“THIS IS WHERE THE POETRY COMES OUT”: EXAMINING THE PETERBOROUGH POETRY SLAM AS RESISTANT SPACE-MAKING Melissa Baldwin (c) Copyright by Melissa Baldwin 2017 Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies M.A. Graduate Program Trent University Nogojiwanong (Peterborough), Ontario, Canada September 2017 ABSTRACT “This is where the poetry comes out”: Examining the Peterborough Poetry Slam as Resistant Space-Making Melissa Baldwin Since 1984, poetry slams have emerged as a politicized expressive movement of performing the personal and political through poetry competitions. Slams are also discursively spatialized, often represented as “spaces” that are “safe,” “inclusive,” etc. In this thesis, I investigate how, why, and to what effect the Peterborough Poetry Slam produces, consolidates, and challenges such “resistant spaces.” Drawing on interviews and participant observation, I consider how the slam’s reiterative practices facilitate its space-making by encouraging performances that resist, reimagine, and sometimes inadvertently reify dominant societal norms. I argue that this space-making is imperfect yet productive: though not resistant space in any straightforward or static way, the slam continuously produces possibilities to challenge norms and confront power. This thesis contributes to scholarship on performative space and creative resistance movements. In an era when political resistance to power structures is often silenced, this research offers insights of potential significance to other resistant space-makings. KEYWORDS: Poetry slam; spoken word; Nogojiwanong; Peterborough; space-making; performance; resistance; performative space. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I extend my deep gratitude to the Michi Saagiig Anishinaabeg, and their lands and waters: my daily living, thinking, and relationship-building, and all that has gone into this thesis are inseparable from this place and from the care it has been given over millennia. To those who shared in this research through interviews – Bennett, Beth, Christine, Frankie, Jon, K, Niambi, Sally, Sasha, Tammy, Ziy – thank you for your brilliance, but also for your patient interest, your kind and quippish support, and the friendship and community I have found with you through this process. To the slam-goers – the hollerers, the cheerers, the first-poem-jitterers – you are the ones who make the slam what it is, you are the ones it is made for, and I am grateful to each of you for re-making the slam’s magic, tensions, rituals, and culture every month. I could not have possibly had a more supportive, exceptionally engaged, humourous, gentle, critical, insightful, and generous committee. Sally Chivers, thank you for your eagle eye, your patient insistence with my latent ableism/ageism, and your impeccably well-timed wit. May Chazan, I cannot even begin to thank you: I would not be in this place (in every sense of the word) without your support and kindness. Over the past four years, you have thoughtfully nourished not only my thinking and my research skills, but also my sense of self, sense of social justice, and sense of how to walk gently and lovingly through the world. To Dana Capell: you may not be an official committee member, but you are as much a part of making this thesis: thank you for always guiding me out of the holes I was digging and making me feel like I could move forward, even when I did not think it would be possible. Cathy Schoel, thank you for your unrelenting, understated, and sometimes invisible support. To Maddy, Emma, and Hagrid, thank you for all of the tea-time thought sorting, for all of the supportive levity I could ever want, and for being some of my dearest friends. To Abi, thank you for all of the hours together in our offices, for all of the lunch-time debriefs, for your amazing wit, for accompanying me to slams, and for being such a dear pal. To iii the VFB, thank you for drawing me out of my shell and keeping music in my life throughout this wild process. Thank you to the many dear, wise, and caring mentors and friends I have had along the way: Pat Evans, Barb Marshall, Kim Sawchuk, Roberta Maierhofer, Nadine Changfoot, Wayne Montgomery, and so many others. To my family, chosen and otherwise – especially to my mum, Cory, May, Ben, Zoe, Alex, Bev, and Gayle – thank you for supporting me in every possible way. Finally, the most enormous thanks to Zoe and Alex for always reminding me about what is most important, for reminding me that I am a human, for teaching me that loving fiercely can be resistant, transformative, and filled with possibility. I could not and would not have done this work without the funding, support, learning, mentorship, and so much more that I have received from Aging Activisms and its Collective, and I am also thankful for funding and mentorship from the Trent Centre for Aging and Society and Ageing + Communication + Technologies at Concordia University. I am also grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Ontario Graduate Scholarships, and the Frost Centre for Canadian and Indigenous Studies for the funding that has supported this thesis. