October 11 | 7:00 pm

Writers Read | Phinder Dulai

Writers Read (Concordia) presents Phinder Dulai.

Phinder Dulai is the Vancouver-based author of dream/arteries (Talonbooks, ) and two previous books of poetry: Ragas from the Periphery (Arsenal Pulp Press, 1995) and Basmati Brown (Nightwood Editions, 2000). His most recent work has been published in Canadian Literature and Cue Books Anthology. Earlier work appeared in Ankur, Matrix, Memewar Magazine, Rungh, the Capilano Review, Canadian Ethnic Studies, Toronto South Asian Review, subTerrain, and West Coast LINE. Dulai is a co-founder of the Surrey-based interdisciplinary contemporary arts group The South of Fraser Inter Arts Collective (SOFIA/c).

Tuesday October 11, 7pm in Room LB 6.646, 1400 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W

More info here.

Words from Talonbooks about Dulai’s dream/arteries:

“A hundred years ago this year, the Japanese steamship Komagata Maru set sail for Canada with 376 Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu migrants travelling from Punjab, India. They were refused entry at Vancouver, even though all passengers were British subjects. The Komagata Maru sat moored in Vancouver’s harbour for two months while courts decided the passengers’ right to access – and while the city’s white citizens lined the pier taunting those onboard. Eventually, Canada’s racist exclusion laws were upheld and the ship was forced to return to India.

In his third poetry collection, dream / arteries, Phinder Dulai connects these 376 passengers with other New World settler migrants who travelled on the same ship throughout its thirty-six-year history, including to ports of call in Hong Kong, Japan, India, Turkey, Halifax, Montreal, and Ellis Island. By drawing on ship records, nautical maps, passenger manifests, and the rich, detailed record of the Komagata Maru, Dulai demonstrates how the 1914 incident encapsulates a broader narrative of migration throughout the New World.”