It was an evening of pure emotions on Feb. 27 as Archway Community Services hosted its Diverse Voices spoken poetry event in Abbotsford.
This sold-out event featured artists from a variety of backgrounds, each of them sharing passionate messages revolving around language, identity, resiliency, hope, and other similar themes.
Organizer Melissa Ly explained that these deeply personal pieces allowed the event to blossom into a welcoming and emotional space for everyone in attendance.
"The idea and concept of the event started off as a seed of hope," Ly said. "The support of my Archway colleagues, the open-hearted attendees, and finally the courageous speakers were like the soil, the water, and the sun. From that, a flower blossomed, which for many was one of collective healing. And that is all that I could have hoped for when planting the seed of this event."
Many of the pieces shared throughout the evening involved passages in the poet's original language, including an original work by Gursahib Singh, which was presented in both Hindi and English.
"It was amazing," Singh said. "Like people from diverse voices, I was wondering how I could relate to them that much. Every other person who came on stage felt like ‘That’s a part of me, that’s me!’ It was an amazing event."
Archway diversity education program supervisor Muhi Bakini was also one of the people who took to the stage in order to read a chapter he authored from the book Geographies of the Heart, which contains the stories of 18 new immigrants in Canada.
Ly said that the evening had a surprising ending when one of the audience members, Shailendra Pathak, felt inspired enough by the other performers to get up on stage and share an original Hindi song and parts of Punjabi poem by poet Bulleh Shah.
"I love the audience and beautiful performances," Pathak said. "Amazing, emotional, moving performances here."
Given the enormous outpour of support for this event, Ly said that Archway Community Services hopes to host more similar Diverse Voices activities in the future.
