ShapeShifters by Délani Valin
On Thursday, April 20th at 6pm PST, join Massy Arts Society and Nightwood Editions for a reading and celebration of Shapeshifters by Délani Valin. Join us as we’re drawn into a moving, ever-shifting collection of poems that explore the complexities of urban Métis and neurodivergent experience, and moves through multiple personas to enact empathy as a form of resistance.
The event will open with a contribution from knowledge keeper Audrey Siegl, a guest reading from Justene Dion-Glowa and flow into a warm, inviting and fun conversation between both authors and moderator Gillian Jerome.
This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.
Register here on eventbrite.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Registration is free, open to all and required for entrance. The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.
For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
About The Book
Shapeshifters by Delani Valin (Nightwood Editions)
In Shapeshifters, Délani Valin explores the cost of finding the perfect mask. Through a lens of urban Métis experience and neurodivergence, Valin takes on a series of personas as an act of empathy as resistance. Some personas are capitalist mascots like the Starbucks siren, Barbie and the Michelin Man, who confide the hopes and frustrations that lay hidden behind their relentless public enthusiasm. Others include psychiatric diagnoses like hypochondria, autism and depression, and unlikely archetypes such as a woman who becomes a land mass by ending the quest to shrink herself. In more confessional poems, the pressure to find relief from otherness often leads to magical thinking: portals, flight, telepathy and incantations all become metaphors for survival. Shapeshifters maps ways in which an individual can attempt to fit into a world that is inhospitable to them, and makes a case to shift the shape of that world.
With Authors
Délani Valin is neurodivergent and Métis with Nehiyaw, Saulteaux, French-Canadian and Czech ancestry. She studies for her master’s in professional communications at Royal Roads University, and has a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Vancouver Island University. Her poetry has been awarded The Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize and subTerrain’s Lush Triumphant Award. Her work has appeared in PRISM International, Adbusters, Room, and in the anthologies Those Who Make Us and Bawaajigan. She is on the editorial board of Room and The Malahat Review, and lives on traditional and unceded Snuneymuxw territory (Nanaimo, BC).
Justene Dion-Glowa is a queer Métis poet, creative and beadworker born in Winnipeg and residing in Secwepemcúl’ecw (Kamloops). They are a Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity alumnus who spends their daytime hours working in the non-profit sector. Their poetry has been in print and digital formats in a variety of collections and journals. Their first collection of poetry is Trailer Park Shakes, available from Brick Books.