Women and men gathered to end violence against women during a poetry show in the Fenn Lounge Nov. 25.
“Acknowledge the ignorance, uncover the solution” was the guiding mantra for the show held in honour of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. The show was filled with emotion, joy and excitement, as poets recited their pieces and viewers responded with snaps and applause.
The poems ranged from narratives about one-night stands to letters to the women of the future.
“They are illustrating a picture of the many ways in which women are marginalized,” said organizer Yusra Uzair.
The show was an artistic way of spreading the message of gender violence said the third-year public affairs and policy management student.
She also said they aimed to point out violence against women is still present in society, Uzair said, whether it’s physical, emotional or verbal.
The event raised over $700 for the Interval House, a women’s shelter in Ottawa, she said. The shelter has rehabilitation programs and provides a safe place for women and children who have been victims of violence.
While the show was about women, many men attended and performed their own poems.
English and philosophy student Sean O’Gorman, who also performed, said to move forward, he believes there should be penalties for people who abuse women and more support for victims of violence.
Greg “Blue” Boyd was another male performer. In one of his poems, he compared women to Mother Nature since they both give life and nurture their offspring.
“Women, water, world. Three words synonymous to one another because with one related to the other, the other seems lifeless and life is enriched by all three,” Boyd recited as the audience snapped wildly.
The origin of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence agaisnt Women arose in Latin America, explained the event’s MC, Sharrae Lyon. It first appeared when a feminist group in Columbia denounced violence such as sexual harassment, rape and state violence, she said.
Nov. 25 commemorated the murder of the three Mirabel sisters, who opposed Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship of in in the Dominican Republic in 1960.
“We should commemorate the sisters in the past, the sisters that are surviving in the present and those who will come after us in the future,” said Lyon, a fourth-year human rights student.
The show ended with three of Faye “Festrell” Estrella’s engaging poems. She concluded by talking about the pain she’s been through and the violence going on in her community.
“You have to [address] how you were hurt so communities can come together and build a better one,” she said.
