Celebrating the depth and diversity of BC publishing
On Monday, November 6th at 6pm, join Massy Arts, Massy Books and Brick Books in celebrating the launch of Bottom Rail on Top by DM Bradford with with Cecily Nicholson and Junie Désil, hosted by Mercedes Eng.
“Not a collection of poetry but the sound of an opening door. Not a book but a tree on the riverbank. Not a line but a kinetic archive. Not a text but a heart. Not a page but a scene of the author at sunrise. Not a day but the gathering of the senses. Not a moment but the heavy low of another place.” — Jordan Abel, author of Open Spaces, Injun and NISHGA
This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. Ce projet a été rendu possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.
Venue & Accessibility
The event will be hosted at the Massy Arts Gallery, at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.
Registration is free and required for entrance.
The gallery is wheelchair accessible and a gender-neutral washroom is on-site. Please refrain from wearing scents or heavy perfumes.
For more on accessibility including parking, seating, venue measurements and floor plan, and how to request ASL interpretation please visit: massyarts.com/accessibility
Covid Protocols: Masks keep our community safe and are mandatory (N95 masks are recommended as they offer the best protection). We ask if you are showing symptoms, that you stay home. Thank you kindly.
About the book:
Bottom Rail on Top (Brick Books, 2023)
A rolling call and response between antebellum Black history and the present that mediates it.
Somewhere in the cut between Harriet Jacobs and surveillance, Southampton and sneaker game, Lake Providence and the supply chain, Bottom Rail on Top sets off a mediation between the complications of legacy and selfhood. In a kind of archives-powered unmooring of the linear progress story, award-winning poet D.M. Bradford fragments and recomposes American histories of antebellum Black life and emancipation, and stages the action in tandem with the matter of his own life. Amidst echoes and complicities, roots and flights, lineage and mastery, it’s a story of stories told in knots and asides, held together with paper trails, curiosities, and hooks — a study that doesn’t end.
About the author & guests:
Darby Minott Bradford is a poet and translator based in Tio’tia:ke (Montreal). They are the author of Dream of No One but Myself (Brick Books, 2021), which won the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, was longlisted for the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal, and was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, Governor General’s Literary Awards, and Gerard Lampert Memorial Award. House Within a House by Nicholas Dawson, Bradford’s first translation, was published in 2023 by Brick Books. Bottom Rail on Top is their second book.
Cecily Nicholson is the author of four books and a past recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. She is an Assistant Professor in Poetry at the School of Creative Writing, UBC and will be the 2024/2025 Holloway Lecturer in Poetry and Poetics at UC Berkeley. Cecily volunteers with community impacted by food insecurity and her most recent book HARROWINGS considers Black rurality, agriculture, and art history.
Junie Désil is a poet. Born of immigrant (Haitian) parents on the Traditional Territories of the Kanien’kehá:ka in the island known as Tiohtià:ke (Montréal), raised in Treaty 1 Territory (Winnipeg). Junie’s debut poetry collection Eat Salt|Gaze at the Ocean (TalonBooks, 2020) was a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Junie currently lives on the traditional territories of the Homalco, Tla’amin and Klahoose where she is currently working on a novel and a poetry manuscript.
Mercedes Eng is the author of Mercenary English, Prison Industrial Complex Explodes, winner of the BC Poetry Prize, and my yt mama. Her writing has appeared in Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry, Jacket 2, Asian American Literary Review, The Abolitionist, r/ally (No One Is Illegal), and Survaillance (Press Release). Mercedes is at work on a women’s prison anthology as a 2023 SFU Shadbolt Fellow.