** bookpresentations ** reading ** discussion **
Hannah Dawn Henderson: Being, in a State of Erasure
Nicole Jordan: 89
2 – 4 pm at our Babel Bookspace at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Museumpark 18, Rotterdam
Email us if you’d like to be on the guest list for free entrance to the museum (info@printroom.org).
The publications of Nicole Jordan and Hannah Dawn Henderson deploy autobiographical voices so as to generate an oscillation between past and present. Departing from their Caribbean heritage, both writers seek to address histories that have contoured their conceptions of selfhood, whereby a literary register serves as a device to navigate political/politicised heritage.
Being, in a State of Erasure recollects Hannah Dawn Henderson’s research in the archives of the British National Council of Civil Liberties. Henderson’s excavation of the archive was motivated by a desire to comprehend the political inheritance of Commonwealth descendants living in Britain today. During the 20th century many formerly colonised countries acquired independence, yet this dissolution of the empire saw a rise in nationalism on the British mainland. In the wake of independence, it was the body and identity of the Britain-bound Commonwealth migrant that thus became the territory upon which colonial power-plays would be exerted.
Commissioned as part of Beyond Words Library residency by the Freedom Festival Arts Trust, Hull Culture and Leisure Library Services and Book Works, in association with Hull History Centre, Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation, University of Hull, funded by James Reckitt Library Trust and Arts Council England. This project was also supported by Stroom Den Haag and the Mondriaan Fund, Amsterdam.
In 89, a series of meditations as poems by Nicole Jordan, a staccato meter evokes the pace of memories scattered across the Caribbean, Canada, and Europe, particularly the Netherlands. Featuring eighty-nine poems completed over one year, the anthology is a meditation on sentiments of nature, spirituality, (mis)placement, longing, inheritance and resolution. Written in what Nicole calls “hashtype”, 89 simultaneously explores abstract form and emerging clarity in contemporary communication while it commemorates and extends the legacy of works penned by Nicole’s grandmother, Hope, published over seventy years ago in Kingston, Jamaica.
The presentation will involve readings from both publications and a discussion on the process of their creation.
Thanks! Centre for Visual Arts Rotterdam (CBK) for supporting Babel Bookspace at Boijmans Van Beuningen