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One of the author team-up sessions Friday afternoon at the Festival of Words was between poet and anti-racism activist Khodi Dill and Robert Currie, who both graduated from Central Collegiate in Moose Jaw.
The duo was introduced by Moose Jaw city councillor Crystal Froese, who acted as a facilitator for many of the author sessions during the festival.
The session was held in the Taylor Room of the Moose Jaw Public Library (MJPL).
Dill is a Bahamian-Canadian writer, spoken word artist, and anti-racist educator living in Saskatoon. He is the author of the picture book Welcome to the Cypher.
“It’s really fantastic to be back at this library, which is kind of the library that raised me,” said Dill. “And to be here with Mr. Bob Currie, who is an absolute legend.”
Currie taught at Central for many years. Although he retired before Dill started high school, Dill remembers seeing Currie’s books in the classroom and learning about him.
“I have to say, growing up in Moose Jaw, I didn’t have a lot of Black writer role models, you know?” Dill said. “But it was so cool to have a writer role model from my little town, and to know that that’s a possibility for people, is to actually be a writer.”
Dill spoke about his work as a teacher and about his next book, a non-fiction young adult book about racism, resistance, and transformation. He read from a chapter called “How to show love… and rage, too.”
“The Black positive self-image I was developing in my youth would become crucial as I began to participate more actively in the struggle for equity,” Dill read in part. “I know that the fight for Black liberation can be won … Remember, happiness is part of the fight, and the complete and unfettered joy or spiritual awakening that one can feel while making anti-oppressive art ain’t bad therapy either.”
Robert Currie is the author of 13 books, both fiction and poetry. He is a former Poet Laureate of Saskatchewan and a recipient of the Lieutenant-Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.
“Real pleasure to be reading with you, Khodi,” Currie said. “Khodi and I are both graduates of Central Collegiate, although one of us is more recent than the other.”
Currie’s latest book of selected poems, Shimmers of Light, was published in May. The book launch was at MJPL, where Currie also does most of his writing.
The esteemed poet read several poems from his book, including one about a boy being bullied into playing chicken with a train — and apparently barely surviving — and a poem about a group of skinny-dipping boys boldly inviting some girls picnicking nearby to join them. The audience laughed, and Currie dodged a question about whether the poem was about him.
On the topic of racism, Currie read a poem about his father and himself at a baseball game.
The young Currie heard someone nearby shout a racial slur at a Black player and asked his father what the word meant. His father told him it was an ignorant word, a bad word and an insult — a word he should never use.
“I have no memory of who won the game, or who the opposition was. But even now, 23 years after my father’s death, I can recall that moment,” Currie read. “Never in all the years he was alive had I seen him look more serious.”
