artist & writer

November 7, 2015

It is my deep pleasure and honour to be reading with the remarkable poet Eileen Myles tonight here in Winnipeg. I’ll be reading some new writing inspired by Chelsea Girls. It’s fast and furious. I hope to see you tonight. REALLY you do not want to miss hearing Eileen Myles, poet rock star and damn fine human being. She’s going to read from Chelsea Girls and I Must Be Living Twice. Follow what she’s up to at her website: http://www.eileenmyles.com/

Thanks for your brilliance and grace, Eileen, and for living a life of words.

Eileen Myles has published more than a dozen books of poetry, art journalism, and fiction. She has been the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, a Warhol/Creative Capital Grant and a 2014 Foundation for Contemporary Art Grant. She lives in New York.

October 16, 2015

Today I was honoured with the Marsha Hanen Award for Excellence in Creating Community Awareness at UWinnipeg’s Autumn Convocation.

Congratulations to my colleague Dr. Anna Stokke who was also honoured. From Dr. Annette Trimbee, President and Vice-Chancellor at U of W: “Both Dr. Roewan Crowe and Dr. Anna Stokke exemplify the powerful impact the members of our faculty have on the wider community. We’re fortunate our students not only benefit from the wisdom and practical knowledge these women share in the classroom, but also from the inspiration they provide by building academic careers that contribute to positive change in the world.”

September 23-27, 2015

What a pleasure to spend a week in Toronto for the Feminist Art Conference (FAC) at OCAD University.

I had the opportunity to reconnect with friends, meet new artists, speak on a panel, and perform Lifting Stone, a queer femme performance/installation creating intimate stone encounters.

OCAD’s painting studio was the performance and installation site for Lifting Stone.

The practice of painting and wooden easels have now become part of the installation.

My new FEMME bag was made by the fabulously talented JR Koroscil.

In the desert you can remember your name.

August 30, 2015

It was a dream to be at the Zapatista (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) village of Oventik – autonomously territory of the Mayan – with my Hemi and CCPPA comrades this August.

May 29, 2015

I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Alex Wilson (Opaskwayak Cree Nation) about the significance of the round dance, Idle No More’s use of social media, and her recent participation at the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics Encuentro in Montreal.

Alex is an Associate Professor of Education and Director of the Aboriginal Education Research Centre at the University of Saskatchewan. Her academic and community work and her passion focus on Indigenous land-based education and social ecological justice. As a community organizer, she uses education and Cree philosophy to intervene in ongoing practices of colonialism, oppression, and the destruction of land and water.

Idle No More Round Dance Revolution at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics Montreal Encuentro: A Discussion with Roewan Crowe and Alex Wilson.

The article, invited by editor, Dr. Gina Athena Ulysse, was published in Emisférica 12.1 Carribbean Rasanblaj.

View other issues of Emisférica here.

Gina Athena Ulysse is a feminist artist-anthropologist-activist and a self-proclaimed Post-Zora Interventionist. She earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and is also a performance artist, poet and multi-media artist.

May 17-20, 2015

So pleased to attend the Publishing Feminisms Symposium this weekend at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

About the symposium:

“Organized by Michelle Meagher (U of Alberta) and Tessa Jordan (BCIT), the goal of this symposium was to bring together a broad range of scholars and practitioners in order to explore the relationships between feminist print culture – feminist presses, periodicals, glossies, zines, independent and the production and distribution mechanisms through which they are supported – and post 1960 feminisms.

Participants included junior, mid-career, and senior scholars from universities in Canada and the United States, graduate students, librarians, archivists, artists, and representatives from several feminist periodicals, including The Feminist Wire, TRIVIA,femspec, feral feminisms, GUTS, and off our backs.”

I talked about my book, Quivering Land, and about my Feminist Bookstore Ghost Launch project with Cam Bush and Steven Leyden Cochrane.

Publishing Feminisms on Twitter (@PFeminisms), May 20: @RoewanCrowe’s book Quivering Land – a queer western – “ghost launched” where a feminist bookstore used to exist.

