Thursday, January 28, 2016, at 8 pm, free. The Tower and PoeMagic presents a poetry reading, in English and Mandarin, to launch a chapbook of poems by Xu Lizhi, the late Chinese poet, and worker at FoxConn, an electronics factory in Shenzhen. The chapbook is published by The Tower, Hamilton’s Anarchist Community Library and Resource Centre. http://the-tower.ca/
Readers include: Lee Reed, Laura Kodzhe, Chris Pannell, Ziboya Nhun, New-Era Neisha, Angie C, Campbell Young, and Adam Getty, as well as Klyde Broox, who hosts the event. Stories of the struggles of migrant laborers in Chinese factories and Canadian farms will also be shared, as we attempt to foster universal working class solidarity across great distances. The evening will include an open mic section.
In September, 2014, 24 year-old Chinese poet and migrant worker Xu Lizhi threw himself from a FoxConn work
ers’ dormitory building in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. Xu Lizhi’s poetry flashes “a bleak snapshot of working life in China today.” The tragedy of Xu Lizhi’s untimely exit from life is becoming a triumph for his poetry as poetry aficionados and social justice/workers rights activists continue to memorialize his name by disseminating his poems.
