SOME OF US DID NOT DIE’s event poster, featuring a black and white image of a Black woman, whose lower half is encased in clay, with a vibrant scarlet banner erupting from her mouth into the upright corner. In the background, the landscape is filled with warm-coloured land, purple mountains, a pink sky, and a yellow sun.
Poster design by Autumn Beals.
Some of Us Did Not Die: A Fundraiser and Online Showcase of Black Poetic Futures (Presented by VOLTA Collective)
Broadcasted via zoom: Sunday, August 30th, 2020
Some of you, some of us remain, despite that hatred that violence that murder that suicide that affront to our notions of civilized days and nights.
And what shall we do, we who did not die? — June Jordan
SOME OF US DID NOT DIE, VOLTA Collective’s inaugural event, was a community fundraiser and online experience of Black poetics and Afro-futurisms. Adopting our title from Black feminist visionary June Jordan, this curated evening featured Black, LGBTQ2S+, Montreal-based performers imagining worlds against prisons and policing, and toward Black liberation. Our artists sought to embody the action of our siblings organizing in the streets as Black people faced another wave of state-sanctioned attacks across Turtle Island in summer 2020. White literary institutions continue to fail in preserving our activist and artistic legacies. In ‘Canada’, Black creation is in constant struggle with social forgetting—but some of us did not die.
Performances by Awa Banmana, Willow Cioppa, Linzey Corridon, Quinlan Green, isi-bhakomen, Paige Keleher, Faith Paré, Powetik, and Samm Reid. Hosted by Deanna Smith and with a meditation circle led by Fimo Mitchell of We Are Home.
Contributions from attendees and community members amounted to $4250, which VOLTA distributed to currently and formerly incarcerated Black people in Canada, specifically prioritizing Black trans women and Black residents of Québec. .
SOME OF US DID NOT DIE was graciously funded by the Black Perspectives Office and the Sustainability Action Fund at Concordia University, QPIRG-McGill, and the League of Canadian Poets. We were proudly part of PERVERS/CITÉ’s 2020 programming and received technical and volunteer support from the Concordia Co-op Bookstore.