April 15-18, 2015

A beautiful time spent in the desert, in the land of stone, in my element!

I attended the international conference, Open Embodiments: Locating Somatechnics in Tucson.

Conjuring up some stone femme magic and feeling slightly possessed, I performed Lifting Stone.

About the conference:

“To be open means having the capacity for connection and curiosity, and willing to be receptive to otherness and difference. Openness is an engagement with processes of becoming, to be in anticipation of future states without predetermined ends. To be in the open is to be exposed and vulnerable under conditions of necessity and possibility, of risk and danger. Open is ontological, an ethical stance, an imperative: it demands of us to open borders, detention centers, and prisons, to open our eyes and our hearts, our senses and our awareness. Invitations are openings, as this one is: Let us come together and open ourselves to the embodied experience of our messy entanglements, fraught alliances and fuzzy boundaries with each other and with the Earth. And let us do it in Tucson.”

March 30, 2015

I was so pleased to be asked about my work as a feminist artist. I spoke with Brittany Thiessen from The Uniter about transformation, censorship, baking as a metaphor for feminist art, and my interests in radical questioning.

We also spoke about what I have going on right now, including teaching a Women, Health, and the Environment course, where the students have decided to collaborate on their final assignment, and my upcoming performance at Open Embodiments, a conference in Tucson, Arizona next month.

You can watch the full video here.

March 18, 2015

Presented by the Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies and the Manitoba Crafts Museum and Library, this round table explored how we express our care about missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit through various forms of activism and interventions, including the use of craft in the collective We Care Quilt.

We were joined by Leah Gazan of the We Care Campaign, Cheryl James of the Keewatin Otchitchak (Northern Crane) Traditional Women Singers and Bear Clan Patrol,  Rorie McLeod Arnould of the University of Winnipeg’s Students’ Association, and Michael Champagne of Meet Me at the Bell Tower. We were also  joined by Elder Hector Pierre.

The We Care Quilt is being made in recognition of the #WeCare Campaign, a campaign to engage Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians to take a united and firm stance to ensure that the safety of Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit. is realized in Canada. Individuals will be able to create a We Care Square as a physical representation of their care and commitment to this national crisis which will then be sewn into the collective quilt.

See UWinnipeg’s news story,  Care to Quilt.

March 4 & 7, 2015

I am excited to share that the Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies has teamed up with the Manitoba Crafts Museum and Library and the We Care Campaign to initiate a community-made quilt honouring missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit.

We are holding two drop-in craft workshops for anyone interested in making a We Care Square that will eventually be sewn into the collective quilt.

The We Care Quilt is being made in recognition of Leah Gazan’s We Care Campaign MMIW, a campaign to engage Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians to take a united and firm stance to ensure that the safety of Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit is realized in Canada. Individuals will be able to create a We Care Square as a physical representation of their care and commitment to this national crisis which will then be sewn into the collective quilt. The quilter, Tracy Popp, who is assembling the quilt will be on site on Saturday March 7th and working on the quilt so that the public can see it come together.

There will also be kits available at the Manitoba Crafts Museum and Library from March 7 through to March 25 and there will be a table set aside for anyone to drop by to create a square at any time during the museum’s opening hours!

About the #WeCare Campaign:

The #WeCare campaign was established to engage Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians to take a united and firm stance to ensure the safety of Indigenous women and girls is realized in Canada. In 2013 James Anaya, former Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Issues for the United Nations, called the state of violence and the number of murdered and missing Indigenous women in Canada a national crisis. This has been noted in a recent report completed about violence against Indigenous women and girls by the RCMP in 2014. This is not just an Indigenous issue. This is an issue for all Canadians who value the safety of all children and women in our society.

The #WeCare campaign aims to educate the broader public about the serious crisis relating the violence against Indigenous women. It is an opportunity for all Canadians to demonstrate compassion, love and hope while putting pressure on all levels of government to support a national inquiry and immediate action to address this serious issue impacting families and communities across Canada.

