APEX Express – Dragonfruit Transcript 6.24.21
Good evening. This is Miko Lee, and you’re listening to apex express where we focus on the Asian American and Pacific Islander experiences. Tonight we’re proud to present a teaser for the dragon fruit project, an international project that explores queer Asian and a Pacific Islanders and their stories about love and activism in the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties. We welcome APIENC, our partner under the AACRE umbrella AACRE, the Asian Americans for civil rights and equality. We are so happy to start off with an interview with one of the curators of the podcast. Dorothy Tang.
The Zolas
What: The City of Surrey is livestreaming the family-favourite Party for the Planet on April 22 from 5 to 7 pm on Facebook and YouTube Live. And this year’s event is packed with great performers, environmental education for all ages, and more.
Vancouver indie-rockers The Zolas will be headlining the event. The JUNO-nominated group will be sharing the virtual stage with musical and Indigenous performances by Andrea Menard, Stars of the North Drum Group, IAMTHELIVING and Teon Gibbs, Glass Forest, Wild Moccasin Dancers and Bobs & Lolo and more. There will also be interactive workshops, arts & crafts, and contests worth up to $700 happening every 30 minutes. Plus pop into the Virtual Photobooth for an Earth Day selfie.
Brandon Wint’s collection,
Divine Animal, showcases his facility with words. Like the work of spoken word artists such as Toronto’s Andrea Thompson, his poetry sings on paper.
Divine Animal is rich with anger, mourning, yearning, celebration, sensuality, and hope. The collection is also a timely and important reflection on the origins of systemic racism and long-time police brutality against Black people in the Western world.
In his prelude to
Divine Animal, “Incantation: Memory of Water,” Wint’s narrator considers the history of his Jamaican and Barbadian ancestors. Wint’s epigraph from Saint Lucian poet and playwright Derek Walcott sets the tone and evokes the Caribbean setting, “its history,” and the “scars of colonialism.”
Brandon Wint’s inaugural collection,
Divine Animal from Write Bloody North, can be described in four words: heavy impact, gentle touch.
I first heard Brandon Wint perform poetry at a small venue in East Vancouver in 2011. I was one mason jar into
Café Deux Soleils’ legendary sangria when Wint took the stage. From the moment he began speaking, my arms were alight with goosebumps. Wint has always had a remarkable gift for delivering visuals, perhaps because he is such a keen observer of the world. Wint pays attention. He catches quirky specifics and like a wizard of mental origami, crafts them into poignant revelations.