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Cecily Nicholson

Cecily Nicholson is a Canadian poet and activist, and the financial administrator for Gallery Gachet, located in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Her book, Among the Poplars (Talonbooks, 2014) won the 2015 Dorothy Livesay prize for poetry.

Life

A former student of the University of Western Ontario, Nicholson studied at the Kroc Institute of the University of Notre Dame, where she earned her master's degree. Since then, Nicholson has held residences at a number of Canadian universities, including the University of British Columbia Okanagan, Queens University, Thompson Rivers University, the University of Windsor, and the University of Northern British Columbia. Nicholson continues to give readings, presentations, and question and answer sessions at various institutions and conferences, including the Surrey Muse gathering in 2016, UWO's WRITE NOW! speaker series, and a reading event at Redeemer University College. Nicholson was a moderator at the 23rd Annual Virginia Woolf Conference: Virginia Woolf and the Common (Wealth) Reader (June 6th-9th, 2013). She currently lives in Vancouver, BC.

Work

Beginning in 2000, Cecily Nicholson has worked in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, doing administrative work as well as crisis management. In particular, Nicholson works with and for women who reside in Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh territories, as well as impoverished communities; the types of issues these marginalized people face are often reflected in her poetry. Additionally, Nicholson was a coordinator for the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre, is a member of Emily Carr University's research ethics board, and has had collaborations with Thompson River University's Centre for Innovation in Culture and the Arts in Canada, Simon Fraser University's Audain Gallery, VIVO Media Arts, and the Joint Effort prison abolition group. Nicholson is currently the financial administrator for Gallery Gachet, a centre run by artists that hosts various exhibitions, performances, workshops, residencies, and special events, and strives to eliminate stigmatization, and support marginalized peoples. The gallery challenges commonly held perspectives on various social and mental health issues through art and opportunities for self-expression.

Poetry

Cecily Nicholson wrote poetry without publishing her works for several years, despite the fact that she enjoyed editing and rewriting her poems when she was still a teenager. In 2008, Nicholson moved to Vancouver, where her work inspired her to give a voice to the city's various communities through poetry. Nicholson began to participate in poetry readings, and started submitting her work. Her second formal publication was a clutch of poems printed in West Coast Line, volume 62 (2009), which she submitted upon invitation.

Nicholson has published two books of poetry. The first, Triage, was published by Talonbooks in 2011. Nicholson's second book, which involved research and the perusal of archival documents, From the Poplars, was published in 2014 by Talonbooks.

Nicholson's poems have also been featured in Tripwire Journal 8: Cities (2014), and Canada and Beyond: a Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies, volume 4 (2014). She also contributed poems to the 2013 exhibition Due to Injuries..., which included an online publication.

Other works and contributions

In addition to her poetry publications, Cecily Nicholson has contributed to various projects. Nicholson was a curator for Anamnesia: Unforgetting (2012). Along with Geraldina Polanco, Nicholson co-authored the ninth chapter, "'Re-construction' from the Viewpoint of Precious Labour: the Practice of Solidarity,' for the book Human Welfare, Rights, and Social Activism: Rethinking the Legacy of J.S. Woodsworth. Nicholson has also been acknowledged as contributing research to Sunera Thobani's Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada, and is listed as a contributor for Harsha Walia's Undoing Border Imperialism.

Nicholson contributed a barbed-wire candy to Oh Oh Canada's pure maple sugar candy. In her artist statement, Nicholson describes the barbed wire as representative of enclosure and oppression, "instrumental in attempts to 'tame the West,'" and mentions how No One Is Illegal has attempted to alter this image by showing a fist raising the wire, meant to symbolize the freedom to cross "colonial borders."

Nicholson does not write reviews.

Themes

The poetry Nicholson writes is filled with social, political, and cultural issues and examinations. Much like her work, her poems have dealt with issues such as marginalization, violence, trauma, and displacement, as well as the private and public affects and implications of these same issues. Many narrative voices appear in her works, which explore aspects of diaspora.

Nicholson's first book, Triage, is focused on trauma and the response to trauma, endurance, and witnessing, and was influenced by her workplace experiences in the Downtown Eastside.

From the Poplars has been referred to as "documentary poetry," for its recursive nature and the narratives it presents, which includes fragments taken from archival documents. The poetry in this collection serves to voice the history of the land of Poplar Island itself, and its native peoples, and to raise awareness of displacement and origins. Cecily Nicholson describes her own work as: "an effort towards building an active subjectivity that’s located on land, as well as within histories of settlement, migration, and brutal erasure resulting from colonialism. The poetic lens within the work is multifarious and fractured, in a good way. It includes migrant narratives, which stem from me—particularly the thread that draws on legacies in proximity to Detroit."

Awards and recognition

Cecily Nicholson's From the Poplars (2014) received the Dorothy Livesay prize for poetry. The award is granted to an author who has produced what is deemed the best book of poetry that year, and who lives in either British Columbia or the Yukon.

Nicholson was featured in Room Magazine's 14 Books to Read by Canadian Women in 2014 list, Black History Month: Our Favourite Canadian Writers, and 50 Books Written by 50 Canadians of Colour.

Nicholson's poetry has been described as "alluring, but deceptive, awkward, but poignant" by Michael Roberson, while Garry Thomas Morse describes it as: "unique and refreshing [...with] lyrical complexity she maintains throughout her activist solidarity, in which her meticulous reportage allows language itself to reveal the cruel ironies and paradoxes of our place in the world."

External links

• Cecily Nicholson poems published in Canada and Beyond
• Due to Injuries...: Response by Cecily Nicholson
• Cecily Nicholson: barbed wire candy
• The Quality of Light - Cecily Nicholson
• Anamensia: Unforgetting
• Gallery Gachet