The #WeCare Campaign is a firm statement of solidarity to let all levels of government in Canada know that #WeCare, and we will not stop until Indigenous women and girls can enjoy safety in cities, towns, and communities throughout Turtle Island.

March 1, 2015

This picture makes me so happy! What a pleasure to work on this dream team. In the past few months I have been working with Trish Salah, Erin Meagan Schwartz, Syrus Marcus Ware, Christina Hajjar, and Shimby Zegeye (not pictured) on planning the Decolonizing and Decriminalizing Trans Genres symposium.

Building upon the momentum of Trish’s weekend conference last May, Writing Trans Genres: Emergent Literatures and Criticism , this one day symposium centered the critical and creative work of black and indigenous trans and two spirit writers, artists, scholars and activists. Recognizing the violent force of institutional racism, police brutality, colonialism, and the criminalization of trans of colour lives, particularly in the area of sex work, this symposium worked to foreground these intersections in trans experience and representation.

With these extraordinary guests:

Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán
Ceyenne Doroshow
Imani Henry
Andrea Jenkins
Yasmeen Persad
Dr. C. Riley Snorton
Syrus Marcus Ware
Saylesh Wesley

The day included two panels, a dinner, and readings/storytelling.

Schedule:

1pm: Decolonizing Trans Genres
3:30pm: Against the Law: Living & Writing While Black, Indigenous, Trans
5:30pm: Dinner in Riddell Hall Cafeteria (1st floor)
7pm: Reading and Storytelling

February 27, 2015

The Winnipeg Poetry Slam 2015 competitive season returned on February 25th with the second of four bouts to qualify poets for the chance to be on the Winnipeg Poetry Slam Team! The group of four stunning poets will then qualify to compete on a national stage at The 2015 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word / Festival canadien de spoken word in Saskatoon!

In each regular season bout, 12 spots are open for anyone to sign up and take part in the open mic competition. Audience judges distill each performance into a score out of 10, and the best scored poets move up the ranks and into playoffs.

To give the competing poets a break in between rounds, I was invited to read some poetry and show the audience the ways of the new wild west! I read from Quivering Land and was happy to hear from other talented folks too.

For info on the Winnipeg Poetry Slam community and more, check out Winnipegpoetryproject.com!

On February 27th, 2015, Steve Currie said on Facebook, “Thanks to Roewan Crowe for transporting us to more gothic and windswept times.”

Loved contributing to this exciting competition!

(Feb 25 on FB you said: Braiding my mane, eating my oats, just getting ready for tonight’s slam. I’ll be the featured horse. 7:15 doors, 8:00 slam. I’ll be reading after the first slam. Looking forward to meeting folks in the Winnipeg slam community. There’s a hitching rail out front at the West End Cultural Centre. Hope to see you there!)

February 9, 2015

Hosted by the University of Winnipeg’s Indigenous Advisory Circle, I was happy to be a part of Inquiring Minds:  Understanding the call for, role of and limitations on an inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women #MMIW, honouring the families of our stolen sisters and the survivors of violence.

The event was hosted by Diane Roussin, Chair of the Indigenous Advisory Circle, University of Winnipeg.

Schedule:

What action is being taken to call an inquiry?
With Chief Francine Meeches
Swan Lake First Nation
First Nation Women’s Committee

UWinnipeg’s relationship to Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls & 2 spirited people
Dr. Roewan Crowe, Associate Professor and Director of the Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies, The University of Winnipeg

How can Indigenous people be meaningfully included in a public inquiry?
The Honourable Justice Murray Sinclair
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Former co-Commissioner of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry

Is an inquiry the goal or a way of achieving our goal?
Dr Annette Trimbee
President
The University of Winnipeg

What does an inquiry mean?
A panel with Dr Leslie Spillett (Ka Ni Kanichihk), Lorena Fontaine (UWinnipeg), Dr Niigaan Sinclair (UM), and Treaty Commissioner Jamie Wilson Moderated by Wab Kinew (UWinnipeg).

