BC Book Prize finalist Jonina Kirton will be visiting Prince Charles Secondary.
The author will be reading from her new book of poetry: An Honest Woman. Kirton says the work is loosely autobiographical tackling the complexity of being mixed race as well as violence she’s experienced and violence against women in general. She says it was a challenging book to write, ‘It was such a difficult book to write for many different reasons, clearly the content is challenging, revisiting trauma is challenging at the best of times and there was a lot going on in my life while I was writing the book.’
While Kirton was writing An Honest Woman her nephew passed after battling with cancer. While she was editing her father passed which brought up some guilt as some of her work ‘exposed more about his violent nature.’
Despite the difficulty she finds in presenting her work to students Kirton feels it’s important to share her story, ‘I believe we need to talk about these things and I know when I’m done reading and presenting often young women will come up to me and say I know that place, I’ve had that happen to me and that makes me feel good when that happens. I’m sad that that’s happened to them but I’m glad that they’ve heard someone else’s story and they can see that I’m still standing and doing quite well.’
She adds it’s important for young students to see themselves in authors, ‘We really need to see ourselves in the world and when I go into the schools and see the faces of Metis or other mixed race students and when I read or speak poetry about the complexities or unique challenges of being mixed race their faces just light up.’
An Honest Woman is shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Kirton is speaking to students at Prince Charles Secondary in Creston on April 20th and will be having a public reading in Kimberley on April 19th at the Kimberley Public Library at 7 pm.