Born and raised in Montreal/Tiohtià:ke, Liana Cusmano, aka Luca and BiCurious George, is a writer, poet, spoken word artist, filmmaker and arts educator. They are the 2018, 2019 and 2023 Montreal Slam Champion, runner up in the 2019 Canadian Individual Poetry Slam Championship, and a participant in the 2019 Spoken Word Residency Program at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Liana has presented their work in English, French, and Italian across North America, Europe, and Asia. They wrote the screenplay for the short film La femme finale, screened at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival; wrote and directed the award-winning Matters of Great Unimportance, screened at the 2019 Blue Metropolis Festival; and created « Peuple, Poésie, Politique » in the television documentary series Vivre ensemble (2021). They are Fiction Editor at the literary journal carte blanche and editor-at-large at Accenti Magazine. Their first novel, Catch & Release (2022), was published by Guernica Editions. They were a 2022 finalist for the QWF Spoken Word Prize.
A poetry performance, featuring pieces that touch on love, relationships, queerness and belonging.
Participants will build on memory and recollection to write vivid pieces. Discussions of experiences that have marked us will be followed by writing prompts that will help participants craft a finished piece. If you wanted to bring your reader with you on this journey, which of the five senses would you lean on? Which similes, metaphors, or images most clearly express how you felt? Participants will also be encouraged to play with form, structure, and punctuation as they write pieces that will reflect who they are and the experiences they have lived.
Participants will hear a live performance of three spoken word poems, and then build on memory and recollection to write their own vivid pieces. Discussions of experiences that have marked them will be followed by writing prompts that will help participants craft a finished piece. If you wanted to bring your reader with you on this journey, which of the five senses would you lean on? Which similes, metaphors, or images most clearly express how you felt? Participants will also be encouraged to play with form, structure, and punctuation as they write pieces that will reflect who they are and the experiences they have lived.
