A University Canada West installation is using erasure poetry to explore questions of reconciliation, colonialism and belonging through the experiences of international undergraduate students.
On Land, In Absence: An Immersive Erasure Poetry Installation is now showing at UCW’s West Pender Campus (626 West Pender St., third floor).
Led by Dr. Kathleen (Kaye) Hare and Dr. Gitanjaly Chhabra, the installation grew out of a research project examining erasure poetry as a decolonial teaching and learning practice at UCW. The project was completed in consultation with UCW’s Indigenous Action Committee.
Thirty-seven students in UCW’s Associate of Arts and Bachelor of Arts in Business Communication programs participated in a series of workshops and created more than 50 erasure poems. The students, who come from eight countries, created poems from passages from works by Indigenous authors Cody Caetano, Alicia Elliott, Jessica Johns and Joshua Whitehead.
Erasure poetry involves creating a new poem from an existing text by removing or obscuring selected words and leaving others visible.
“The poems focus on belonging, immigration, decolonization and reconciliation here in Canada,” Dr. Hare said. “They reflect on students’ roles as newcomers in reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples in Canada, while engaging with themes including colonial histories, migration, hope, pain, healing and belonging on Indigenous lands.”
The resulting installation features 53 of the poems across three rooms and takes approximately 30 to 40 minutes to experience.
The first room presents 27 poems focused on diaspora, distance and arrival. According to the professors, students draw on histories and identities shaped across different places and contexts before moving into questions of borders, migration, displacement and belonging.
The second room contains 26 poems that engage more directly with colonization and decolonization. The works consider land alongside experiences of being between places, identities and relationships, while reflecting on memory, responsibility and how relationships may continue to evolve.
Both rooms use projection, movement, light and sound to take the poems beyond the classroom. Recordings of students reading their work are layered with sounds from the creative process, including markers moving across pages, pressure being released and paper rustling.
Dr. Chhabra said the concept of erasure required particular care because of the word’s significance in the context of colonization. For some participants, those conversations were informed by experiences of colonialism in their own countries.
“Students have their varied experiences with colonization, migration and displacement, and those experiences informed how they responded to the source texts,” Dr. Chhabra said. “We also talked about erasure as a form of colonial violence, so there was a real awareness of what it means to work with these texts and the responsibility that comes with that.”
Rather than rewriting or claiming ownership of the original works, Dr. Chhabra and Dr. Hare said students were encouraged to create something personal while remaining responsible to the original texts and their authors. The authors’ names and original words remain visible beneath the students’ markings.
A third room invites visitors to participate in the project. A video explains how to create an erasure poem and materials are available for visitors to make their own work. Completed poems can be displayed in the room or submitted through an online portal to become part of the project.
Visitors can also leave written reflections and, at certain times, speak with the project’s primary investigators and student volunteers about the exhibit and the research behind it.
The installation also seeks to create space for international students to contribute to conversations about colonization, Indigenous lands and reconciliation from perspectives shaped by their own histories.
Dr. Hare noted that public discussions about international students can often reduce them to questions of labour, housing pressures or institutional revenue. The installation instead highlights students’ own perspectives, creative work and reflections on land, responsibility and ongoing colonial conditions.
The installation is intended to be a shared space for dialogue rather than a finished statement. Dr. Hare and Dr. Chhabra said it may prompt personal and emotional responses, and that some of the questions it raises are deliberately left unresolved.
The project received support from UCW, the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences and UCW’s Indigenous Action Committee.
Members of the public can visit the installation from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sept. 10, 11, 15, 17 and 18 and Oct. 6, 8 and 9 on the third floor of UCW’s West Pender Campus.
