The Saskatchewan Festival of Words began Thursday morning, kicking off one of Moose Jaw’s premier summer events with workshops by katherena vermette, Khodi Dill, and Kevin Wesaquate, and a storytime for little ones with Kai Cheng Thom.
[Editor’s note: Please note the spelling of katherena vermette is intentionally spelled in lower case, as it is her preferred stylistic choice as an established author.]
Wesaquate is a multidisciplinary artist currently working as the Indigenous Arts & Culture Leader at SCYAP — Saskatoon Community Youth Arts Programming, Inc. He is the founder of the Indigenous Poetry Society and works to strengthen the spoken word community and empower both youth and adults to combine the written word, storytelling, and visual art.
Wesaquate’s workshop at the Cultural Centre combined a watercolour bison painting with poetry. Participants listened as he explained the multiple directions art has taken him and the social justice he has contributed to.
Spoken word workshop
At the public library, Khodi Dill introduced a class of youth to the history and philosophy of spoken word poetry, drawing from his book Welcome to the Cypher (2021).
“Doing spoken word for me means reclaiming an old, old tradition from my culture that was lost,” Dill said, “or, I should say, suppressed over time.”
Dill worked with participants to write their own poems and then perform them.
“One of the benefits of speaking it out loud is that it breathes life into it,” he explained. If you don’t hear the author reading it out loud, “you might miss a lot of the cadence and the emphasis … and we can (read) with a vividness and a range of emotions which I think is really cool.”
Book club with katherena vermette
vermette is the award-winning author of multiple books of poetry, children’s literature, and the haunting, bleak, deeply affecting debut novel The Break (2016).
Her book The Strangers (2021) is a follow-up to The Break, featuring many of the same characters. vermette drew on her own upbringing as a woman of Métis heritage raised in the north end of Winnipeg.
Book club participants eagerly quizzed vermette on her writing process, asked questions about the fates and mindsets of particular characters, and looked for details on her upcoming work.
Although she gently refused to provide spoilers, vermette admitted — to applause from the group — that a third book set in the same world as The Break and The Strangers is now in draft form. She encouraged her readers to look for ongoing Easter eggs and world-building details connecting each book.
“I am a big sci-fi/fantasy nerd,” she said with a laugh. “I love Easter eggs, I love world-building. You can’t really tell with these three books in particular, because I use realism, but I’m putting in those Easter eggs and those little overlaps.”
Storytime with Kai Cheng Thom
Thom is the Toronto-based author of five award-winning books. She drew on six years of experience as a children’s psychotherapist for her latest children’s book, For Laika (2022).
She read For Laika to a group of children on the front lawn of the Moose Jaw Public Library and stayed to chat with and answer questions from the kids afterward.
“I used to be a children’s psychotherapist, so I have a lot of practice talking to kids,” Thom said. “It’s one of my favorite things to do, storytime.”
Thom has written two books for children, one for teens, and two for adults. For Laika tells the story of the dog who was the first animal in space. She was launched in Sputnik 2 — there was never a plan for her return.
“People ask me, ‘Why would you write about something so sad for children?’ And it’s because when I was working in a children’s hospital, kids would ask me (about death) all the time. … It’s the job of people who teach children and people who tell stories to children to offer them ways of understanding the world that are truthful, and to honour how wise and smart children can be.”
Visit the Festival of Words website at festivalofwords.com/schedule to see what else is coming up, and don’t miss your chance to participate!