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Title page ……………………………………………………………………………………... i Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………………… ii Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………………. iii-iv Table of contents ……………………………...……….…………………………………....v-vi List of Tables …………………………………………………………………………..…… vii Chapter 1: Introduction …………………………………………………………..….….. 1-21 Acknowledging the land, situating myself ………………..……………....……..... 10-12 The Peterborough Slam ………....……………………………………………….. 12-16 Nogojiwanong (Peterborough): A tale of two cities …...………………………...... 16-18 Why? Broader political context ……………………….…………………………. 18-21 Thesis Map ……………………………………………………………………….…21 Chapter 2: Methodology …………………………………………………….……..…... 22-41 Methodological frameworks ……………………….……………………………. 24-32 Methods: Researching the slam space ………………………...…...……………... 32-37 Analysis ………………………………………………………………………… 37-39 Consent process and ethical considerations …………………………..……….….. 39-40 Conclusion …………………………....…………………………………….……40-41 Chapter 3: Conceptual framework ……………………………....……..………….…... 42-72 Slam …………………………………………………………………………….. 42-47 Space ……………………………....……………………………………………. 47-59 Resistance ………………………....…………………………………………….. 59-63 Performance …………………………………………………………………….. 63-71 Conclusion …………………………....………………………………………..... 71-72 Chapter 4: Ritualized slam practices: Producing counternormative space …....…...... 73-110 Roles ……………………………………………………………………………. 74-75 Ritualized practices …………………………………………………………….... 75-92 Spatialized counternorms ………………………………………………………. 92-109 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………….109-110 Chapter 5: On stage: Consolidating/challenging (counter)norms through performance………………….. 111-156 Consolidating/challenging politicized space ………....……………………..….. 113-128 Consolidating/challenging open expression ....………………………………..... 128-135 Consolidating/challenging decolonial space ……………....………………….... 135-145 Consolidating/challenging safe(r) space ……………....……………………..… 145-154 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………… 154-156 v Chapter 6: Off stage: Tension and possibility between the rhymes ………..……..… 157-192 The “off stage” …………………………………....……………………….….. 159-165 Revealing tension: Audience experiences of safety ………………………….… 165-171 Spatializing possibility through off stage dialogue and relations ………….……. 171-180 Shifting experiences, critical perspectives ……………………………….…….. 181-190 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………… 190-192 Chapter 7: Conclusion ……………………………………...…………………….…. 193-200 Spatializing resistance, spatializing power …………………………….………. 194-195 Contesting, de-romanticizing space ……………………....…………………..... 195-196 Tenable space-making ……………………....……………………………….... 196-198 Limitations ………………………………………..………..………………….…... 198 Resistant space-making ………………..……..………………………….……. 198-200 Bibliography ……………………………………….…………………………………. 201-210 Appendix A: Questions for poet interviews…………;;;……..……..…………………….…. 211 Appendix B: Questions for listener interviews ………………..……..…………………….... 212 Appendix C: Informed consent script for participant observation ……..……..…….…… 213-214 Appendix D: Consent form for interviews ………………..……..……………………... 215-216 Appendix E: Letter of introduction …………………………….…...……………………..... 217 Appendix F: Announcement at slam events ……………………………………………...… 217 Appendix G: Flier available at slam events ………………………………………………… 218 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Research participants ……………………………………………......…………. 35-36 Table 4.1 Slam roles ……………………………………………………………….…….. 74-75 Table 4.2 Claims, practices, norms, and challenges of resistant space-making ……………. 95-96 Table 5.1 Political poems ……….…...………………………………………………............ 115 Table 5.2 Trauma poems ……………………………………………………………… 148-149 vii 1 CHAPTER 1║ Introduction January 2016 Nogojiwanong (Peterborough) The Spill On a snowy Thursday evening, over one hundred people crowded into the Spill, a cozy and dingy bar in Nogojiwanong (Peterborough). All manner of folk braved the bitter weather, packing themselves into the well-loved venue. The anticipation, palpable, was only broken as the words “welcome to the slam!” echoed off the red brick walls. The host drew us into making a space together, calling us in to recognize the Michi Saagiig Anishinaabeg and their lands on which we were gathered and compelling us to think about how living on these lands shapes the way we walk in the world and the art we create. As the night went on, all sorts of voices and bodies took up the mic: shifty