT explores what constitutes selfhood, collaging the echoes of colonial history through poetry, autobiography, and archival uncovering. Divided into three parts, SUBTEXT confronts the challenge of finding one's place in a sensorium of shifting appearances, asking: How does one emerge after being dissolved as a subject? Is it possible to transform or authentically reveal the world through art? Throughout these poems, we encounter a number of actors that crack the unified lyric subject: a father dreams of returning to his homeland; an "outsider artist" encounters Reubens upon a visit to the museum; "Crocuses begin to gather" alongside transformed echoes of Plato's Parmenides. Invoking psychoanalytic theories of speech and dream interpretation, SUBTEXT makes history tangible through a "speaking" of memory, inviting readers to witness the intersection of personal and collective histories through the eyes of a queer second-generation Canadian artist and poet.