Montreal Serai

01/02/2025

Lectures Logos Readings wishes you health and happiness for 2025 and invites you to its next session which will be held on Monday December January 13, 2025 at 2741 Notre-Dame West, Montréal, QC H3J 1N9, 7-9 pm. The guest readers are: Sharon Lax, Evadne Anderson, Be Wyrd, Magalie Lefebvre Jean, Sahand Farivar, and Fréderic Boisrond. There’ll be an open-mic session as well with spaces for eight readers.

Lectures logos readings vous souhaite une nouvelle année remplie de bonheur et de bonne santé et vous invite à son prochain événement qui aura lieu lundi le 13 janvier 2025 de 19h-21h au 2741 Notre-Dame O, Montréal, QC H3J1N9. Les lecteurs/lectrices sont : Sharon Lax, Evadne Anderson, Be Wyrd, Magalie Lefebvre Jean, Sahand Farivar et Fréderic Boisrond. Il y aura aussi une session micro-ouverte, limitée à huit participant-e-s.

Looking forward to your presence / espérons vous voir.

12/28/2024

Reviewer and poet Louise Carson portrays Peter Taylor‘s poetry collection, "Cities Within Us," as “a dense, even rich experience—ranging in scope from the humour of 'Lunchroom Lear' in a senior’s cafeteria to the sobering powerlessness of a child being photographed for p**n in 'Desire Needs No Image.'"

12/23/2024

“You asked me how I’m doing earlier. In ten months my extended tree’s fallen leaves count close to twenty. There are nights I’m too ashamed to even bear witness.”

Palestinian poet Thaer Husien provokes, probes and bares his heart: "A century of untreated trauma heals into generational scar tissue until here my du***ss stands trying to remember what’s been forgotten."

©besidethesicklemoon
📷©Thaer Husien

12/21/2024

Serai editors Jessica Stilwell and Jody Freeman sit down with Faiz Abhuani, the founder and director of Brique par Brique, an organization centred on community organizing, community building and experimenting with housing projects that hold the possibility of creating a different kind of world.

©briquexbrique
📷© Stacy Lee

12/17/2024

Ami Sands Brodoff’s short story “Rescue” features a grieving widow who steps up in a time of crisis, to be present for herself and the family next door.

📷© Mikhail Hoch

12/14/2024

"Who gets to say what 'Pakistaniness' is? How can we evolve the discourse to be more inclusive of Pakistani settlers in the West, and realize that, indeed, what happens in Pakistan affects Pakistanis everywhere?"

Zahra Haider's passionate essay situates her experience as a young Pakistani woman in Canada -- subjected to criticism, exclusion and racism, never feeling at home -- within a global context.

📷©Zahra Haider

12/10/2024

“Black holes of all sorts
Floating in all kinds of skies
Linked with filaments”

El Arbi Mrabet's vivid poetic imagery and art explore intricate layers of human consciousness.
See the link in our bio.
📷© El Arbi Mrabet

12/09/2024

"The balm of Appalachia, the comfort of all the neighbours knowing my business -- how did it all go so wrong?""

April Ford lays bare the underbelly of “'tight-knit' communities hungry for novelty but resistant to progress."

📷 © April Ford

12/07/2024

In “Rapping Resistance: Hip Hop as a Form of Dissent in the Bangladesh Students’ Protests,” Moinak Banerjee guides us through the Bangladeshi student uprising of August 2024, as Hannan Hossain's hip-hop song Awaaz Uda Bangladesh becomes the anthem of the movement.

📷© Moinak Banerjee

12/02/2024

🎉 Congratulations to Nada El-Omari, the recipient of the Rana Bose Memorial Grant for 2025! 🎉

This annual grant supports artists whose work resonates with our mandate. Nada’s innovative and intimate approach embodies the spirit of Serai, and we’re thrilled to work with her next year.

Join us in celebrating Nada and stay tuned for more updates on her future works. 🖌️✨

12/01/2024

Thursday at 6 pm

11/30/2024

Last Saturday, friends of Montréal Serai and Teesri Duniya Theatre gathered to celebrate the legacy of Rana Bose and the artists selected for the Rana Bose Memorial Grant. Tahieròn:iohte Dan David will be passing the torch to the new recipient of the Rana Bose Memorial Grant for 2025, Nada El-Omari. Congratulations to Nada (nadaelomari.com) and to the two finalists, Asma Ahsan Khan (akhanstudio.com) and Misa Mandela Johns (ethoscultura.com)! Check out their work: nadaelomari_; asma.ahsan.khan; ethoscultura

11/26/2024

Alejandra Zamudio creates a magical world grounded in the mundane, exploring the mother-daughter bond, menstruation, our kinship with nature and the guardian angels of her childhood.
Discover her narrative-shifting art through the link in our bio.

Follow Alejandra Zamudio on Instagram or online at alejandrazamudio.com.

Zamudio can share her vision of life—fluid like a dream, deep like blood.

11/23/2024

“There was a man that dwelt among us for a time. Now he is gone.”
Jorge Etcheverry Arcaya's vibrant digital art and poems resonate off the screen. Find the link in our bio.

Follow Jorge on Instagram ©jorgerae5

He was the loneliest man on earth. His words were not even listened to by anyone.

11/19/2024

“I always reveled in my femininity,” Atif says, remembering how they expressed themselves as a child growing up in Karachi, Pakistan. “I never hid it, I never tried to conform to any masculine social norms or anything like that.”

Delve into Shahroze Rauf's intimate interview with Atif “Tranie Tronic” Siddiqi.

Almost like a badua, the lyrics to the title track from Tranie Tronic’s latest album are saturated with power.

11/14/2024

In his latest essay, Serai's writer in residence Tahieròn:iohte Dan David paints recollections of Otherness, of not belonging, and of claiming one’s path. “I reached back in my culture to remind myself who and what I was in a Kanienke:haka (Mohawk) word: kariwaroroks. It means ‘truth-gatherer.’”

📷 © Dan David

Every now and then, a wisp of memory invades that foggy space between sleep and waking in the middle of the night.

11/13/2024

Saturday, Nov. 23 from 2 to 4 pm at 251 Pine Ave W. (Teesri Duniya), celebrate Serai's new Artist in Residence for 2025.
The 3 finalists, in alphabetical order, are:
Asma Ahsan Khan - Artist
Misé Mandela Johns - Mixed media artist
Nada El-Omari - Filmmaker and writer

11/12/2024

https://www.cinemapolitica.org/film/where-olive-trees-weep/
Mon. Nov. 18 at 7 pm, Hall building, Concordia U - "Where Olive Trees Weep" - bring a friend.