The event was covered by the Winnipeg Free Press and CBC.

You can watch the video on Youtube.

January 13, 2015, I started the year off for Speaking Crow as their featured reader for the evening.

Speaking Crowe is a free monthly poetry open mic night with various featured readers and is Winnipeg’s longest-running Poetry Open Mic.

I spent the evening reading poetry from Quivering Land and hearing other talented folks perform!

Catch next month’s open mic night on Tuesday, February 3rd, 7pm at the Millennium Library, with the talented Chimwemwe Undi.

November 25, 2014

I’m feeling nourished by the conversation that happened last night. There was a terrific turnout for our long table discussion on feminist activism in Winnipeg. For the first hour young feminists were invited to talk about their activist work. The table as opened up for the next hour. So much strength and beauty. Some talked about community accountability, lateral violence, combating racism, white supremacy and patriarchy, some talked about transphobia, about disability rights and fighting ableism, about sexual exploitation and rape, about decriminalization, about violence of institutions. We talked about the reality of murdered and missing Indigenous women. Some talked about mothering and the world they want to create. Many talked about burnout and self care. And dancing!! There were difficult conversations and so much love and respect in the room.

Growing our power,  practicing love.

Big shout out to IWGS co-coordinators Christina Hajjar and Erin Meagan Schwartz for doing a fabulous job!

The event featured 9 community members discussing their activist practice, the difficulties they have faced, and what impact they have had on themselves and others.

Alaya Mcivor
Cheyenne Henry
Jenny Henkelman
Jess Turner
Johsa Manzanilla
Merrill Grant
Raven Hart Bellecourt
Sarah Martens
Uzoma Chioma

November 18, 2014

November 18th was Rachel Zolf’s launch for her powerful new book, Janey’s Arcadia at McNally Robinson.

Trish Salah, Katherena Vermette, and I were invited to read some of our poetry as well. What an amazing evening and an honour to read with these fine writers!

Rachel Zolf’s fifth book assembles a pirate score of error-ridden historical and current documents – missionary narratives, immigration pamphlets, settler writings – to decry the ongoing violence of Canadian colonialism. It stars Janey Settler-Invader, a foul-mouthed mutant slouching toward the Red River Colony, along with a host of cacophonous, carnivalesque appropriations.

Rachel Zolf’s writing practice explores interrelated materialist questions concerning memory, history, knowledge, subjectivity, and the conceptual limits of language and meaning. She is particularly interested in how ethics founders on the shoals of the political. Her books of poetry include “Neighbour Procedure” and “Human Resources,” which won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award. She has taught at New York’s The New School University and the University of Calgary.

Trish Salah is the author of the Lambda Award winning book, “Wanting in Arabic,” and the recently published “Lyric Sexology,” as well as co-editor of a special issue of “TSQ:Transgender Studies Quarterly,” focused on Cultural Production, out this fall. She is also assistant professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Winnipeg.

Katherena Vermette is a Métis writer of poetry, fiction and children’s literature. Her first book, “North End Love Songs” won the 2013 Governor General Literary Award for Poetry. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in several literary magazines and compilations. She holds a Master of Fine Arts – Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Her next project, The Seven Teachings Stories picture book series, should be released any day now!

September, 2014

I am happy to share with you this piece of work in honour of Sharon Rosenberg, co-written with Dr. Michelle Meagher from the University of Alberta.

“Letting Something Else Happen: A Collaborative Encounter with the Work of Sharon Rosenberg.”

Available online here: http://liminalities.net/10-2/somethingelse.pdf

Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies (Volume 10, Issue 2, Sept 2014): 1-16.

Michelle Meagher’s Bio:

Michelle Meagher is associate professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Alberta. Her research is centered on cultivating relationships between feminist theory and feminist art practice. Her work on artists like Suzy Lake, Cindy Sherman, Martha Wilson, and Jenny Saville has been published in Hypatia, Body and Society, and Feminist Studies.

