Deepen your experience of MOCA Toronto’s spring exhibitions with a special tour of spoken word performances. Featuring the talent and voices of Charlie Petch, Shelly Grace, Truth Is… and Cass Myers. Attendees will be guided through the museum by the artists as they share their intimate perspectives and poetic responses to the exhibitions by Kapwani Kiwanga, Athena Papadopoulos and Serkan Özkaya.
Each artist has developed their poetic response to a different installation, creating a tour that encourages viewers to follow a specific route through the exhibition spaces. The tour will begin on the first floor at 6 pm and take visitors through all three floors until its conclusion at 8:30 pm.
The spoken word tour will be followed by a collaborative discussion with the poets that explores the process of poetry-making in response to contemporary art. Themes of identity, creative resistance and play will be developed throughout the programme.
Meet the Poets
Charlie Petch
Charlie Petch (they/them, he/him) is a disabled/queer/transmasculine, multidisciplinary artist who resides in Tkaronto/Toronto. Aside from their artistic practice, they also work as a touring performer, mentor and workshop facilitator. They won the Golden Beret lifetime achievement in spoken word with The League of Canadian Poets in 2020. Petch is also the founder of Hot Damn it's a Queer Slam and has been featured on CBC's Q, the Toronto International Festival of Authors and was long-listed for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2021. Their debut poetry collection, Why I Was Late (Brick Books), won the 2022 ReLit Award and was named "Best of 2021" by The Walrus.
Shelly Grace
Shelly Grace is a Toronto-based spoken word poet and photographer. She uses her art for community building and healing, focusing on the experiences of women and the Black community. In 2022 she received Toronto Art Foundation's Breakthrough Artist Award. She previously released a chapbook, Sisters in Stanzas, with fellow poet Desiree McKenzie in 2020. In 2019 she won the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, while on the Up From The Roots slam team, becoming a National Spoken Word Champion. Her piece Atlantic was shared with CBC Arts ,and she has recently worked with the TTC and TDSB amongst others.
Truth Is ...
Truth Is … has dedicated much of her time and all of herself to the betterment of the community over the years through poetry and effective communication. Since 2006, Truth Is … has been a multiple time individual slam champion and has participated eleven times as a national spoken word team member, participating in hundreds of slams. She has participated in several of the TEDx series and has been a part of the prestigious 'When Sisters Speak' spoken word concerts. More recently she opened for legendary activist Angela Davis, and has been the recipient of the Min Sook Lee Labour Arts award and named Guelph's Top 40 under 40.
Cass Myers
Cass Myers is a queer, South-Asian-Italian, mad, crippled, non-binary artist working at the intersection of arts, therapeutics, aesthetics and world-building. Their performance poetry has over 100k views on YouTube and has been performed at major venues such as Hillside Music Festival, the Ada Lovelace Festival (Berlin) and the Art Gallery Of Ontario. They have also won the National Magazine GOLD Award in Poetry and the ARC Poetry Magazine’s Poem of the Year. Their poetry can be found in literary journals such as Canthius and the Tahoma Literary Review. They were shortlisted for the RBC Pen New Voices Award and long-listed for the CBC Poetry Prize.
