Who are you?

My name is Peace Akintade, Saskatchewan’s 11th Poet Laureate, an African-Canadian interdisciplinary poet, public speaker, chorus-poem playwright, and thespian, currently residing in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I trace my roots back to Yorubaland, Nigeria, where the traditions of storytelling and communal creation have deeply influenced my artistic journey.

My work is a continuous exploration of intersectionality within the artistic community, approaching it from an explorer’s perspective. I weave together poetry, dance, performance art, theology, neo-poetics, and theatre to uncover how these forms intersect and inform one another. Through my practice, I strive to transcend the boundaries of conventional art and literature, engaging directly with the living pulse of language and the spoken word.

Poetry is not only an artistic expression but a means of public dialogue, capable of capturing the collective emotions, challenges, and aspirations of our province. For me, Saskatchewan is a living entity of creation. Each day, I am challenged, and each day, I stand strong, building community and safety with my voice and my hand.

Poetry is not just written. It is Oral. It is Movement. It is a Secret. It is There, Here, and Not.  I was drawn naturally to performance art and visual art as an extension of my storytelling style. I have always been captivated by the stagnant positioning of poetry within institutional spaces. How can poetry live eternally on paper, remain solid in the air, yet escape being confined by the expectations of an audience’s ear or a reader’s voice?

In deep earnest, I have cultivated, expanded, and experimented with the very definition of a poet—Who gets to be one? What role do they play in education? 

My Artistic Formula:

Storytelling + Wonderment + Facilities+ Devises 

( poetry x soundscapes x videography x photography)

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Community Building + Collective Oneself

I am beyond blessed to have created poetry and performance art for the past twelve years. From working with Open Door Society as a poet-in-residence to share the experiences of immigraints and refugees; to co-running Write Out Loud, a youth poetry collective in Saskatoon; even working with Libraries in Saskatoon and beyond to bring accessible poetry workshops; my work starts and ends in community. We are a Collective Oneself, meaning, “we can not know ourselves without knowing others”. I am not a poet, without being a servant to the work.

What is your book about?

The Goat’s Tongue is an interdisciplinary poetry collection that traces the story of a girl, a goat, and an owl navigating the landscapes of vulnerability, belonging, and memory through symbolic dialogue. It will be my second poetry collection based on Ori Ara Emi (Ori Ori Ori My Head), a long-form performance art piece created during residencies with the Remai Modern Art Gallery and BAM (Bridges Art Movement). 

The Goat Tongue retells my favorite childhood memory. From age five to nine, I became voluntarily mute, only communicating with the goats and eating dirt on all fours. The collection begins with a girl born with an insatiable craving for dirt. She licks the dirt off a goat’s beard and, in doing so, begins an ongoing dialogue with the goat, an elder figure filled with Yoruba knowledge. The collection explores the African concept of “emi” or “pica,” a metaphor for the human craving for substances and experiences beyond the physical realm, mirroring my journey through identity, loss, and ancestral wisdom. 

The Goat’s Tongue marries poetry, Yoruba folklore, and postcolonial themes of silence, isolation, and communication that plague the Yoruba tradition. The core of “The Goat’s Tongue” lies in the reinterpretation of traditional Yoruba oral literature, specifically through the lens of poetic and performance art. Yoruba folklore, with its emphasis on oral storytelling, symbolic language, and spiritual depth, has historically been shared within tight-knit communities. By transforming this practice into a work of performance art, and again into a written manuscript, I am bridging oral traditions with the contemporary mediums I am immersed in.

What does it mean to be truly human? What does it mean to forgive those who reject you? Ori Ara Emi (Ori Ori My Head) and “The Goat’s Tongue”. Created on Saskatoon soil by tapping into the memories of eating Nigerian soil.

Could you tell us a bit about the process of writing this book?

During Ori Ara Emi (Ori Ori My Head), I dedicated myself to writing poetry and prophecies in a script of my own making for forty-six hours, in three performances from March 2024- April 2024. The poems were written through a series of thirty-six unique symbols with their own meanings and theology. The community engaged in the performance by providing food, water, a break, or interrupting my work for a personalized poem written in five minutes or less using those symbols. 

At the beginning of Ori. Ara. Emi. (Ori. Ori. My Head), I realized that my inner child needed a voice that only I knew. Hence I created thirty-six symbols that only I could translate. The decision created a form of isolation that was both comfortable and daunting. 

Ori. Ara. Emi. (Ori. Ori. My Head) was ephemeral. Even though I offered the public something in return for their offering such as food, water, and a break, my offering to them was completely immaterial, and fleeting. I transliterated the symbols for their ears only. There is no trace of the exchange except through memory. 

Hence, following the residencies during which I incubated this project, I decided to share the legend of the symbols and the story they contain with the world. “The Goat’s Tongue” is the material component of Ori. Ara. Emi. (Ori. Ori. My Head). It is the physical evidence of my written stories from the one hundred and thirty-eight hours total of performance.

“The Goat’s Tongue” is currently written in both English and eighteen unique symbols based on the thirty-six symbols crafted during Ori. Ara. Emi. (Ori. Ori. My Head). I use the symbols I created for “care”, “stability”, “vulnerability” , “trust”, “open-ness”, “share”, “forgiveness”, “humanity”, “resourcefulness”, “i am who you are”, “sorry”, “the poet”, “goat”, “owl”, “grandfather”, “sister”, “mother”, the girl”. The beauty of the symbols is in their ability to create unique kinds of poetry, depending on how the reader translates them.

During Ori. Ara. Emi. (Ori. Ori. My Head), I spent hours upon hours in isolation, only talking or connecting when the participants visited and engaged with me. “The Goat’s Tongue” is in part about the loneliness epidemic, the struggle it takes to speak, and the grief that rejection can inflict on humans. 

How would you describe your book using emojis only?

🐐🔇😶🩸⚰️🦉

EXCERPT

first – burn your thoughts for earth’s embers.
: translate the drawings for your scripture
: know that we are unreliable narrators
: understand we write to be understood
: understand you are in the presence of
vulnerability

finally – understand poetry is accessible when
the poet is healed

To be human: translation

to be human means stability,
open-ness, vulnerability.
to be human means I am who you are,
forgiveness, apologizes.
to be human means to love a woman.
to love a woman means a change of culture.

share a bit of care, little girl.
star-eaten girl, dirt-eating girl, unspeaking girl.

to love yourself means, swaying with understanding.
sway with me. for us, little girl. for me, little girl.
connect your ego, and appoint your identity.
I am only your omnipotent self — in goat form.
to be human?
to be human.
to be

nothing grows

the sky here is made of cardboard and potash,
fractured and gray, like birds
that have forgotten how to fly.

we wonder if the poet misses the real sky,
the one that swallows you whole,
that sheds its skin at dusk and
drinks the wails of gods.

but here, the clouds don’t bleed, and
the stars don’t speak hymns, and
the sun never reaches the ground.

and we wonder,
when the poet is done feeding,
will she turn on herself?
will she collapse,
ash falling like rain,
finally choking on the bones of
what she once was?

resolution

a poet with flower-soft bones.
write from what you know.
eat from the dirt of your roots.
lick the goat’s beard.
do not speak as humans do.
speak like a poet.
bone unfolding.
soil – belonging.
heritage in bloom.
skin, rooted in flight