Contemporary Verse 2: The Canadian Journal of Poetry and Critical Writing (CV2)’s mission is to showcase a diversity of poets and poetic styles.

I’m so happy to have been one of those poets in this year’s 2014 Summer Sampler, among two other ARP Books poets.

My contributions include two poems from my 2013 literary debut, Quivering Land.

They include “Bullet” and “Lifting Stone.”

Other contributors include Emma Healy, with excerpts from “Begin With the End in Mind,” and Angela Hibbs, with “Sin Eater.”

You can find our work here.

Retweeted Contemporary Verse 2 (@CV2magazine):

Check out our awesome summer reading samples via @caitlinpress @arpbooks @BrickBooks Nothing better than free poetry!

July 10, 2014: Summer poetry! Contemporary Verse 2 has created summer 2014 poetry samplers, including one with ARP authors Roewan Crowe, Angela Hibbs, and Emma Healey. Download a free epub or PDF version from the CV2 site.

June 21, 2014

Every two years, the Hemispheric Institute hosts an Encuentro—part academic conference, part performance festival—in a different site in the Americas.

The Hemispheric Institute’s 9th Encuentro, held at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada, sought to explore the multiple valences of the term MANIFEST! How are performances mobilized and syncretized in civic, community, and cultural contexts to create manifold forms of political expression? How do public, theatrical events produce ‘evidence’ that manifests ideas otherwise invisible, hidden, or unspeakable? What new manifestations, manifestos, festivals, and manifs emerge via our changing visions of political spaces, intellectual arenas, and the everyday street? The 2014 Encuentro invited artists, activists, and scholars to engage with and investigate the aesthetic, social, and choreographic techniques that transform political ideas into collective images, through actions, embodied utterances, and ways of being. Such questions resonated in the host city of Montréal, where la manifestation has a rich and ongoing history.

I had the pleasure of performing Lifting Stone at this year’s Encuentro.

Lifting Stone, a queer, erotic re/mix of sections from Gertrude Stein’s classic text Lifting Belly, creates space for intimate encounters. This poetic performance reflects on vulnerability, violence, our relationship to the land, and being “stone.” Working with a queer femme notion of ‘stone,’ I play with ideas of touching and being touched in a context of colonial violence.

April 4, 2014

Over the last year I have been co-organizing with the amazing Shelagh Pizey-Allen and Christina Hajjar. We’ve been working on many interesting projects, including a long table conversation in conjunction with the traveling exhibition, Off The Beaten Path: Violence, Women and Art, which is at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) February 1, – April 20, 2014.

The long table event was a collaboration between The Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies at University of Winnipeg and the WAG. Off the Beaten Path features the work of 30 international artists who engage with issues of gender-based violence. With the Long Table we hoped to create a space for discussion and reflection on the role of art in addressing issues of violence.

Conceived by performance artist Lois Weaver, the Long Table is an experimental format for public dialogue. Anyone is welcome to come to the table to make statements, leave comments, ask questions, or simply to listen. We wanted to create an event that would ensure that everyone had an opportunity to speak from their experience and to respond to the art work in the show. Free passes to the exhibition were available on the day of the long table in order to increase access for folks who had not yet seen the show, or give others another chance to engage with the art before our discussion.

We were very pleased with the open discussion that flowed at the long table, and people’s desire to come and go from the table to the seating area as they felt compelled. Connections between Off The Beaten Path were made with another traveling exhibition, Walking With Our Sisters (WWOS), held at Urban Shaman Gallery March 21 – April 12. WWOS is a massive commemorative art installation comprised of 1,763+ pairs of moccasin vamps (tops) plus 108 pairs of children’s vamps created and donated by hundreds of caring and concerned individuals to draw attention to the injustice of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit. Important points were made about the differences in representation of violence and how misrepresentation or exclusion can occur when attempting to cover such a broad topic, as with Off The Beaten Path. We talked about race, colonization, allyship, self-representation, the names of the exhibitions, and more.